The Net came up briefly here Tuesday around noon, then went down again until about noon Wednesday.
I was about to post this Tuesday, so here it is. If the connection holds, we’ll be updating regularly.
GW
As floodwaters blocked entry to the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans along St. Claude Avenue early Tuesday morning, City Council President Oliver Thomas, who grew up in the 9th Ward and teared up while discussing the devastation, said: “Look, look man: It’s gone. It’s gone. This is crazy. Nothing like this ever happened before.”
That from the New Orleans Times-Picayune Weblog, perhaps the best local source of information in such a time of disaster.
The newspaper staff had to evacuate the building at about 9:40 Tuesday morning, but filed an extensive report, quoted here in part:
Hurricane Katrina struck metropolitan New Orleans on Monday with a staggering blow, far surpassing Hurricane Betsy, the landmark disaster of an earlier generation. The storm flooded huge swaths of the city, as well as Slidell on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in a process that appeared to be spreading even as night fell.
A powerful storm surge pushed huge waves ahead of the hurricane, flooding much of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, just as Betsy 40 years ago. But this time the flooding was more extensive, spreading upriver as well to cover parts of the Bywater, Marigny and Treme neighborhoods.
As with Betsy, people scrambled into their attics or atop their roofs, pleading for help from the few passers-by.
The powerful Category 4 storm crossed the coast near the mouth of the Pearl River shortly after daybreak with winds of 135 mph. Naval Air Station-Joint Reserve Base in Belle Chasse reported an early morning gust of 105 mph.
With the power out throughout the area and fierce winds raging throughout the day, officials barely began Monday to assess the full damage of the monstrous storm, which was expected to leave thousands homeless and many more coping with damage from the wind and water.
Meantime, five miles to the west, engineers worked to close a breach along the New Orleans side of the 17th Street Canal.
Huge drainage pumps ordinarily can drive millions of gallons of rainwater uphill through the canal, as it takes water from the low-lying city into Lake Pontchartrain. But the breach turned the canal into a major threat. Lake water flowed back through the breach, hemorrhaging into Lakeview and beyond.
Across Lake Pontchartrain and closer to the site of Katrina’s landfall, thousands of homes in Slidell flooded. From the Interstate 10 overpass at Slidell’s Old Spanish Trail, the only visible structure from the dense commercial intersection was a boat bobbing on the waves.
“This is Lake Pontchartrain,” said St. Tammany deputy sheriff Kenny Kreeger.
Sections of the I-10 twin bridges linking St. Tammany and Orleans parishes over Lake Pontchartrain have been “severely damaged” in both directions, some knocked out, Louisiana highway officials said.
***
Meanwhile, Margaret O’Brien-Molina, a spokeswoman for the American Red Cross’ southwest service area office in Houston, said national Red Cross executives earlier today described Katrina as “the largest recovery operation the Red Cross has ever attempted.”
“The Red Cross response to this event is the equivalent Hurricane Andrew, Sept. 11 and more,” said American Red Cross Executive Rick Scofield.
The huge storm also flooded cities along the Mississippi and Alabama coasts. Katrina pushed Mobile Bay into the city’s downtown district. A 22-foot storm surge devastated parts of Gulfport and Pascagoula.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin called the storm “awesome.”
He noted the city’s strategic importance as a port and a domestic oil refiner as reasons the federal government should assist in the rebuilding.
“I think this is a wake-up call for the city and country,” he said.
President Bush promised swift federal relief for New Orleans and other devastated communities, (even though he advocated cutting federal spending for the Corps of Engineers of late).
“FEMA said give us a list of your needs,” said Nagin, referring to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “And let me tell you, we’re giving them a hell of a list.”
As night gathered over a city without lights, it appeared that at least 150 people – perhaps many more – were marooned on rooftops, sometimes with their children.
State Wildlife Secretary Dwight Landreneau said that by dawn he would have more than 200 boats in the water, about 120 more than he had on Monday. He said he also has a commitment from Texas for another 50 boats.
City officials said they might open the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center as a temporary refuge to shelter an estimated 50,000 people made homeless by the storm.
Police Chief Eddie Compass said officials were desperately trying to make conditions a little more comfortable for the more than 25,000 refugees housed in the sweltering Superdome. Saying that the Dome was filthy and smelled bad, Compass said he was going to allow people to go outside.
Travel about the city on the east bank of the Mississippi River to assess damage was limited…
And, all forms of communications in and out of Louisiana and coastal Mississippi were completely cut off all day Tuesday so far. The best source of information now are the TV crews that manage to get up in the air with the U.S. Coast Guard, and the one’s who manage to broadcast via satellite from downtown, where the poor, trapped people of New Orleans scramble and loot to get their hands on the basics they need to survive.
This is going to be a long, drawn out rescue and recovery effort. Let’s hope our government leaders now realilze the extent of the problem of erosion on the coast, which will only continue to get worse as the U.S. corporate community and the Bush administration continue to fail to face the facts and deal with climate change due to global warming.
A couple of New York Times stories from Tuesday are worth considering.
After Centuries of ‘Controlling’ Land, Gulf Learns Who’s the Boss
NYT Editorial: Nature’s Revenge
