Gustav And The New Orleans Quandary

The damage in New Orleans was hurricane related, but it wasn’t the damage you expect in a hurricane. On the Mississippi coast structures were blown apart. In New Orleans most buildings were intact until they were flooded.

As I type this, Gustav is somewhere near the Cayman Islands, picking up strength and heading toward the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf is warm. Gustav will strengthen some more.

For the past few days the official Hurricane Center Track has pushed Gustav toward the Louisiana coast sometime late Monday/early Tuesday. The latest center of the track would bring landfall west of the Mississippi over a swampy, sparsely populated area near Vermillion Bay. That would put New Orleans on the stronger side of the storm, but possibly far enough away to escape the worst. Katrina struck on the opposite side of New Orleans–actually on the Mississippi coast. For Katrina, New Orleans was on the weak side!

Monday’s a long way off. The track will certainly shift somewhat by then.

There is a misconception most people have about Katrina. I’m writing tonight to put that part of the Katrina saga in perspective. The damage in New Orleans was hurricane related, but it wasn’t the damage you expect in a hurricane. On the Mississippi coast structures were blown apart. In New Orleans most buildings were intact until they were flooded.

I’m not saying there wasn’t damage before the water–there most certainly was. But New Orleans wasn’t flattened by a hurricane. It didn’t receive strong and sustained hurricane force winds. It was not the ‘worst case scenario’ storm New Orleans had feared.

I wrote this as Katrina began to pull away Monday evening.

Katrina Comes Ashore 08/29/05 9:21 PM

New Orleans wasn’t totally laid to waste. There has been plenty of damage, and once we get out of the ‘fog of war’ we’ll find plenty more. The coasts of Alabama and Mississippi really took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. That was more than expected.

After the fact, I still agree with the decision to empty out New Orleans. Yes, some people will crawl out of the woodwork to say they rode it out and it wasn’t that bad. That’s not the point.

At this point the New Orleans hurricane damage from Katrina wasn’t that bad. The damage we all saw didn’t start until later Monday night long after the storm was over. It was as if the Katrina unfolded in slow motion.

Bad News For New Orleans, Out of Left Field 08/30/05 3:02 AM

Rick Sanchez was on the air, speaking by phone with someone from Tulane Hospital in New Orleans. The hospital’s spokesperson was talking about water – rising water.

The hospital had seen no real flooding while Hurricane Katrina passed by, but tonight, water had begun rushing in and it was rising at an alarming rate.

I could hear the fear in her voice as she described the water level rising an inch every five minutes. That’s a foot an hour. Already there was six feet of water outside the hospital. Soon, water would reach the level of their emergency generators on the second floor.

Sanchez was taken aback. I’m not sure he originally understood what she was saying. It was so unexpected – so out of context.

She said a levee keeping Lake Ponchartrain out of New Orleans had been breached. The cut in the levee was two blocks long and water was rushing in unimpeded. Even if there were pumps working, and she wasn’t sure there were, they wouldn’t be able to keep up with this deluge.

On CNN, Rick Sanchez kept asking questions, but it was obvious this woman wanted to get off the phone. Speaking to him wasn’t going to help her.

I heard terror in her voice.

The hospital had to get its patients out. Its patients were by and large critical. The only way to move them would be by helicopter and FEMA would be needed for that.

The other all news stations are in their usual reruns. I have no way of knowing if this is true. If it is, this is New Orleans’ worst fears are realized. Lake Ponchartrain could inundate the city.

Here’s my point. If Gustav gets strong (likely) and hits just west of New Orleans (possible) there will be a different type of damage in the Crescent City. New Orleans could just get blown over. Nothing FEMA or the Corps of Engineers has done would prevent this kind of destruction.

I’m not sure which scenario is worse–what happened in ’05 or what’s possible in a few days. They are not, unfortunately, mutually exclusive scenarios.

The Unknown State

There’s a website with a little game, challenging you to name all 50 states. I sight read maps for a living. I just wanted to race the clock.

A little under four minutes later, I was finished. I clicked on the results to see how others had done. That”s when I got a real shock.

Below you will find the most forgotten (or perhaps mispelled&#185) U.S. States, as well as how your score stacks up against everyone else who took this quiz.

Texas was the most recognized state. 98.4% of the respondents picked it out correctly. Then came California, Washington and New York.

I looked for Connecticut. Zip.

But it was there! We are the very last entry on the list – number 50!

Connecticut was identified (and correctly spelled) by only 77% of those playing. We were right below the difficultly spelled Massachew… Massatu… You know, the state to the north of us.

We were even outdone by Mississippi. Oh, the humanity.

&#185 – They misspelled misspelled!

Hurricane Dean – At The Antilles

Tonight, the Hurricane Center deemed Hurricane Dean’s winds to be sustained at 100 mph. Sure, why not?

I actually don’t think they’re blowing that fast. I’m basing my estimate on the look of the satellite imagery, surface observations and the Martinique radar.

The chain of islands Dean is approaching, the Antilles, will be quickly passed. Though Dean might damage them, they won’t slow Dean much at all. That seems unfair.

The next two days will probably see significant strengthening of this storm as it enters the Caribbean. On TV, meteorologists and others will point out Dean’s well defined and circular eye. We can’t do that quite yet.

The official pronouncement from the Hurricane Center calls for a period of Category 4 winds. There’s no certainty, but that seems a reasonable call. Dean is entering an area primed to be hurricane fuel.

Jamaica, the Caymans and the Yucatan Peninsula are all under attack if Hurricane Dean follows the computer guidance (amazingly in agreement with each other right now). All three areas are quite vulnerable.

After Katrina, some people were left with a false impression. There aren’t many places that can flood like New Orleans. Certainly none of the places I just mentioned floods that way.

The major damage from Dean will be related to strong, destructive winds. If you want the Katrina analogy, that’s the kind of damage produced on the Mississippi Coast.

A less sexy story, Mississippi a whole lot less news coverage than New Orleans. The damage was nonetheless catastrophic. Let’s hope I’m wrong.

A Couple Of Guys Go To Broadway

Helaine and Stef left Saturday morning. The ‘Stalker Tour’ is on the move with Rick Springfield concerts in Boston and Laconia, NH. They’ve taken “Clicky,” my Canon Digital Rebel camera, with them.

That left Saturday as a pretty hollow day for me. Luckily, I knew someone else who was being ‘abandoned.’ Matt Scott’s wife and daughter were leaving town for Mississippi.

He and I decided to head to New York City and see a show.

If you carry a fishing pole, people just assume you’re a fisherman. If you go to a Broadway show… a Broadway musical… a Sondhein musical… they assume you’re gay! I know this because virtually everyone who heard we were going either commented or asked.

All I could think of was the time I went to the theater and stood in line behind a guy wearing a t-shirt which said, “I can’t even think straight!”

Just as there are black Republicans, there are straight guys who enjoy the theater.

Since Matt was dropping his wife and daughter at LaGuardia Airport, I took the train to the city. I would walk crosstown and we’d meet outside the theater.

Taking the train from New Haven is very easy. Unfortunately, it’s also quite a long trip. Union Station to Grand Central Terminal is around 1:45&#185. I brought the NY Times, a photo magazine and my $30 camcorder.

I didn’t have “Clicky,” but I did want to try and make a short video essay. It was supposed to be about the day in general. Unfortunately, I didn’t budget properly and my video ran out as I approached the theater!

My New York City travelogue video is at the bottom of this entry. It was entirely shot on the $30 camcorder and edited using Windows Movie Maker (included on every Windows XP or Vista computer). The music is “Look Busy” by Kevin MacLeod.

Yesterday’s show was Steven Sondheim’s Company. This is a revival of the 1970 musical about Bobby (Ra&#250l Esperza), a bachelor, the three single women in his life and his five married couple friends.

What made this musical more interesting was how it was cast. There was no orchestra pit because the actors were also playing instruments on-stage!

This must have been a casting nightmare. Finding good actors is one thing. Finding good musicians is another. But finding people who can sing, dance and act (often simultaneously) really limits your choices. I, for instance, would be 0 for 3!

With all this going, the cast was dynamite. I especially enjoyed Ra&#250l Esperza, (Bobby) who reminds me of Bradley Whitford (Studio 60, West Wing) and Angel Desai (Marta).

The show is funny, but often poignant and sad, as it traces Bobby’s life from his 35th to 36 th birthday. Being a grown-up bachelor has its good and bad points. Being single doesn’t remove you from emotional tumult.

I’d recommend going to see it, but as I type this, they are nearly an hour into Company’s last Broadway performance. Luckily, yesterday’s matin

The Meisels Go Home To New Orleans

Back when Hurricane Katrina was threatening the Gulf Coast, I did my best to get Ruth Meisel out. The day she drove to safety up north was the last time she saw her home, until yesterday.

With her two adult children in tow, Ruth Meisel returned to New Orleans to see what could be salvaged and tie up loose ends. She will be among the tens, maybe hundreds of thousands, who will leave their homes and move elsewhere.

New Orleans is being abandoned, wholesale.

I asked her son, my friend, Farrell to type some of his thoughts so I could put them here in the blog. I’ll sprinkle a few of his photos here, though the best way to see them is in this slideshow.

Clean up goes on. 80% of the city was affected. Some parts of the city have begun to function, albeit at half speed. This area is still without electricity and is deemed unsafe. It’s expected that electricity won’t be restored in New Orleans East for six to nine months. My mother returned for the first time since the hurricane and subsequent floods, to survey the damage and see if anything could be saved. She’s suited up and ready to go inside. In the background, my sister, Cheri, ready to suit up, as well.

It’s nice… no, it’s amazing to see Ruth smiling.

Here’s my read. She could be distressed with what she’s about to see, or she could be happy to see she raised her children right, and they are accompanying and supporting her. She chose the latter.

My mother knew from earlier reports and a prior visit by my sister, that things didn’t look so good. She’s been very optimistic and hopeful, looking forward and giving us much encouragement. My mother’s house survived the storm on the outside, but the inside looked and smelled awful and was a total disaster. Entering the front door we were greeted by a living room chair that wasn’t there when my mother left in August. That gives you an idea of how we were greeted.

From the marks on the wall it looks like 4-5 feet of water made it into the house. From the ‘bunny suits’ the Meisel’s wore, you can assume it wasn’t spring water.

Nearly everything was ruined.

One of the things that struck Farrell when we spoke on the phone was the proliferation of signs advertising Katrina related services. There are also markings, scrawled on homes with spray paint.

This house has been FEMA’d. FEMA is not an acronym here. It’s a four-letter word. BTW, so is Bush.
One of the city’s synagogues, Beth Israel, an Orthodox house of worship…Also one of the city’s oldest, which used to be in the historic uptown area until the late 1960s. Also on Canal Blvd, note the watermarks. Reportedly, the head Rabbi fled town, leaving the Torah scrolls to flood and be rescued from religious volunteers. The Rabbi has since been fired. My sister spotted prayer books and prayer shawls on the ground in front of the now-deserted synagogue….a sin in the Jewish religion.

Here’s how Farrell ended his note, and I’ll leave it pretty much intact:

As I visit here, for the first time in several years, 3 months after the devastation that has been chronicled worldwide, I have now discovered: A Missing City. Parts of the city and neighboring parish (Jefferson) we have seen are beginning to function, but it’s slow and without spirit.

In our many conversations with New Orleanians and Jeffersonians, one hears a great deal of anger leveled at Government. I could only find one person with a nice thing to say about President Bush. I asked why? The waitress at the seafood restaurant said it was the Louisiana Governor’s fault for not letting Bush send FEMA and the troops in. I then asked, out of curiosity, did she know that Bush was on a fundraising trip in California for three days before he did a “fly-over”, VP Cheney was buying a vacation house and the Secretary of State was shopping in Manhattan, while her home state, Alabama, was flooded. The waitress hadn’t heard that.

A newspaper stand owner or manager clearly vented his anger towards Bush, but didn’t spare either the local, regional and state governments, but felt, the US Government let Louisiana down.

Most of the Greater New Orleans area, (Orleans and neighboring parishes), as it’s known, with some 1 million people once living there, don’t have electricity, a home, assistance from FEMA, insurance companies, and they feel forgotten just three months after the hurricane and floods.. As is the case with crises the world over, once the cameras leave, the sense of urgency goes with the camera crews.

The stores and shops that are open are operating for limited hours due to two factors: limited shoppers and limited staff.

It’s quite unusual to be driving in one part of the area, say neighboring Metairie, where the shops and malls have reopened, only to continue on Interstate 10 to downtown New Orleans, and pass through darkness because whole areas have no power.

There were some signs of life downtown and in the French Quarter. The beautiful St. Charles Avenue historic areas seemed to be untouched and lit, yet, just a few blocks away, one would have thought we could have been in a war zone.

Rumors of price gouging exist. Household stores are reportedly charging double for goods consumers can buy in the middle of the state or in Mississippi for less. Gasoline is 30 cents a gallon more expensive than in the center of Mississippi or Louisiana reportedly.

Residents feel abandoned now. From the newspaper shop owner to restaurateur, residents don’t feel the city of N.O. census will approach even half of it’s close to 461,000 registered residents.

Employers are looking for employees. Potential employees are looking for housing, assistance from FEMA and the insurance companies, and those are the few, who have returned.

The Times-Picayune reported today that the New Orleans Mayor, Ray Nagin, rumored to be in Washington on business, actually wasn’t there on business, but took his family on vacation to Jamaica. While I’m sure he’s deserving of a break, there are several hundred thousand to one million people, who’d love to take that break, if only they could get some help from the various government agencies so they could get on with their lives and rebuild. And I haven’t even begun to discuss the levee system.

As I write this at 2am Central Standard Time, I was trying to think, after only two days here, how could I best describe what I have seen and heard? The word that comes to mind is “abyss.”

New Orleans, which had once been described as the “city that care forgot,” from an old Mardi Gras tale, has become the bottomless gulf or pit. There are only a handful of truly unique cities in the U.S. with some history and character. When tourists think of those cities, New Orleans had always been in the same company with San Francisco, Boston, New York, Savannah, and perhaps one or two other cities or towns.

It would not be an exaggeration to suggest, if there is no sense of urgency, New Orleans could drop off that list in my lifetime.

Please, look at the pictures. It is so sad… so tragic.

Storm Prediction Center Gets Scared

I usually take a casual look at the maps from the Storm Prediction Center. In this day of weather specialization, these guys watch for severe thunderstorms and tornadoes.

In the past I have been critical of their work in the Northeast where severe weather responds to different stimuli than in the Plains. They do a good job in giving people like me a ‘heads up.’ We’re much better off with them, than without them. More flexibility in issuing watches here would be helpful.

I’ve watched with great interest over the past few days as they’ve posted a high risk outlook for severe weather over a large area. ‘High risk’ and ‘large area’ are rare and usually mutually exclusive.

ZCZC SPCPWOSPC ALL

WOUS40 KWNS 151652

ARZ000-ILZ000-INZ000-KYZ000-MOZ000-MSZ000-OHZ000-TNZ000-160045-

PUBLIC SEVERE WEATHER OUTLOOK

NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER NORMAN OK

1052 AM CST TUE NOV 15 2005

VALID 151652Z - 160045Z

...OUTBREAK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS EXPECTED OVER PARTS OF THE

OHIO...TENNESSEE AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS LATER TODAY AND

TONIGHT.

THE NWS STORM PREDICTION CENTER IN NORMAN OK IS FORECASTING THE

DEVELOPMENT OF A FEW STRONG...LONG-TRACK TORNADOES OVER PARTS OF THE

OHIO...TENNESSEE AND LOWER MISSISSIPPI VALLEYS LATER TODAY AND

TONIGHT.

THE AREAS MOST LIKELY TO EXPERIENCE THIS ACTIVITY INCLUDE

CENTRAL AND EASTERN ARKANSAS

SOUTHERN AND EASTERN ILLINOIS

MUCH OF INDIANA

WESTERN AND CENTRAL KENTUCKY

SOUTHEAST MISSOURI

NORTHERN AND CENTRAL MISSISSIPPI

WESTERN OHIO

WESTERN AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE

SURROUNDING THE HIGH RISK AREA...THERE IS A MODERATE RISK OF SEVERE

THUNDERSTORMS FROM SOUTHERN LOWER MICHIGAN INTO LOUISIANA...SOUTHERN

MISSISSIPPI AND WESTERN ALABAMA

A WIDESPREAD AREA OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS...INCLUDING SOME WITH

LONG-TRACK TORNADOES AND VERY DAMAGING WIND...WILL AFFECT A LARGE

PART OF THE EAST CENTRAL U.S. LATER TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING.

The operative words are “strong” and “long track.” That’s the recipe for disaster.

So far, there’s been one report of 65+ knot wind in Southwest Missouri. The day is young.

This weather system gets to us in Connecticut tomorrow. To quote Dorothy, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” There will probably be storms, just not as intense or with as much damage.

Meanwhile, if I were in the bullseye on the SPC map, I’d be sweating bullets today. Someone’s going to get hurt, or worse.

New Orleans, Again

lake-charles-radar.jpgI woke up to see live pictures of a levee breach in New Orleans. I did not expect this.

Hurricane Rita is well out in the Gulf. Though New Orleans is under a Tropical Storm Warning, the winds have been out of the East, but only around 20 mph. Obviously, I underestimated how precarious the situation still is.

I don’t mean to diminish the pain and suffering of those there, but is this now a significant setback? These homes are already destroyed. They’ve been underwater before.

It certainly does point to how much thinking will have to take place before New Orleans is rebuilt… if it is rebuilt.

Speaking of precarious; we’re going to find out a little more about whether our nation’s finances are secure or precarious. The potential for damage in Texas is just as great, maybe greater, than New Orleans.

Though Galveston could flood, those waters would naturally recede. I’m just as, or more, concerned with the type of damage that took place on the Mississippi and Alabama coasts from Katrina.

It’s possible, no… it’s probable we’ll see houses and industrial facilities leveled – again. Where are we going to come up with all this money?

The best view of this storm is radar, again. The eye is clearly visible on the long range scan out of Lake Charles, LA. Later, as the storm gets a little closer, I’ll start probing it with the Doppler capabilities of the radar to try and get a better feel for the wind speeds within.

UNLESS ANOTHER EYEWALL CYCLE OCCURS THAT COULD BRING THE WINDS TEMPORARILY UP A LITTLE BIT…THE OVERALL TENDENCY IS FOR RITA TO WEAKEN GRADUALLY. SO FAR THE PASSAGE OF RITA OVER THE WARM EDDY IN THE GULF OF MEXICO HAS NOT RESULTED IN INTENSIFICATION.

HOWEVER…RESEARCH SUGGESTS THERE IS A LAG IN THE ATMOSPHERIC RESPONSE. NEVERTHERLESS…RITA IS EXPECTED TO MAKE LANDFALL AS CATEGORY 3 OR…A LITTLE LESS LIKELY…CATEGORY 4 INTENSITY.

A lot of ‘ifs’ in that discussion. Nothing to do now but hope and pray.

How Long Can You Maintain Perfection?

How Long Can You Maintain Perfection? That’s a valid question in the world of hurricanes – certainly a question that was asked yesterday about Hurricane Rita and answered today.

When I told some people Rita wouldn’t continue to strengthen and would most likely diminish, some seemed disappointed. I don’t think they wanted people hurt or displaced, we’re just conditioned to see superlatives become more superlative.

Everything in a hurricane has to be functioning perfectly for a storm to get to 175 mph&#185, as Rita did last night. If any one or two parameters change, even in a small way, the storm reacts.

No storm stays at Category 5 for long. It is a fact of life.

Meanwhile, a Category 4 or even 3 storm can do a tremendous amount of damage. Don’t fixate on what happened in New Orleans. New Orleans is a special case. Galveston could get flooding (which would quickly recede) and wind. Think the kind of damage that happened in Mississippi and Alabama.

More of a mind boggle is what could happen in Houston. The effect of hurricanes on tall structures has been thought about, but we haven’t seen too many real world examples.

If (and this is a big if) Hurricane Rita goes inland and comes close to Houston, a brand new set of problems will arise. There are lots of tall buildings. One is 75 stories tall! The wind there will be much stronger than at ground level.

I’m not saying these tall buildings will be blown over, but there would most certainly be exterior damage and the possibility of interior damage if/when the windows are blown out and the wind is funneled between the floors.

There is also concern for the ‘wind tunnel’ effect as winds get shunted into the canyons between the buildings of a city. I just don’t know how the calculations get made – though I assume they have.

I know enough to know Houston, inland as it is, is very vulnerable.

Today’s official forecast looks farther to the right… farther north… closer to the Louisiana border for landfall.

There continues to be nothing good about this storm.

&#185 – Even while saying Hurricane Rita had attained top winds of 175 mph, the Hurricane Center implied they might be higher. After saying, in very technical jargon, how they came up with the wind speed and what data they didn’t have to work with they ended with: “THE PRESSURE-WIND RELATIONSHIP FOR AN 897 MB PRESSURE IS 160 KT.” 160 knots translates to 184 mph.

Dinner With A Hurricane Katrina Survivor

A week ago, as Hurricane Katrina was strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico, I spent some time on the phone with my friend’s 86 year old mom. I tried… I guess I did convince her to leave her New Orleans home.

Before dawn Sunday morning she got into her car and drove to the Louisiana Superdome. This was before all the tumult and grief there. Before long they had her on a bus headed to Alexandria. She never got there. The bus drove 10 hours to Baton Rouge (a one hour trip under normal circumstances) and dropped her off at LSU.

Though we’ve all see the horrific images from New Orleans and the Mississippi and Alabama coasts, Ruth was treated well at LSU. They fed her and there was air conditioning, while the power was on.

We all assume Ruth’s house and all her possessions are gone. The area it’s in was one of the hardest hit, under ten or more feet of water! Her car, in the Superdome parking lot is probably a total loss as well.

A few days ago, my friend bought tickets to bring his mom to Connecticut&#185. She will stay with her daughter who lives here in the Naugatuck Valley.

When I heard Ruth was coming to Connecticut, I told the station’s assignment desk and we sent Darren Duarte to do a story. Ruth is telegenic and articulate. The story was very emotional – as you might imagine.

Astoundingly, and much to her delight, Ruth has become a ‘TV star’. First it was the UPS man, delivering a package, asking if she was the woman from television? Then at Macy’s in the Trumbull Mall.

Last night, Ruth and family invited me to dinner at Tony & Lucille’s on Wooster Street in New Haven. Dinner was exceptional. Even Ruth, a lifelong New Orleans resident… a city known for it’s astounding cuisine… was blown away.

More interesting were Ruth’s stories and her amazing attitude. I don’t know about you, but if I had lost everything, I don’t think I could have maintained her composure and positive attitude.

Everything is gone – photos, letters, memorabilia. Furniture and cars, even houses can be replaced (and, thankfully, she has the insurance to do that). But how do you replace a lifetime of possessions with special meaning? There is no insurance for that.

Ruth has no imminent plans to return to New Orleans. She will probably take up living with her daughter and, if all goes well, just stay.

This is part of what will change New Orleans. At the dinner table we discussed whether New Orleans would ever come back?

Can tourists and conventions ever look past the images of gun toting thugs walking down the street or the misery of the people trapped in the Convention Center, Superdome and even on highway overpasses?

Will those with means, like Ruth I suppose, flee the city? It could turn from a primarily poor and black city to a totally poor and black city. An analogy was made to Newark, NJ.

That would be a shame. Though it’s an overused term, New Orleans really was a one of a kind city. It would be nice to see it return to that stature.

&#185 – When my friend, whose name I have kept from these entries, called his travel agent to tell his mother’s story and get tickets, the agent said the trip was on her company. Some stories from this tragedy are good. Most of us do operate the way you’d like under difficult circumstances.

Where Is The Federal Government?

“Good afternoon…there is a desperate, desperate race to try to save those who made it through the storm, but may not survive the aftermath. This may be one of the saddest spectacles I have ever seen.” – Shepard Smith, Fox News Channel

I’m not in New Orleans nor the Gulf Coast. I only know what I see on television and read in the newspaper. I am not happy with what I’m seeing.

Times-Picayune

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Looting on Tchoupitoulas Avenue

By Michael Perlstein

Staff writer

Looting in New Orleans was so widespread Wednesday that police were forced to prioritize their overwhelmed enforcement effort.

The officers were rushing to a break-in next door at the Sports Authority, desperate to secure the store’s stockpile of guns and ammunition.

“I think we ran them off before they got any of it,” said the commanding officer at the scene. The cops secured the store with heavy plywood before moving on to other emergencies.

There’s more, but it’s too depressing.

Where is FEMA? Where is Homeland Security? Where is the National Guard? Where are tents and cots and kitchens?

Why on Wednesday is this first being announced by President Bush&#185?

That Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast was no surprise. It was well forecast, both intensity and track. The predictions from the Hurricane Center were dire with some of the strongest cautionary language I’ve ever read relating to weather.

Wasn’t anything brought in to be ready?

As we have a moment to step back from this tragedy, maybe it’s time to question how the resources allocated for emergency services are deployed. If I were in New Orleans or the Mississippi and Alabama coastal towns, I’d be more than steaming right now. I’d want answers.

&#185 – Though President Bush is ‘in charge’, operational decisions should have been made at lower governmental levels.

The Storm’s Gone But It’s Getting Worse

The past 24 hours were the most difficult time yet to watch what’s going on in the areas struck by Hurricane Katrina.

First up was the emotional reporting of CNN’s Jeanne Meserve. Here’s what USAToday said.

“It’s been horrible. … You can hear people yelling for help. You can hear the dogs yelping, all of them stranded, all of them hoping someone will come,” Meserve told anchor Aaron Brown.

“Mark Biello, one of our cameramen, went out in one of the (rescue) boats to help shoot. He ended up being out for hours and told horrific tales. He saw bodies. He saw other, just unfathomable things. Dogs wrapped in electrical lines … that were being electrocuted.”

Brown said Tuesday: “Jeanne conveyed a human being’s view of what she saw. Her reporting was incredibly solid. Her humanity was incredibly real. The marriage of those two elements helped viewers understand the desperate situation.”

There was an equally emotional side to Robin Roberts live shot on Good Morning America. She had gone to the Gulf not knowing the condition of her family. This was where she grew up.

Later Tuesday morning I watched an interview with a man who had lost his wife. He was on the street, a child in tow. He seemed dazed or disoriented as he told the story of being on a rooftop, holding his wife’s hand and then having her slip away.

As she drifted off, she asked him to take care of their family.

It was as sad a moment as could be seen. This man was the embodiment of human tragedy.

When the reporter asked the man where he would go, he didn’t know. His simplicity was his eloquence.

I’m hoping that sentence makes sense to you. I wish I could think of a better way to explain, other than to say, he didn’t need to speak volumes of words to have his plight understood.

I got an email from my friend whose mother had been evacuated from New Orleans home he grew up in to Baton Rouge.

She just called from BR. She’s now being moved to a new shelter in downtown BR because the school where she’s been since Sunday opens tomorrow. Since she probably won’t be going back to NO for sometime, as it’s being evacuated, I told her, once they feel it’s safe, we’ll fly her up to Connecticut and buy her clothes and get her settled. Once NO is able to open up, which could be a month, we’ll go down and survey the damage and decide where she’ll move and get her a new car.

New Orleans looks like a war zone. Very very sad..

Until today this had been a New Orleans story. There is plenty of damage farther east in Mississippi and Alabama. The pre-Katrina story had been set-up better in New Orleans. Now it’s all coming into perspective.

In Mississippi and Alabama the damage has been done. In New Orleans additional damage is piling on.

The breach of a levee I wrote about yesterday continued to pour Lake Ponchartrain into the city. Attempts to stop or slow the flow failed. As i understand it, flood control pumps only would pump the water back into the lake – a vicious cycle.

Civil law began to break down today. Looters were out in force. I watched people brazenly fillet a Wal*Mart. People were walking around with carts, as if they were really shopping.

CNN reported tonight there had been shootings and carjackings.

The city is preparing to move everyone out of the Superdome. It hasn’t been said, but I assume people inside are becoming volatile.

The New York Times is reporting a naval contingent on its way to New Orleans. Where have they been? Why wasn’t this done sooner? I don’t know.

Since the hurricane, the weather has been fine. On the Gulf that won’t last. Thunderstorms will fire up. There’s even the chance of more tropical trouble from the Gulf. After all, the hurricane season doesn’t peak for another few weeks.

Notes From New Orleans

My friends mom, the one I encouraged to leave New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina was approaching, is fine though her home is not.

My mother rang this morning from the Baton Rouge shelter. She’s fine and in good spirits considering. They’re treating everyone well. She’s come to the realization that her home is gone as is her car. Since most of NOLA is excessively flooded she’s staying put in BR until the officials feel it’s wise to move on. At that point, we may have her fly up to my sister’s in Connecticut. When it is safe to go to NOLA, we’ll go down there to see what the damage is, and then consider alternatives, including whether she should stay in the city. It’s hard to know whether she’ll be away from the city for a one or more. It’s more than likely we’re talking about a longer period of time.

From a Mississippi State classmate who just started a job forecasting the weather as Hurricane Katrina approached:

The national news hounds are blowing this one. I know

I talked to friends watching from other places and CNN

and Fox were saying it was a glancing blow. Just

because there were buildings blown over it wasn’t

that bad. Now that more and more of the flooding

video is being seen I think people are changing their

minds. This will go down as the worst storm in

history.

Mike

There is no New Orleans Times-Picayune I can find. Their website hasn’t been updated since Monday’s edition. Their Tuesday front page link leads to last Tuesday’s.

T-P EVACUATING

Tuesday, 9:40 a.m.

The Times-Picayune is evacuating it’s New Orleans building.

Water continues to rise around our building, as it is throughout the region. We want to evacuate our employees and families while we are still able to safely leave our building.

Our plan is to head across the Mississippi River on the Pontchartrain Expressway to the west bank of New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. From there, we’ll try to head to Houma.

Our plan, obviously, is to resume providing news to our readers ASAP. Please refer back to this site for continuing information as soon as we are able to provide it.

I’ve heard stories of the Brazilian rain forest. If a jungle area is clear cut and then allowed to grow back, it comes back differently. The rain forest is what it is because of how it evolved over time.

There’s a truth in that last paragraph for New Orleans. This city will come back (if it is actually able to come back) different than it was a few days ago. You can’t rebuild tradition and charm. You can’t plan to regain what was there by serendipity.

I’m still not sure we know everything.

Katrina Comes Ashore

I spent the night at Mohegan Sun, preparing to emcee and event for a few thousand teachers. It wasn’t a good night. My body doesn’t know whether it’s “Tuesday or Chestnut Street.”

I caught a few hours, but was up at four… drifting in and out of a light sleep until my wakeup call at 6:30.

This isn’t the hotel’s fault. This is a top notch hotel (more on that later). It was my body saying “Don’t treat me this way.”

Message received.

Up early, I started spinning the dial, looking for Hurricane Katrina coverage. It wasn’t tough to find. Seemingly everyone had a ‘cowboy’ out in the elements, flirting with disaster.

I saw Anderson Cooper, in the pouring rain, gesturing to a crane he said might topple.

Hey, Andy – get away from the crane. This is only television.

All in all I liked the local coverage I saw last night on WWL much better than what the national news showed. Obviously, their was a different purpose to each particular broadcast. I found WWL’s comforting.

Is that OK to say? Comforting was what was needed.

I moved downstairs to prepare for the event. In the featured speaker’s dressing room, a TV was showing CNN. My last contact with the storm this morning was the report that the roof of the Louisiana Superdome had been breeched.

I think the original story was worse than what actually happened. I would think it wasn’t hype but genuine concern from the anchors and reporters. I certainly was concerned.

Yesterday, I had written about what the forecasters might have been thinking. Today, one of those scenarios came true as the storm weakened prior to landfall and then jogged right, giving a more direct hit to Alabama and Mississippi than Louisiana.

New Orleans wasn’t totally laid to waste. There has been plenty of damage, and once we get out of the ‘fog of war’ we’ll find plenty more. The coasts of Alabama and Mississippi really took the brunt of Hurricane Katrina. That was more than expected.

After the fact, I still agree with the decision to empty out New Orleans. Yes, some people will crawl out of the woodwork to say they rode it out and it wasn’t that bad. That’s not the point.

Tonight I’ll drive home wearing my seatbelt, even though I don’t expect to get into an accident.

Blogger’s note: One of my fellow MSU students just started a new job, forecasting in New

Orleans! He sent a mass mailing to the class which I’ll attach after the jump.

Continue reading “Katrina Comes Ashore”

Katrina Shifts West Again

Earlier this afternoon, before the Hurricane Center issued its 5:00 PM update on Katrina, I sent an instant message to my friend Bob at FSU. I told him I was putting up a dollar that Katrina’s forecast would be shifted left.

It was.

I had the exact same feeling tonight… and NHC moved it again.

Maybe feeling is the wrong word, because this isn’t intuition or guesswork. I could see signs. The storm was refusing to make the predicted right turn. In fact, it was traveling south of west.

To the north there was some sort of convergence. Feeder bands from the hurricane were meeting something moving from the north. Clouds were showing up bright white – a sign they were developing vertically.

Whatever it was to the north, it would impede that right turn forecast at the Hurricane Center.

I’m sure I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating. The best hurricane information is often contained in the forecaster’s technical discussion. These really were meant to be ‘internal use only’ documents, but you can’t do that when you work for the government.

In these the lead forecaster discusses what has gone into the latest forecast package. I’m sure it’s very helpful at NHC after the hurricane season is over or whenever post mortems are done.

I’ll attach tonight’s at the end of this message so you can get a feel for yourself. This one was written by Dr. Lixion Avila, one of NHC’s hurricane specialists. Four of the six specialists are Ph D’s. This is specialized work.

Sometimes, I sense, things are thrown in with the understanding that it’s more than meteorologists reading.

KATRINA IS FORECAST TO MOVE DIRECTLY OVER THE WARM

LOOP CURRENT OF THE GULF OF MEXICO…WHICH IS LIKE ADDING HIGH

OCTANE FUEL TO THE FIRE

No one trained in weather needed that line. Some surface water in the Northern Gulf of Mexico is 90&#17+. Without a doubt, this is a dangerous storm and getting more dangerous by the minute.

My biggest fear is Katrina will head west of New Orleans and strike the coast there. A Category 4 storm (which is the forecast) in that location would be devastating. For a variety of reasons, New Orleans is incredibly vulnerable and a strike like that would be the worst of all possible scenarios!

IT IS WORTH NOTING THAT THE GUIDANCE SPREAD HAS DECREASED AND MOST OF THE RELIABLE NUMERICAL MODEL TRACKS ARE NOW CLUSTERED BETWEEN THE EASTERN COAST OF LOUISIANA AND THE COAST OF MISSISSIPPI. THIS CLUSTERING INCREASES THE CONFIDENCE IN THE FORECAST.

Man, I hope he’s right. So far, this storm has been poorly forecast&#185. And, recently, each succeeding forecast has moved the path farther left… farther to the west.

Today alone, the center of the forecast path for landfall has moved a few hundred miles.

More on Katrina later. We have a few days with this storm at sea before the real trouble begins.

&#185 – By poorly forecast, I don’t mean NHC did a bad job. I mean the ability to forecast this particular storm was beyond the capabilities of science at the moment. Something’s there that no one can get a handle on. That we don’t know exactly why it went wrong is as troubling as it going wrong… maybe more.

Continue reading “Katrina Shifts West Again”

Going To School From Home

I am now in my eighth of nine semesters of broadcast meteorology at Mississippi State University. Other than driving through, I’ve never been to Mississippi. Even then, I’ve never been to Starkville&#185, home of MSU.

Of all the school courses I’ve ever taken, going all the way back to 1955, I am currently taking the toughest – Thermodynamics. It’s heavy on theory, often using examples that don’t or can’t exist in the real world.

I’ve always been good at looking a theoretical problems from a real world perspective and using that to shape my understanding. So far in this course, that doesn’t work.

I will pass this course. In fact, I hope to do well in this course. The first homework test was a killer – exceptionally tough. Because it was a homework test, I had unlimited amounts of time to formulate my answers to the questions before I opened up the timed portion, I was able to get a 96%.

Trust me, it was still crushingly difficult. I’m petrified about the midterm which is timed but without the opportunity to answer the questions in advance.

This is one course where there would be an obvious benefit to being in a classroom where I could raise my hand and say, “What the hell are you talking about?” Getting my lectures on DVD makes that impossible.

I’m not sure where my knowledge of thermodynamics will lead. There is probably a good purpose for this which will become obvious later… or not. Sometimes a school’s curriculum just doesn’t make sense. The academic and professional worlds are often far apart.

I have become more sensitive to this course and others I’ve taken, because of a proposed law in Texas. I’m not going to fool you, this proposition is already dead. Still, the fact that someone tried to push it through is pretty upsetting to me.

A Keller lawmaker’s bill regulating TV weathercasters stirred up a whirlwind of opposition in Austin. But the dust-up between scientists and TV personalities hasn’t lost speed and may show up soon on a radar screen near you.

Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller, triggered a gust front when she sponsored a bill requiring math and science college studies before a person can use the title of meteorologist.

Under this proposed legislation, my 53 college level credits in meteorology and related subjects would mean nothing! Behind the scenes, it looks like this was pushed by a degreed meteorologist who didn’t feel my coursework was enough… and probably didn’t want to compete with the likes of me.

There is no doubt I am a biased observer. However, I can say absolutely, this course will give me enough knowledge to call myself a meteorologist and much more knowledge than I’ll ever need to be on TV. It was actually devised to pass the scrutiny of the American Meteorological Society and their Broadcast Seal program. Like academia, the AMS is also sometimes out of touch with the professional world.

When I first started the course, my wife asked if I had learned anything new. When I said yes, she asked, “How important could it be if you didn’t need it for the last 20 years?”

This summer, after all my courses are finished, I will head to Birmingham, AL&#178. Birmingham in August – pinch me.

After a few days of on-site seminar lectures I will be done with my schooling. Hopefully no one else will make an end around and try to change the rules.

&#185 – Here’s a town name right up there with Marblehead, MA and Peculiar, MO. Starkville is, I would assume, the opposite of Pleasantville. At some point someone looked at what surrounded him and the best word to describe it was, “stark!” Or, it’s named after someone whose last name was Stark… though my explanation is so much more fun.

&#178 – Birmingham is being used because of the size of our group. In some ways I’m disappointed. Who wants to finish their college career without once seeing the campus?