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[pmcd9]

The levee in New Orleans didn't hold.

"History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of man."

~Paul

[V-Adore]

Man, are you trying to be a dick?

Have some fuck*ng dignity. People are dying.

[Choop]

V, this is one time I might have to disagree with your stance.

Paul's chosen Godzilla as a topic title here, I believe, because that song by Blue Oyster Cult is the source of the quote which rings so true in the midst of this disaster. The New Orleans levee wasn't shored up last year, when the Army Corps of Engineers found it needed to be, due to a decision made by men (and maybe ladies, but absolutely humankind) who currently happen to serve as members and the head of our federal government's administration.

As a result, hundreds of people are dying and perhaps hundreds of thousands have lost their homes. If this isn't nature pointing out the folly of man, I don't know what is.

We know Paul. He's definitely and easily a man who knows when dignity is and is not called for. He's not, I believe, making light of the situation. This is the History forum, after all, and it's where current events discussions go.

Paul, if I'm not dead-on in this assessment, you've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do.

Donate at http://www.redcross.org/ or 1-800-HELP-NOW (435-7669).

[V-Adore]

Fair enough. I'm sorry -- this is a fairly sensitive topic for me. Right now I'm staying with my parents, in central Louisiana, and while we weren't hit by the hurricane or its aftermath, we're overwhelmed with evacuees with no place to go. My father teaches students from around Louisiana, and some of them have lost their homes and may have lost family. If that's what Paul meant, I'm sorry, but... yeah, tensions are high.

[Choop]

And if that's not what Paul meant, I'm sorry too.

Regardless, I hope you and yours are well-stocked and stay safe.

[arkabee]

i, i think the news people (note i only get ABC and UPN so the coverage i have access to is severely limited and what i am commenting on may not be accurate for others),

i think the news people are trying to minimize what they are showing, because as my puny brain tries to piece together this scene here from LA and that one there from MS and etc, it really scares the shit out of me.

this might be the first time i appreciate the news people not acutally telling/showing the fuck*ng truth, because if someone started flying from FLA and headed west with a camera pointed on the coast and then they just rolled that footage i don't think i'd ever get out from under the bed ever again.

my brain is holding to seperate and opposite thoughts concurrently: of course New Orleans is under water, it's below sea level.  and: oh my god the entire city is fuck*ng GONE.

wiki says the metro new orleans population is 1,337,726.
they say 80% of new orleans is under water.

WHAT THE FUCK CAN WE DO FOR ONE MILLION PEOPLE?

i mean, holy shit.  and that's just new orleans.

i was watching ted koppel last night, and he talked about 80% of the city being under water, but he didn't ONCE talk about how many people that represents not having a dwelling wherein they live and keep themselves safe and eat and all that.

and that's just new orleans.

how long has new orleans been below sea level?

i've always sort of thought godzilla was hokey, but fuck if it doesn't make a whole hell of a lot of sense, because what the fuck other than a giant radioactive dinosaur can walk the coast of the gulf and fuck everything and everyone in it's path?

it's a fuck*ng monster and it just walked on everyone and everything in it's path.

[side_show]

On an only vaguely related note, with the news being what it is, I found myself wondering if the band Katrina and the Waves are still together.  And also, one of my bestfriends, once dated a girl named Catrina, and shortly after came of of the closet as perfering boys.  

In regard to making light of the situation, the local news had what was clearly meant to be a funny clip montage yesterday of several Canadian affiliate reporters trying to report while standing out in the insane weather.  It was wacky!  (I'm being sarcastic here - actually - it was disturbing) It seemed in such poor taste to show this goofy montage in the same news cast as the sound bite that every station is showing of the guy weeping because his house split in half and he can't find his wife's body...  Gah!

[CortJstr]

An aquiantence who is with the Federal disaster folks flew out to Houston to stage for relief efforts yesterday.

Her goodbye quote: "See you in 6 months".

Right around DC are two of those elite urban search and rescue teams who always get activated for hurricanes and the tsunami and such. I can't even image doing that for a living just because of all the time spent away from home, let alone the things you would see.

[Ben-San]

To me, strangely, the predominant thought is "Am I going to have to cross New Orleans off my Eventually Someday Road Trip?" The thought that New Orleans may just not be there anymore in its classic form boggles me. Like what Arkabee said about monsters, in my mindset "New Orleans is gone" is the kind of thing you hear in the wake of a supervillain attack. It's the kind of thing a bad writer would do for shock value, and then for several months you see background news reports about the New Orleans Reclamation Project and if the Justice League writer needs a member not to show up, he's in New Orleans helping with the rebuilding.

Except, of course, that in this case there are obviously no space mongols involved and it can't really be resolved off-panel. But that's the mindset in which I can readily wrap my mind around that kind of destruction to a significant American city. 80% underwater? Criminy.

[jough]

I feel for the people in Louisiana, because they're not SUPPOSED to get hurricanes like this, but I must admit to shouting "you fuck*ng idiot!" at the TV whenever I see someone crying about how their home was destroyed by a hurricane... for the FIFTH TIME in as many years.  Gee, you think you should move further inland, maybe, you fuck*ng idiot?

[AlohaDawg]

Paul - good post.

I have in the past had issues with people FROM NO (I went to Grad school there)  who would face every hurricane more or less cavalierly because "they always turn". This one did too, for the most part...imagine what a direct hit will do when it comes.

Leave it to the French to build a city 12 feet below sea level in the swamp between a huge lake and a huge river. You would have to want to live someplace where the sewage has to be pumped up and out. A city of over a million, a flood of biblical proportions, and all that sewage and garbage, and now bodies...

It will be a miracle if they don't have a cholera epidemic.

Those levees probably would have failed to some degree even with the repairs....I was there once during a routine thunderstorm and they were sandbagging all the entrances of the buildings on Canal Street. The waters got nowhere to go, the ground is swampy already.

the energy behind Katrina was incredible. I don't know what they will do next but if I were any big insurance company I would never insure anything in that area. I think serious consideration to moving the bulk of the population and economically important businesses should be taken - leave it as a college town and theme park for excessive behavior but it's no place for a big city.

[Lister]

Last year at this time, I lived in Orlando and had experienced three hurricanes passing through the area in (I think) 7 weeks.  We didn't get the worst of any of them, but life still sucked.

After the first (most damaging) one, power was out nearly EVERYWHERE.  I had thought I had plenty of food, but I'd forgotten to consider how I would cook any of it.  There weren't any working traffic signals.  The gas stations that had power didn't have gas, and people were lined up in their cars waiting just in case they got more gas delivered.  I was lucky in that my apartment building had an intact and relatively non-leaky roof.

Standing water was everywhere, and it was full of tree branches and bits of buildings.  There was a water quality alert, so you couldn't drink water without boiling it first.  It was over ninety degrees most of the day, every day.  I took unheated showers to try to cool off, and my clothes would be soaked with sweat within minutes of putting them on.  All of the major highways leading out of town were gridlocked for days, and people kept running out of gas and having no way to get more.

My grandmother lives on the Sound east of Pensacola, right about where Ivan hit hardest.  When we visited last Christmas, it was still impossible to get plywood or roofing materials.  Her house survived, because my grandfather had purchased the highest property along that stretch of coast.  The house 100 yards down the road was washed off of its foundation and was still just sitting there.  The road was littered with detritus from the houses in the area: dolls, videos, clothes, stuff like that (Again, this was in December).

It's about ten times worse than that in New Orleans and eastwards.  I can't really imagine it.  The real horror is that life there won't be approaching normal for weeks at best, and some areas won't ever recover.

There's a reason I don't live in Florida any more.  I know I'm more mobile than most people can afford to be (rented property, no spouse or children), but after last summer I decided I was never going to be in a position to go through that again.  It didn't sound too bad until I experienced it.  I'm guessing that's why people chose to remain in New Orleans -- you seriously can not comprehend the magnitude of a hurricane's power if you haven't been in one.

[V-Adore]

I feel for the people in Louisiana, because they're not SUPPOSED to get hurricanes like this, but I must admit to shouting "you fuck*ng idiot!" at the TV whenever I see someone crying about how their home was destroyed by a hurricane... for the FIFTH TIME in as many years.  Gee, you think you should move further inland, maybe, you fuck*ng idiot?

Er, far be it from me to get in the way of a good Jough rant, but you do realize that many of the people caught in Katrina are those sufficiently poor that they can't just get sick of hurricanes, pack up, and leave, right? Not everyone has the liberty of easy mobility. For that matter, we're often talking about homes that have withstood previous hurricanes; I believe they mentioned that a lot of the places in Alabama and Mississippi that got destroyed were buildings that had previously stood up to George and Camille. I get the frustration, but most of the inability to evacuate this time was gridlock and lack of transportation, not hubris.

(Honest to God, I'm contradicting Jough. This really must have gotten me pissy, huh?)

[Carlos del Vaca]

Right around DC are two of those elite urban search and rescue teams who always get activated for hurricanes and the tsunami and such. I can't even image doing that for a living just because of all the time spent away from home, let alone the things you would see.

I actually know a couple of people who do this.  I asked one of them once, how do you deal with going to Oklahoma City and the WTC and all these places where awful shit is happening?  And she said, better to go there and HELP than sit at home doing nothing.

Hey, how about all that money diverted away from levee buildup and stuff like that in favor of going to blow shit up in Iraq?  Brilliant!

[jough]

Actually, I was talking about people in Florida who keep rebuilding and staying where they are rather than moving once a hurricane decimates their homes EVERY YEAR OR TWO.

The people of LA may not have had a hurricane of this magnitude ever, or at least not in the course of their lifetimes, and thus are spared being thought of as fuck*ng idiots.

Now, if any of those SAME people have this happen to them AGAIN next year, they deserve our ire, scorn, and pointless cursing at the tele.