9 weeks to pump out New Orleans???

[Roy]

Let's not forget that most of the roads north of NO and the Gulf Coast had to be cleared of fallen trees and what-not before any relief convoys could get through!

 

[cy]

what amazes me is not the relief taking so long.

but issue of plugging the leak in the levee and results of not taking imediate action.

when you are dealing with breaks several blocks long. you need something of simular size to shut it down.

there are all sorts of barges nearby, some easily a block long. some probably carrying a low value item like coal. why could they not comandeer say a coal barge, sink it. then plug up around it.

 

[idleprocess]

Probably any number of good reasons not to use barges... Two I can think of off the top of my head.

They'd jut out into the channel and present navigational hazards.

Prossibly not strong enough to hold back 10' of water or of iffy structural integrity even if they are.

They might make for decent work platforms, however.

 

[mattheww50]

FEMA now says it may be up to 9 months before New Orleans is dry. I don't care how big the pumps, you are talking about pumps moving cubic meters. The water is cubic Kilometers. My thumbnails says about half a cubic mile of water needs to pumped out. The secondary issue is whether all not they will be permitted to dump all the garbage into the River or the lake. At this point the water is heavily contaminated with just about every imaginable biological and industrial contaminant. If those have to processed out before the water can be dumped, it is going to take a while.

I think it is safe to say Much of New Orleans Infrastructure is now 'toast'.

 

[Bmccue1964]

Think about the infrastucture damage to water, sewer, electric, gas, phone, etc. I personally think they may just consider filling the place over to raise it above sea level and starting fresh.

Evacuation:
I saw pictures of about 100 submerged school buses that were parked in storage. I find it amazing that the Mayor did not declare a mandatory evacuation and then use the buses to shuttle people out.

 

[turbodog]

NO infrastructure toast?

This is not directed at any particular person, but will you guys wake up?

This thing destroyed the infrastructure from above jackson, ms to the gulf of mexico. Look at a map.

NO may have been flooded, but at least it's still there! Look at gulfport, ms or waveland, ms or pascagoula, ms or biloxi, ms or any town anywhere near the MS coast. They are GONE. Completely.

 

[Bmccue1964]

I agree with you about the devestation to other areas outside of NO. However, the topic at hand was NO.

The media has not been focusing on the other areas nearly as much as it has been on NO. The media needs to show those other areas decimated by Katrina.

 

[James S]

I saw pictures of about 100 submerged school buses that were parked in storage.

Yup, I was looking at those pictures too.

This Fellow Is posting a lot of info about the busses that people are finding looking at the satellite photos. There are 142 city busses parked in the lot less than a mile from the superdome, and not much further another 255 school buses. Enough to evacuate 22,000 people in a single trip. Assuming you could find 350+ people to drive them. but then, the municipal busses are in use every normal day, and the school busses are driven every school day, so those people are there and there should be enough other city and business folks that have the appropriate license, you dont need to make the bus drivers stay behind necessarily.

And make sure you scroll down and read this entry too where he quotes from the actual emergency evacuation plan in place since 2000 where it specifically says that they planned to use these exact busses to do the evacuation. But for some reason they failed to arrange ahead of time to do so and when they finally decided to use them it was too late. He also has links to the actual documents in total if you really want to read the whole things. I did.

So while it would certainly have been nice if the Army Corp of Engineers had shown up to fix the levees a day or 2 earlier, it shouldn't have mattered because all the people should have already been gone. The work to plan their evacuation had already been done. Why didn't anybody in the local government pull the switch?

 

[cy]

Probably any number of good reasons not to use barges... Two I can think of off the top of my head.

They'd jut out into the channel and present navigational hazards.

Prossibly not strong enough to hold back 10' of water or of iffy structural integrity even if they are.

They might make for decent work platforms, however.

assuming they could get barges into position. who cares if they poke out of the channel, permenant repairs could be make later.

why would loads of dense coal or some other cargo not be less effective than bags of sand? those barges are wider than 10ft.

time was the critical issue. if leaks had been pluged within first few hours. greatly reducing flow.

if pumps could have handled exta water, damage would have been way less.

but hindsight is 20/20

if all those folks that did evacuate, knew what was going to happen. they would have packed differently.

 

[James S]

This whole event is a trail of incompetence as far as the eye can see. This morning we have an article in the Shreveporttimes that quotes our very own Federal Emergency Management Agency Director Mike Brown as saying:

"Saturday and Sunday, we thought it was a typical hurricane situation -- not to say it wasn't going to be bad, but that the water would drain away fairly quickly. Then the levees broke and (we had) this lawlessness. That almost stopped our efforts."

So the man in charge of disaster in America wasn't aware of the situation in NO and hadn't heard that it was number 2 on the list of worst case events that could happen in this country? He was misinformed badly enough to think that the water would drain away like a hurricane in an area that was above sea level?

Doesn't matter how long it takes to get aid if the major players are ignoring their own emergency plans and the federal government isn't even aware that there is a problem.

These people are supposed to be prepared not surprised. I can hardly believe the incompetence.

 

[HWilliam]

These people are supposed to be prepared not surprised. I can hardly believe the incompetence.

And THAT is the basic issue that needs to be looked at as things calm down.

Regardless of the compassion or contempt for the folk affected, we're paying the FEMA people and others to be prepared, and we gave them the authority to deal with this sort of thing.

If they can't deal with something they KNEW was going to happen, they're sure not going to be able to deal with anything surprising.

 

[raggie33]

i just heard 6 months to drain it?i do sometimes miss hear so i hope that the cas now

 

[James S]

well now... This Washington Post article is very interesting. Seems that if you can't handle the evacuation yourself, you better not let the fed come in early to do it or you'll get blamed for everything you did wrong.

Behind the scenes, a power struggle emerged, as federal officials tried to wrest authority from Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D). Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans, a source within the state's emergency operations center said Saturday.

The administration sought unified control over all local police and state National Guard units reporting to the governor. Louisiana officials rejected the request after talks throughout the night, concerned that such a move would be comparable to a federal declaration of martial law. Some officials in the state suspected a political motive behind the request. "Quite frankly, if they'd been able to pull off taking it away from the locals, they then could have blamed everything on the locals," said the source, who does not have the authority to speak publicly.

A senior administration official said that Bush has clear legal authority to federalize National Guard units to quell civil disturbances under the Insurrection Act and will continue to try to unify the chains of command that are split among the president, the Louisiana governor and the New Orleans mayor.

Louisiana did not reach out to a multi-state mutual aid compact for assistance until Wednesday, three state and federal officials said. As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.

So it seems that instead of getting the evacuation geared up and ready to go as soon as the storm blew over, they were discussing how to keep the fed from taking control of the situation.

 

[Empath]

Shortly before midnight Friday, the Bush administration sent her a proposed legal memorandum asking her to request a federal takeover of the evacuation of New Orleans

That's not early. That was practically a week after the hurricane.

 

[pedalinbob]

This story was from the 28th:

http://tinyurl.com/8w4c2

"Gov. Kathleen Blanco, standing beside the mayor at a news conference, said President Bush called and personally appealed for a mandatory evacuation for the low-lying city, which is prone to flooding."

Bob

 

[Empath]

Those are two seperate events. Bush calling for a mandatory evactuation before the hurricane, isn't the same as suggesting a federal takeover several days after the hurricane.

 

[pedalinbob]

Those are two seperate events. Bush calling for a mandatory evactuation before the hurricane, isn't the same as suggesting a federal takeover several days after the hurricane.

Your point is...?

Bob

 

[James S]

hmmm, from reading it the first time I was of the impression it was the Friday before they were hit. But the article doesn't actually say. So it's probably the following friday and everybody is still incompetent one way or the other. What would have been the point to take over day before yesterday? Too late to help much of anybody else.

 

[pedalinbob]

The feds must have permission to take over, though it appears the Bush admin was attempting to exploit a loophole based upon the deteriorating conditions.

The locals botched it, not the federal government.

Bob

 

[Icebreak]

***EDIT***
Looks you guys figured it out while I was typing.
***END EDIT***

Bob, I may be wrong but I think I can tag the confusion.

James made reference to arguing about control that took place Friday Sept. 2. I believe by his post that the unclarity of the Post's article led him to believe that happened Friday Aug. 27, hence the "gearing up" statement. Logically Sept. 2 would be past the point of gearing up.

I think Empath was pointing that out.

Then your post may have been percieved to be a reply to Empath but probably wasn't.

Then Empath replied to your post as if it were part of the exchange pointing out that these were two seperate instances.

Finally, his point didn't make sense to you because it couldn't due to the confusion.

I could be wrong.