by Dreams End » Mon Aug 29, 2005 1:28 am
I'm not saying that this is somehow deliberate...but if this thing hits New Orleans....well, we in the south will get the first real taste of martial law. It looks nasty...and I REALLY hope they have a plan to get those people out of that stadium.<br><br><!--EZCODE QUOTE START--><blockquote><strong><em>Quote:</em></strong><hr><br><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK START--><a href="http://www.easttennessean.com/media/paper203/news/2004/10/11/News/Direct.Hurricane.Hit.Could.Drown.City.Of.New.Orleans.Experts.Say-749652.shtml">www.easttennessean.com/me...9652.shtml</a><!--EZCODE AUTOLINK END--><br>Direct hurricane hit could drown city of New Orleans, experts say<br>By Paul Nussbaum, KRT Campus<br>Published: Monday, October 11, 2004<br><br><br>Residents sift through the wreckage of their homes after one of this year´s many damaging hurricanes and tropical storms.<br>Media Credit: KRT Campus<br>Residents sift through the wreckage of their homes after one of this year´s many damaging hurricanes and tropical storms.<br><br>NEW ORLEANS - From a helicopter above the Gulf of Mexico, Col. Peter Rowan could see that his first line of defense had been breached.<br>Where Breton and the Chandeleur Islands had been, only pale green water now sparkled in the sun. Hurricane Ivan had pummeled the sand and grass barriers two weeks earlier, washing away much of them - and the hurricane protection they provide for New Orleans.<br>"It looks like it's pretty much all gone," said Rowan, commander of the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers.<br>The second line of defense is vanishing, too. Wetlands, which absorb much of the storm surge of approaching hurricanes, are disappearing at the rate of 28,000 acres a year, bringing the sea that much closer to the city.<br>So New Orleans, tucked below sea level between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain, is in growing danger of drowning. A direct hit by a very powerful hurricane could swamp its levees and leave as much as 20 feet of chemical-laden, snake-infested water trapped in the man-made bowl.<br>More than 25,000 people could die, emergency officials predict. That would make it the deadliest disaster in U.S. history, with many more fatalities than the San Francisco earthquake, the great Chicago fire, and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks combined.<br>"It's only a matter of time," said Terry C. Tullier, city director of emergency preparedness.<br>"Ivan just missed us by a hairsbreadth," he said. "The thing that keeps me awake at night is the 100,000 people who couldn't leave."<br>After Ivan slipped past 175 miles to the east, the 600,000 residents who evacuated last month returned, knowing they might need to flee again: The hurricane season lasts through November, and forecasters believe the Atlantic region has entered an active cycle that could last 15 to 30 years.<br>The root of the problem is location. New Orleans is hemmed in by 300-square-mile Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi to the south and west.<br>Built on newly deposited alluvial soil, the city has been sinking ever since its founding in 1718. Draining land for development has made it sink even faster. And sea levels are rising.<br>To protect the city from floods, the river and lake have been lined with levees, grass-covered walls as high as 18 feet. The levees keep the Mississippi in its channel, but they have exacerbated the loss of wetlands by cutting off the periodic flood of freshwater and sediment necessary for the wetlands' survival. And the levees would trap water in the city if they are overtopped in a big hurricane.<br>Hurricanes are part of life here, as much as beignets and beads, but most recent storms have spared New Orleans. Betsy (Category 3) hit in 1965, leaving eight feet of water in some places. Camille (Category 5) in 1969 swept by 60 miles to the east. Andrew (also Category 5) in 1992 came within 100 miles. This year, it was Ivan.<br>The levees are designed to protect the city from a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane. A more powerful one, such as this year's Charley or Ivan (Category 4), or a slow Category 3 could send lake water surging over the levees.<br>The worst scenario would be a big hurricane arriving from the east, pushing a wall of water from the gulf into Lake Pontchartrain, then over the levees into the city.<br>There it would remain, submerging single-story houses and lapping at the eaves of two-story buildings.<br>"The Red Cross has estimated 25,000 to 100,000 would drown, and I don't think that is unrealistic," said Ivor van Heerden, director of Louisiana State University's Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes. About 300,000 of the area's 1.2 million people would not evacuate, he predicted, and many of those would be the most vulnerable - elderly, disabled, homeless, carless.<br>Rescuing 300,000 people trapped inside the flooded bowl would be a logistical nightmare, and officials have started enlisting private boat owners who could help a Dunkirk-style operation to ferry people out.<br>There are national implications, too, if New Orleans is hammered. About one-fourth of the nation's oil and natural-gas production is here, as is one-third of its seafood catch. Thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines snake through the bayous and marshes. The region is home to the nation's largest port complex, moving 16 percent of its cargo.<br>Experts say it will take a combination of higher levees, new floodgates and restored wetlands to save New Orleans. And time is not an ally; hurricane-protection projects are moving slowly, even as the threat seems to grow each year.<br>"It's possible to protect New Orleans from a Category 5 hurricane," said Al Naomi, senior project manager for the Corps of Engineers. "But we've got to start."<br>___<hr></blockquote><!--EZCODE QUOTE END--> <p></p><i></i>
