Hurricane Katrina: 'Do Not Call 911'

LiveJournal business manager Mark Kraft is gathering information for Gulf Coast residents bracing for Hurricane Katrina, collecting reports from several LiveJournal diarists who are fleeing or preparing to ride out the storm.

Kraft passes along a grim prediction from meteorologist Jeff Masters:

I put the odds of New Orleans getting its levees breached and the city submerged at about 70 percent. This scenario, which has been discussed extensively in literature I have read, could result in a death toll in the thousands, since many people will be unable or unwilling to get out of the city. I recommend that if you are trapped in New Orleans tomorrow, that you wear a life jacket and a helmet if you have them. High rise buildings may offer good refuge, but Katrina has the potential to knock down a high-rise building.

The 4 p.m. National Weather Service warning for New Orleans was equally foreboding:

Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks ... perhaps longer. At least one half of well constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail ... leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed.

The majority of industrial buildings will become non functional. Partial to complete wall and roof failure is expected. All wood framed low rising apartments will be destroyed. Concrete block low rise apartments will sustain major damage ... including some wall and roof failure.

High rise office and apartment buildings will sway dangerously ... a few to the point of total collapse.

Government officials did their best to scare the hell out of residents all Sunday morning, hoping they'd leave by any means possible. One told holdouts to make sure they had a hammer or some other tool that's strong enough to break through an attic roof. "You don't want to drown in there when the water comes," he said.

Several parishes in Louisiana have closed emergency services, giving their residents a discordant bit of advice: Do not call 911.

Comments

It's all about natural selection, and as hearless as it sounds, this is nature's way of weeding out a lot of brain-deads all at once.

I just hope the Superdome holds. 35k plus people in there and a Category 5 coming? That could easily be the worst natural disaster in our recent history.

you heartless fuck

I think David is the one who needs to be weeded out

i agree completely.

Taken from a blog I wrote on another web site ... .

In the US, it's a group of people who chose not to heed the warnings of an inevitable natural disaster. The Americans who are suffering now chose to live in an area prone to hurricanes. And New Orleans is below sea level for crying out loud!!! Now my tax money is going to pay for people being rescued because they chose not to evacuate when they knew a category 5 hurricane was coming! Let them sit on their rooftops!

I have sympathy for the victims of 9/11 and the tsunami because those events came with little or no warning. But the people of the Gulf Coast knew for days that Katrina was coming.

As for the people who said they didn't have $40.00 to buy a bus ticket out of town, maybe they shouldn't have bought that last pair of Jordans, or they should have quit smoking and/or drinking, or gotten a bulk bag of rice instead of McDonald's and KFC, or drank water from the faucet instead of Pepsi, or not gone to the movies last weekend, or waited until they were financially sound to have kids, or gotten rid of the cable and cell phone, etc. Not having $40.00 is BS. Anyone receiving government assistance of any kind who doesn't have $40.00 can float in the cesspool for all I care. Perhaps waiting a few days to send government assistance is one of the best decisions Bush has made.

It's about time poor people in the United States learn what it is really like to be poor, because right now welfare and other social programs give them enough to sit around without lifting a finger. They wait for someone else to solve their problems and to take care of them. But perhaps for a society like the US to work, government needs the masses eating out of its hands.

Americans don't know what poor is. American's don't know what crisis is. American's don't know what disaster is. Maybe this event will start to shed some light on the subject for the majority of the country that has been too nationalistic to follow events in other parts of the world.

The only sympathy I have for the people of the Gulf Coast is that the oil companies probably paid off government officials not to upgrade the strength of the levy in hopes that an event of this magnitude would occur, causing a surge in oil prices.

Forecasters knew on Friday the 26 of August that a category 4/5 hurricane was headed toward the region. I was out of the country at the time, but making plans to avoid it on my return flight. What were people in the region doing? Many left. Everyone could have if they had wanted to. There was no one keeping them there but themselves. The people who stayed - they planned to be there when the category 4/5 hurricane hit. They made individual choices.

It's about time people in the US get slapped for making bad decisions instead of receiving the typical empathetic handouts. Civilizations are part of the natural world. This is just part of Natural Selection (survival of the fittest) at work. Let nature take its course and get rid of those which can't take care of themselves or breeding of incompetent offspring will continue until the society falls.

For those hungry still in New Orleans, perhaps you can still beat Darwin's theory ...

Excellent fishing expected after the hurricane

After a hurricane, offshore fishing is usually excellent, so once seas calm down after Katrina, anglers should find good fishing for snapper and grouper on the reefs, kingfish just the reefs and dolphin around floating debris, which should be abundant.Look for some of the best kingfishing in Palm Beach County to be in 80-120 feet from Juno Beach to the Hobe Sound Loran Tower. Also good should be 100-150 feet off Boynton Beach Inlet to the Lake Worth Pier.Kingfish also should be biting off St. Lucie Inlet, along with sailfish. Anglers fishing out of FORT PIERCE Inlet were catching snapper and dolphin before Katrina, along with some kingfish. Catches out of SEBASTIAN INLET were scattered before Katrina, with anglers catching a little of everything, including kingfish, dolphin, sailfish and snapper.

If you look at Holland, they are below sea level and have spent over a trillion dollars (3 trillions) in massive water gates and huge metal walls. New Orleans is much smaller scale, I bet it could be replicated (smaller) for less than 10 billion...

I find some of the comments before me on this thread abhorent.

We did not have days to plan for this storm we had hours.... If you bothered to watch the weather reports on the weather channel and by the national hurricane service, they were saying that it was going to hit the western panhandle of Florida. Only on Saturday did they start pushing the cone west toward the gulf coast and New Orleans.

I myself only made it out of Biloxi only 5 hours before the first strong bands began hitting the coast. Many here in my town never dreamed a hurricane could do more damage than Hurricane Camille, because of that many people stayed in areas that rode out Camille. This storm was worse, Camille had a 30 foot tidal surge centered in Pass Christian and stretched out for 90 miles. Katrina's Storm Surge was around 40 feet streched out well over 350 miles. The surge tilted the battleship Alabama in Mobile bay and destroyed the beachfront west all the way to Louisiana. New orleans, although wiped out by the flooding after the levy breaks the day after the hurricane, was only brushed by the western side of the storm. a near miss.

New Orleans and the Gulf Coast only had 1 full day to realize the storm was actually going to hit, if you followed the official forcast. It was not possible to evacuate everyone, and the fact that the poor have a more difficult time evacuating - and then to be mocked by you ignorant asses is even more insulting.
I know one thing, no matter how smug and smart you think you are and how you analize situations of which you have little understanding and call yourselves wise. One day you will die, and maggots will burst out of your sour filthy mouths. So keep pretending you are anything but food for the worms because you are less than a worm in my sight.

I suppose when the San Andreas and the New Madrid fault lines inevitably shift those unfortunate thousands or millions will be subject to the ridicule of those who have chosen to live their lives in the safe pure airbubble of utopia. This was the worst U.S. natural disaster in our lifetime. The problems in New Orleans were in part associated with the levee breaking. And, yes there was some warning but the vast majority of those who chose not to leave somehow survived. So you can speak of Darwin but some may choose to speak of Nietzsche (what doesn't kill you makes you stronger).

For those who are unaware, New Orleans is one of the most vital seaports of world. Located at the mouth of the Mississippi, it is responsible for almost all of our grain, food and middle american exports. Several industies in the rust belt and the heartland depend on New Orleans imports and exports to survive. America's economy and the world will suffer greatly without a fully functioning Port of New Orleans.

So to those of you compassionless dry maritini sippers on the sidelines please remember that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. And as much as of some of you hate paying for the "stupidity" of others, I hate that my tax dollars are use to clean the air that some of you breathe.

`How many deads were there when Catrina hit?

It's spelt Katrina by the way.... just saying. Well, who knows a lot on the levy issues in New Orleans? Because I need some info on that.

Well, never mind, since no one has visited this for a little over a year. I'm pretty much talking to no one aren't I? I always knew I was nuts...

its all good yo so just let him say what he wants its not important im just happy that some people are ok

I can't believe the stupidity of some people. They are willing to pay to rebuild California, with each fire, earthquake, mudslide, one days it will be a typhoon, and drought, but not New Orleans. What about the other states, with fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, mudslides, river flooding, volcanoes, sink holes, and drought? Do you suddenly say you had time and should not live there? I was one that could not desert my post, I work law enforcement. We had all of our first responder that had to remain behind during Katrina and the aftermath. Are we not considered worthy of living, because we protect and serve the public?

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