Check out the latest
hurricane tracking map -- it's aiming directly for New Orleans.
And meteorologists are predicting the storm to get stronger as it comes north across the Gulf.
New Orleans is known to carry the risk of utter devastation -- as in 15-20 feet of floodwater submerging most of downtown -- in the event of a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane. This one is expected to be a 4 or a high 3 when it hits.
Granted, the storm track is being updated almost hourly, and the computer models might move east or west of New Orleans by the time I've posted this. But at this time, it looks bad for New Orleans.
I've gathered some information online about why New Orleans is at such risk for flooding... it's quite interesting, and strikes me as a miracle that the city has lasted as long as it has! More posted inside...
Here's an excellent
six-page article from American RadioWorks that describes what's at stake for New Orleans, and why:
And just across the Mississippi River, Walter Maestri is struggling to help New Orleans prepare. Maestri is the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish (that's the county that sprawls across a third of the metropolitan area). He points to a map of the region on the wall of his command post.
"A couple of days ago," explains Maestri, "We actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five Hurricane into the metropolitan area."
When the computer models showed Walter Maestri what would happen after a hurricane hit New Orleans, he wrote big letters on the map: "KYAGB--kiss your ass good bye." Photo: William Brangham/NOW with Bill Moyers
The map is covered with arrows and swirls in erasable marker. They show how the fictitious hurricane crossed Key West and then smacked into New Orleans.
When the computer models showed Maestri what would happen next, he wrote big letters on the map, all in capitals.
"KYAGB--kiss your ass good bye," reads Maestri.
"Because," says Maestri, "anyone who was here when that storm came across was gone--it was body-bag time. We think 40,000 people could lose their lives in the metropolitan area."
And some scientists say that figure is conservative. People have known for centuries that New Orleans is a risky spot -- the biggest river in North America wraps around it; and most of the land is below sea level. But researchers say they've been learning just how grave the problem is, only in the last few years. And they say the city and the nation aren't prepared to handle it.
New Orleans has dodged bullet after bullet, over the past century, when it comes to hurricanes. Most recently, in 1998, Hurricane Georges was looking scary as it headed up toward the city. New Orleans prepared for the worst and evacuated. But the storm weakened and hit a bit further east than expected, hitting Biloxi MS as a Category 2 with sustained winds of 110 mph.
Far more dangerous a near-miss was Hurricane Camille back in 1969. That storm, too, hit east of New Orleans, just far enough away that the city was spared the most brutal of the high-force winds. (Mississippi got pummeled.)
To give a summary of how New Orleans protects itself from flooding:
New Orleans, a city of nearly 1.4 million people, sits below sea level, as much as 8 feet lower than water in nearby Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River and its delta, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico. This in effect creates a "bowl" that floodwaters can settle into, like water headed for a stopped-up drain.
To combat this unique problem, a system of levees surrounds the city to hold back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain to the north and the Mississippi River to the south, says Joseph Suhayda, director of the Louisiana Water Resources Research Institute at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The levee that holds back Lake Pontchartrain is 15 feet high while the one guarding against the Mississippi River is 20 feet tall.
Suhayda says the 15-foot levee will protect the city from a minimum hurricane of Category 1 or 2 intensity and at best a fast-moving Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane intensity scale.
"A slow-moving Category 3 or any Category 4 or 5 hurricane passing within 20 or 30 miles of New Orleans would be devastating," Suhayda says.
I confess to a lifetime's fascination with natural disasters, and it's partly in that spirit of interest that I am motivated to research and post this diary. Yet it's clear that on Monday, August 29, there will be real human suffering as a result of Hurricane Katrina. People losing their homes... and hopefully none losing their lives, but it always seems to happen. So I close with a wish that the storm somehow will land in a way that spares major population centers... and that everyone down there evacuates. This is a big one.
