Cat 5
Ida from space:
It’s Katrina all over again, but worse.
The storm surge is what was so lethal in 2005 – it filled the basin of New Orleans like filling a bathtub, and that’s why so many people drowned. It will happen again because the hurricane developed too quickly for a complete evacuation.
And sheltering in place is grim advice in N.O. in a hurricane because much of it is below sea level, so “in place” means underwater. This is going to be another nightmare.
And I’m afraid it’s going to be a recurring nightmare. I’ve loved New Orleans but perhaps it’s time to relocate it north of Baton Rouge.
Well I had been hoping to see New Orleans once more before it disappeared forever but that’s looking less likely.
And the lessons of Katrina have almost certainly not translated into more effective public policy, more available transit for evacuation, more funding to assist the displaced, or improvements to levees. It’s always the same story. We learned with Hurricane Camille in 1968 that New Orleans levees likely could not withstand another category 5 hurricane; what did we do? Put the report on a shelf. There was finally money to restore wetlands to absorb some storm surge – in 1997. Which meant that the restoration (which I got to visit in 2003) wasn’t far enough along when Katrina hit to do much.
Remind me again why we are known as sapiens? Why are we looking for intelligence on other planets, when there is so little evidence we’ve found it here?
So … Odds that the wedding on the north shore I’ve been planning to go to Saturday will still happen?
Don’t put any money on it.
There was a whole lot of talk after Katrina about whether it made any sense to rebuild Nawlins, all of which made pretty clear that it wasn’t but also that it would be rebuilt anyway. Meanwhile more and more of the delta is under water.