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2008-08-27 -Signs, Portents, and the Weather-

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Posted by tu3031 2008-08-27 11:52|| || Front Page|| [3 views ] Top

#1 Don't forget to move the buses!

Posted by 3dc 2008-08-27 12:25|| 2008-08-27 12:25|| Front Page Top

#2 Oh-oh. Might be time to panic...

Mayor Ray Nagin leaving Democratic Convention to return to New Orleans

Posted by tu3031 2008-08-27 12:43|| 2008-08-27 12:43|| Front Page Top

#3 Watch out Chocolate City!

Posted by Hellfish 2008-08-27 12:52|| 2008-08-27 12:52|| Front Page Top

#4 Gov. Bobby Jindal said he could declare a state of emergency as early as Thursday, which would begin an evacuation process resulting in the state exercising contracts for as many as 700 buses. "Be ready," Jindal said. "This is a serious storm."

Assisted evacuations could begin as early as Friday, and evacuations from hospitals and medical care facilities could begin Saturday. Evacuations by rail also could begin Saturday.

Contraflow, in which all lanes of major highways would direct traffic away from the storm impact area, could begin Saturday or early Sunday, Jindal said. "These are the timetables as we see them now," Jindal said.

He said the state has identified 10,000 critical care beds for evacuees and 68,000 regular beds for evacuation.

The Louisiana National Guard has been put on alert, Jindal said. The number of guardsmen and the place of deployment will be determined as the direction of the storm clarifies, Jindal said.

In New Orleans, Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness Director Jerry Sneed said city officials are poised to begin an evacuation countdown. "We're ready to go," he said.

The city's timetable dovetails with a regional plan that has residents in different locations staging their evacuations to reduce congestion on the few highways leading north and west out of the area.

The city's plan calls for residents to gather at 17 sites, where they will be picked up by Regional Transit Authority buses and taken to the Union Passenger Terminal downtown. From there, they board state-chartered buses headed for shelters in Shreveport, Monroe and Alexandria, or Amtrak trains to Jackson, Miss.

Sneed urged residents who cannot get themselves to the loading sites, for any reason, to register for a program that will pick them up at their homes.

Sneed said the preliminary evacuation timeline is based on the expectation that tropical storm force winds will hit the Louisiana coastline Sunday about 4 p.m.

Counting backward from that target, Sneed said the state Department of Transportation and Development would activate charter bus contracts early Thursday. Amtrak trains already are stationed at the Union Passenger Terminal, he said.

RTA buses would begin shuttling residents from the pickup sites early Friday morning, with charter buses arriving in the city Friday about noon, he said.

Residents evacuating on their own would be asked to wait until mid-morning on Saturday, after the departure of residents from coastal areas, he said.

For those that choose to ride out the storm, the horror at the Super Dome and the New Orleans Convention Center will not be repeated. They will no longer serve as emergency shelters. Now, there are 17 evacuation centers.

Posted by tu3031 2008-08-27 12:54|| 2008-08-27 12:54|| Front Page Top

#5 What a difference good leadership makes.

Posted by Deacon Blues 2008-08-27 13:05|| 2008-08-27 13:05|| Front Page Top

#6 Or they can sit on their arses and blame Bush.

Posted by Beavis 2008-08-27 13:26|| 2008-08-27 13:26|| Front Page Top

#7 From what has been said, a Cat-5 hitting to just to the west will produce far larger surge and winds than Katrina, and would probably destroy several levees and wipe out large areas that were hit before.

All it takes is for 1-2 levees to fail, and we have katrina-style destruction all over again.

I still don't see why we spend all that money to rebuild in-place. We should rebuild on higher ground to the N, build-in mass transit to get to the sustainable part of New Orleans where hte businesses are, and let the severely below sea level areas go back to being delta swampland. I'd rather my tax money be paid to people to "condmen" their land as federal wildlife area, and buy them a new house in a much better area elsewhere, then cut all the levees and locks that are not needed any longer.

Posted by OldSpook 2008-08-27 15:11|| 2008-08-27 15:11|| Front Page Top

#8 Does FEMA have formaldehyde free trailers this time?

Or will they have to pay for them?

Posted by USN, Ret. 2008-08-27 16:24|| 2008-08-27 16:24|| Front Page Top

#9 That picture just irritates the hell out of me, nobody had the sense to realise the water was NOT salt, it was fresh,(Mississippi River) and fresh water does NOT short wiring or cause excessive rust, just dry the busses and they'd be good as before, But instead those Idiots scrapped every single bus.

Posted by Redneck Jim">Redneck Jim 2008-08-27 17:41|| 2008-08-27 17:41|| Front Page Top

#10 Jim, why should they care? It wasn't their money spent to replace the buses.

Posted by Rambler in California">Rambler in California 2008-08-27 20:20|| 2008-08-27 20:20|| Front Page Top

#11 Wrong, redneck jim. It was salt water from the breached levees of drainage canals that open onto Lake Pontchartrain which is open to the Gulf & brackish-to-salty, depending on where and when. Katrina flood waters never reached the level of the Mississippi, which has not overflowed into New Orleans in ages (maybe 1920's?) The river levees have been considerably better built and maintained than the lake & canal levees, and are much more a Corps of Engineers operation and less a local political operation.

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-08-27 20:46|| 2008-08-27 20:46|| Front Page Top

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