Think things are getting back to normal in New Orleans? Guess again, from the Christian Science Monitor:
Now, as hurricane Rita steams toward Texas, it isn’t hurricane-force winds that scare this city so much as the prospect of buckets of rain.
The Army Corps of Engineers say the levees can handle just 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.
“If the storm surges come up, this will all wash right into the neighborhood,” says Capt. Ron Beaulieu of the New Orleans Fire Department, as he stands on the sand walls of the Industrial Canal patch. He points to the deep trench that formed in the mud along the still-standing levee walls. “All the levees are like this. They’re really weakened.”
I guess protecting the petrochemical industry is a lot more important…
New Orleans residents who braved the flooding with little food and water have decided to leave in Rita’s wake. People who were returning home by automobile after Mayor Nagin’s precipitous ‘all-clear’ announcement decided to turn around. This time, Nagin has 500 buses ready for others who want to evacuate. So where is everyone going?
“Everyone’s going to Alexandria [La.] to ride out the storm,” says Col. Ken Lull of the Colorado National Guard’s169th field artillery brigade. Col. Lull got married Sept. 3 and jokes that he’s spending his honeymoon in New Orleans. He’s in charge of the task force for the hard-hit St. Bernard Parish. “With this levee out here, we can’t be here [if it breaks] – then we become casualties.”
Military units across the region repositioned themselves with Rita in mind. Marines who’ve spent the last few weeks setting up food distribution and cleaning out schools in Mississippi and Louisiana boarded the Iwo Jima ship in downtown New Orleans to ride out the storm and go wherever they might be most needed.
And most of the 1,850 soldiers with the Oregon National Guard, part of a task force responsible for Lakeview, the Ninth Ward, and other severely damaged New Orleans neighborhoods, loaded onto contracted buses to wait out the storm in Alexandria, northwest of the Big Easy.
Governor Blanco has ordered that everyone try Northern Louisiana cities other than overcrowded Baton Rouge. Mandatory evacuations include Cameron, Calcasieu (south of I-10) and Vermillion Parishes, link here of Louisiana parishes. These parishes, however, are closest to Texas and the path of the hurricane.
Yesterday
[t]he Army Corps of Engineers has begun closing two damaged canals at noon today in preparation for storm surges associated with Hurricane Rita.
The 17th Street canal and the London Street canals will be closed with steel sheet piling by 8 p.m. tonight and will remain closed until the threat of severe weather passes.
Steel sheets will be driven deep into the canal beds near Lake Pontchartrain, providing protection from possible storm surges from the lake rushing into
the damaged canals.The move to close the canals is part of the Corps continuing effort to provide an interim level of protection for the area that was damaged during
Hurricane Katrina.More than 800 filled sandbags are on hand, and an additional 2,500 have been ordered. Work continues around the clock to make emergency repairs to
damaged canal walls and levees.Working with local levee districts and drainage authorities, the Corps has begun re-distributing pumps, construction equipment and materials to municipalities for emergency response. Efforts continue to evaluate flood control structures in the region to determine what preventive measures can be implemented.
“In addition to materials, we have also pre-positioned contractors throughout the region to rapidly respond after severe weather,” said Col. Richard
Wagenaar, commander of the Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District.A team of Corps experts has also been established both in New Orleans and at the regional office in Vicksburg, Miss.
Over 500,000 people are leaving/have left New Orleans. The rain arrived this morning.
Update [2005-9-22 18:17:25 by blksista]:: Gov. Blanco has warned NO residents still holding out to write their Social Security numbers on their arms “in indelible ink” just in case. That’s how bad it’s going to get.
Update [2005-9-22 18:53:20 by blksista]:: Jefferson Parish may not have the resources to evacuate its residents should its levees break:
[A]n official said a storm could push a tidal surge of 3 to 5 feet into Barataria Bay and threaten a weak point in the parish’s storm defenses: the Harvey Canal levee. Anything over 5 feet could top the levee and cause widespread flooding, emergency management director Walter Maestri said.
But as of Wednesday, there were no plans to evacuate the estimated 200,000 Jefferson Parish residents who have returned since Hurricane Katrina. Maestri said that with relatively few gas stations or grocery stores re-opened, evacuees would not be able to stock up on needed supplies before they hit the road.
“People are not ready to move again, and our infrastructure is such that we can’t move again,” he said.
Update [2005-9-22 21:34:38 by blksista]:: Texans still unprepared for Rita’s fury:
“This is the worst planning I’ve ever seen,” said Judie Anderson, who covered just 45 miles in 12 hours after setting out from her home in the Houston suburb of LaPorte. “They say we’ve learned a lot from Hurricane Katrina. Well, you couldn’t prove it by me.”
In all, nearly 2 million people along the Texas and Louisiana coasts were urged to get out of the way of Rita, a 400-mile-wide storm that weakened Thursday from a top-of-the-scale Category 5 hurricane to a Category 4 as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico.
The storm’s course change could send it away from Houston and Galveston and instead draw the hurricane toward Port Arthur, Texas, or Lake Charles, La., at least 60 miles up the coast, by late Friday or early Saturday.
Update [2005-9-22 21:48:2 by blksista]:: Here is some AP news from other Louisiana and Texas emergency organizations:
Louisiana State Police are telling motorists to travel north on LA 27, US 171, and US 165. Traffic flow on Interstate 10 in the Troop D area and all other evacuation routes is heavy at this time both east and west bound. Interstate 10 travel west is discouraged due to Texas evacuation traffic. Interstate 10 travel east is discouraged due to eastern parishes having to evacuate toward Interstate 49. Conditions on all evacuation routes are congested, so expect delays. We want to remind the public to please drive carefully and pay strict attention to the roadway. If motorists are involved in a minor crash, move off of the roadway and call the police. We want to try to keep the roadways open to prevent any other crashes or traffic backup. Motorists evacuating the area and searching for an evacuation shelter are encouraged to travel north on the main evacuation routes: Jefferson Davis Parish residents are encouraged to go north on US 165 (Exit 44) to a shelter checkpoint just north of Oakdale at the Mowad Civic Center, and Calcasieu Parish residents can go north on US 171(Exit 33) to the Pickering High School gym. There are no plans for any type of Contra-Flow in Southwest Louisiana.
If you need assistance on road conditions please call the Louisiana State Police Hotline at 1-800-469-4828. If you need assistance please call *LSP (*577) on your cell phone.
With Hurricane Rita posing a more serious threat to Louisiana, Governor Kathleen Blanco is asking for 15-thousand more federal troops to be on standby. At the same time, the National Guard in Louisiana has asked for an additional 15-thousand National Guard troops from other states to help. Blanco says at least a half (m) million people are being asked to evacuate coastal areas. In an ominous warning, she suggests that those refusing to leave should write their Social Security numbers with indelible ink on their arms.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Fuel trucks are being dispatched along Texas evacuation routes to help motorists who are fleeing Hurricane Rita. Some drivers have run out of gas due to the slow traffic flow. Governor Rick Perry spoke to President Bush today and asked that ten-thousand federal troops be pre-positioned to help Texas before and after Rita makes landfall. Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc says about 90 percent of the island’s residents have been evacuated. He says the city has moved more than three-thousand people off the island — using buses. Also, Texas authorities have begun airlifting special needs and other people from the Beaumont and Houston areas — about nine-thousand folks. Those evacuees will be transported to San Antonio, Amarillo, El Paso, Dallas, Fort Worth and Lubbock.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Traffic came to a standstill and gas shortages were reported Thursday as hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston metropolitan area rushed to get out of the path of Hurricane Rita, a monster storm with 165 mph winds. More than 1.3 million residents in Texas and Louisiana were under orders to evacuate to avoid a deadly repeat of Katrina. The Category 5 storm weakened slightly Thursday morning as it swirled across the Gulf of Mexico, and forecasters said it could lose more steam by the time it comes ashore late Friday or early Saturday. But it could still be an extremely dangerous hurricane – one aimed straight at a section of coastline with the nation’s biggest concentration of oil refineries. “Don’t follow the example of Katrina and wait. No one will come and get you during the storm,” Harris County Judge Robert Eckels said in Houston. In New Orleans, meanwhile, Rita’s outer bands brought the first measurable rain to the city since Katrina, raising fears that the patched-up levees could give way and cause a new round of flooding. Highways leading inland out of Houston, a metropolitan area of 4 million people, were clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic for up to 100 miles north of the city. Gas stations were reported to be running out of gas. Shoppers emptied grocery store shelves of spaghetti, tuna and other nonperishable items. Hotels hundreds of miles inland filled up. Police officers along the highways carried gasoline to help motorists who ran out. To speed the evacuation out of the nation’s fourth-largest city, Gov. Rick Perry ordered a halt to all southbound traffic into Houston along Interstate 45 and took the unprecedented step of directing the opening all eight lanes to northbound traffic out of the city for 125 miles. I-45 is the primary evacuation route north from Houston and Galveston. At 11 a.m. EDT, Rita was centered about 460 miles southeast of Galveston and was moving at near 9 mph. It winds were 165 mph, down slightly from 175 mph earlier in the day. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore somewhere between the Houston-Galveston area and western Louisiana. Hurricane-force winds extended 85 miles from the center of the storm, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the Katrina-fractured levees protecting New Orleans, where engineers rushed to fix the pumps and fortify the walls. Forecasters said Rita could be the strongest hurricane on record ever to hit Texas. Only three Category 5 hurricanes, the highest on the scale, are known to have hit the U.S. mainland – most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992. The U.S. mainland has never been hit by both a Category 4 and a Category 5 in the same season. Katrina came ashore Aug. 29 as a Category 4 hurricane. Galveston, Corpus Christi and surrounding Nueces County, low-lying parts of Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita swirled across the Gulf of Mexico. Oil refineries and chemical plants in and around Houston began shutting down, and hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Environmentalists warned that the stretch of coast threatened by Rita is home to 87 chemical plants, refineries and petroleum storage installations, raising the possibility that the storm could cause a major oil spill or toxic release. Southeastern Texas is also home to more than a dozen active Superfund sites. NASA evacuated Johnson Space Center and transferred control of the international space station to the Russians. Storm surge projections put most of the NASA space center, situated about 20 miles southeast of downtown Houston, underwater in the event of a hurricane above Category 2. Although Houston is 60 miles inland, it is a low-lying, flat, sprawling city whose vast stretches of concrete cover clay soil that does not easily soak up water. The city is beribboned with seven bayous that overflow their banks even in a strong thunderstorm. Those bayous feed into the Ship Channel, Clear Lake and Galveston Bay. Scientists have warned that the storm surge from a hurricane could cause the bayous’ currents to reverse, actually pushing more water back into the city. Along the Gulf Coast, federal, state and local officials heeded the bitter lessons of Katrina: Hundreds of buses were dispatched to evacuate the poor. Hospital and nursing home patients were cleared out. And truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and rescue and medical teams were put on standby.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Jimmy Guidry, Louisiana’s state health officer, says hospital evacuations continue today in southwest Louisiana ahead of Hurricane Rita. Patients from South Cameron Memorial Hospital were evacuated yesterday and patients transported to Oklahoma. West Calcasieu Cameron Hospital also was evacuated. Christus Saint Patrick Hospital in Lake Charles is being evacuated, Lake Charles Memorial Hospital is evacuating premature babies. Patients from the state’s charity hospital in Lake Charles are being moved to the state’s charity hospital in Alexandria. (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
Texas officials will begin airlifting at least nine-thousand people from Beaumont and Houston today. Those include nursing home residents, those without transportation and the homeless. They’ll be taken to inland Texas cities as part of the massive coastal evacuations ahead of Hurricane Rita. Steve McCraw is the state’s director of homeland security. He says at least some of the flights will take off from George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston. The evacuees will be taken to San Antonio, Amarillo, El Paso, Dallas, Fort Worth and Lubbock. (Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
CANCELLATIONS AND DATE CHANGES:
Texas-based airlines are suspending flights to cities being threatened by Hurricane Rita. Flights are expected to resume on Sunday — weather permitting.
Here’s a look:
— Continental Airlines tomorrow morning begins operating a reduced schedule from Houston, where it’s based. Continental plans to cancel all of its George Bush Intercontinental Airport flights starting at noon tomorrow. All Continental Express flights from Houston are canceled tomorrow and Saturday.
— Dallas-based Southwest Airlines will discontinue scheduled flight service at Corpus Christi, Houston’s Hobby Airport and New Orleans at noon tomorrow.
— Fort Worth-based American Airlines has canceled its flights in and out of Houston’s Hobby Airport. American’s service at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport was scheduled to continue through 7:09 p-m tonight. All flights after that time have been canceled.
