Nagin Speaks
The Superdome area of downtown does not look to me to be flooded very badly…water is not even up to pickup truck doors. It appears to be maybe a couple of feet high on the yellow concrete pilings at the garage entrances to the Superdome itself. Still lots of broken office windows.
Looks like St. Bernard and Chalmette are really slammed. Chalmette High School has people on the second floor, the government building on Judge Perez has 8-10 feet of water.
Kenner officials are saying that Williams is flooded north of I-10 but that the lake didn’t top the levee there.
I have a second-hand report that an apartment building on Manhattan has collapsed and that the Shell station at Manhattan and the West Bank Expressway was leveled. I hope that, if accurate, it’s an indication that the West Bank isn’t seriously flooded.
Conditions might be good enough before sundown for some good inspections of damage.
The imagey doesn’t look so bad, yet…the I-10 trestle as the split is, of course, completely flooded, and stupid people have obligingly driven straight into the approx. 16ft. of water for our amusement. But it’s hard to tell from that how bad other areas of the city might be. I haven’t seen imagery from St. Bernard or Kenner, yet, although the Superdome looked like it was scalped.
City Hall confirmed a levee breach along the 17th Street Canal at Belaire Drive in Lakeview.
LOOTING! People have been captured by a WDSU news crew removing items from a warehouse, loading things like beer and cleaning supplies into shopping carts and onto hand-held carts. No info on the location of that warehouse. Ridiculous.
Looks like Covington had some serious flooding.
There’s just not enough people on the ground able to get many images from the area. Everything I’m seeing is from downtown or high locations in Mid City with limited sight lines. With winds still keeping rescue and recovery workers off the street for now, it might be tomorrow before a comprehensive picture emerges.
Another report from the 9th Ward confirms people trapped in their attics.
Mayor Nagin’s press conference:
- Some 200 people are trapped on their roofs.
- There are several bodies floating in Bywater.
- Up to 20 buildings have collapsed throughout the city.
- Residents might not be allowed back in for up to 48 hours.
Update:
- Roof blown off Gretna City Hall
- An intrepid webmaster in St. Bernard has updated the parish’s website. Nice, especially if he’s local. (I’m in North Mississippi at the moment).
I’m annoyed that there’s so much Mobile coverage. The reason is pretty simple to figure out: things are so bad in Southwest Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana that they don’t have — and can’t get — much to work with. But while there are people on their roofs in Chalmette and the Ninth Ward, we’re hearing about flooding “halfway up the parking meters” in Mobile. At least tell people that you can’t get anything from New Orleans.
Update II
- More looting reported at Coleman’s (between Earhart and I-10) by Times-Picayune reporters. Dozens of people and reportedly the crowd is growing, hauling off clothes and shoes and, I suppose, whatever else they can carry. These are the people that should be trapped on their damn roofs.
- Politicians are swooping in for attention, while local politicians are too busy. President BUsh and Vitter both made pretty useless and self-serving statements
- Mary Landrieu took a nice shot at President Bush, though indirectly, taking the opportunity to point out the importance of the Port of New Orleans to the rest of the country and the role wetlands have in protecting the port from severe weather like this, wetlands Bush has no interest in spending any money to protect.
Update III (via Eric)
- “While Pres Bush and Sen Vitter focus on providing emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of Lousiana residents, Democrats Mary Landrieu and Joe B. politicize the tragedy to take cheap shots at them.”
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Joe,
Your Nagin announcement seems to be possibly not right:
“There are several bodies floating in Bywater”
Bywater is West of the industrial canal. The lower ninth ward and St Bernard (East of the industrial canal) did in fact experience terrible flooding. Did Nagin really say Bywater?
The WWL site confirms that Nagin did say Bywater.
“Mayor Ray Nagin said that 200 people were stranded on rooftops in the Lower Ninth Ward and several
Impossible to get ANY info from northshore..Serious flooding in Covington?? More info puleeeeze…
Does anyone have any info on Destrehan, specifically Ormond?
“I’m annoyed that there’s so much Mobile coverage. The reason is pretty simple to figure out: things are so bad in Southwest Mississippi and Southeast Louisiana that they don’t have — and can’t get — much to work with. But while there are people on their roofs in Chalmette and the Ninth Ward, we’re hearing about flooding “halfway up the parking meters” in Mobile. At least tell people that you can’t get anything from New Orleans.”
Amen. I just said this, almost word for word.
Any news regarding Algiers (family) and Uptown around Claiborne and Carrollton (me) would be much appreciated.
Keep up the good work, guys.
Any info on Covington? 75 year old mother in law by herself in home. phones down. beyond weather channel info, looking for any place to get info…
Since the best way (by far) to protect the wetlands would be to remove the levees along the Mississippi and let the floods deposit silt and mud to build them back up, I’m fairly certain that President Bush has no interest in that idea.
Can you people drop politics for even a moment? This is a very bad day for that part of the world, and I don’t see what is accomplished by making snarky little comments like you did.
Sheesh. In reference to Update II, Update III should read
“While Pres Bush and Sen Vitter focus on providing emergency aid to hundreds of thousands of Lousiana residents, Democrats Mary Landrieu and Joe B. politicize the tragedy to take cheap shots at them.”
Pitiful.
I’m sure that, if Bush’s administration hadn’t decided to cut the Army Corps of Engineers budgets for NO hurricane preparedness since 2001, people wouldn’t be making these comments.
In other words, the disaster we’re seeing could’ve been mitigated by intelligent planning by our President. Instead, he chose to spend our income tax contributions elsewhere.
I’m glad to see that Landrieu is making it publically clear who’s responsible for making this ordeal more difficult.
Ha! Second Eric is me. Didn’t realize I was *responding* to an Eric!
Y’all confused yet?
Do you have actual figures for the budget line-items directed towards wetlands protection? I doubt it. But you “just know” the effort is suffering under Bush.
You guys really should lay off the politics imo. The comments about the President are both unfair and uncalled-for. Back to business as usual so soon? And here I was trying to scrape money together to send to LA and MS charities because we have family there and we love NOLA. You just took down my enthusiasm for doing so a couple of notches.
Covington apparently got some bad early flooding from the storm surge and then there’s the rain. Tree damage was reported, but again, tv news services aren’t giving out more than general info. It’s difficult to find enough local sources for details. I’m combing all the local news sites and government sites for what I’m scraping together. My brother has gotten a few calls from people on the West Bank. Haven’t seen anything on Destrehan.
Local government is telling people NOT to call into the city because if the cellular service gets overwhelmed it could hamper rescue and recovery operations. So I haven’t tried to call in.
So it’s just a matter of waiting for people to get news out. The Times-Picayune site has been excellent and they seem to have a number of people scrambling about town where they can to gather information. WWL and WDSU seem to be doing some of their own reporting, too. St. Bernard updated their website.
The Terrytown collapse (the Wright Ave. is the only one I’ve heard about in Terrytown) is being reported as an apartment building.
I haven’t heard anything about Algiers. That could be good or bad, there’s no real telling. I would figure English Turn to be more vulnerable considering how far east of downtown it is, and the Point to be experiencing only rain flooding. The river levees near downtown haven’t been reported as topped or breached, and I would think if they had that news would have gotten out. Also, I believe the fact that the river rose 3 feet in Baton Rouge on the surge points to no serious river levee problems. Spilllway site is unavailable.
Background on the Wetlands comments at Oyster’s site here.
Levees are the major reason for coastal erosion. The current path of the river is unnatural. While Louisiana knows this is the problem, solutions take money. Louisiana gets comparatively little oil revenue sharing from the federal government. Less than other states. Additionally, Bush wants a 50% match on wetlands funding. Every other project everyplace else has required, I believe, a 30% match at most.
But hey, if you have a different view of the situation, it’s healthy to hear about it. It’s frustration that led me to mention it, sure. But it’s not empty pot-shotting.
Another excuse for losers to take a shot at President Bush. I am always amazed at the depths to which some people will sink just to get a jab in at a fine man. Using a hurricane, a natural and humanitarian disaster, to make a political shot is inexcusable. Presidents always make statements at times like this. Just pay attention to your own little square of turf, help your neighbors, and stop with the ridiculous politicizing of every disaster or event. Makes you look foolish, small-minded, petty, and ignorant.
I’ve already donated to the Red Cross, and will continue to do so enthusiastically no matter what people’s politics are, either on this board or in Katrina’s path. People aren’t really “blue” or “red”, you know. They’re people. And the people of LA and MS are in need. That’s enough for me. I don’t care if they voted for Donald Duck, they didn’t bring this upon themselves!
But it’s fair to criticize leaders for the policies they choose. When the president makes decisions, those decisions have consequences. The president supports policies that make it harder to preserve wetlands. While wetlands can’t stop a hurricane, they can mitigate it.
If the President supports policies that make hurricanes more damaging, it is fair for politicans who have the other position to say in the wake of a hurricane, “See why we need more wetlands! People, tell the President to protect the wetlands.”
Personally, I’m offended that Bush was so “focused” on emergency relief that yesterday he called a press conference to declare Katrina’s path a disaster area and then, bizarrely, started talking about how popular the new Iraqi constitution was.
And you’ve got to appreciate the irony that the letter Bush sent last week saying he was too busy for a tour of LA’s coastal areas in order to better understand why we need to invest more in them to protect us against catastrophic storms arrived today.
Doubtless he’ll manage to find time in his busy schedule for a tour now. But the response to this disaster has to be more than a photo-op in which he tells everyone how great it is that they’re going to rebuild.
It’s not fair to give regular people a hard time for their politics in a crisis. It’s unamerican. But the professional politicians? It’s ok to call them out on the consequences of their actions. It’s accountability.
It does not really matter who is self-serving or not. The primary goal has to be on rescue with regard to situations like an
… estimated 40,000 homes flooded in St. Bernard Parish just east of New Orleans.(From Yahoo.com just now)
How do you balance helicopter use with small boats and rafts to rescue people while identifying where people are located?
We will face future problems like this. Hurricanes will come again.
The people who stayed behind did not learn any kind of lesson. Some of them did not understand the need to leave clearly enough. The idea of “better safe than sorry” has to be clearer for future events.
Good job by the Mayor and the people working on rescue.
So…when Camille hit did someone blaim the president at that time (before MY time)? Who was president then? Hurricanes have been going on for longer than people have been on this planet. Trying to politicize it is dumb.
If this same hurricane had hit 50 years ago there would be a LOT more deaths, although less economical damage. Because of the economic development, monetary loss is going to be huge. But the good news is fewer deaths than we might have had 50 years ago.
Focus right now on helping those in immediate need. Wait until the cleanup begins to harp on the policies that might have made things less painful. Doesn’t do much good right now. (And focusing on ‘what if’ is pretty childish anyway.)
What is the status of New Orleans East off Chef Hwy. and the National Finance Center at Michoud?
All I was saying about not learning a lesson is that we should not be criticizing people who stayed behind. If anything, we who survived learned a lesson that we are not doing a good enough job of evacuating hurricane areas.
any info on LaPlace?
“(DSmith on Aug 29, 2005 4:26 PM) You guys really should lay off the politics imo. The comments about the President are both unfair and uncalled-for. Back to business as usual so soon? And here I was trying to scrape money together to send to LA and MS charities because we have family there and we love NOLA. You just took down my enthusiasm for doing so a couple of notches.”
This is absolutely the most appalling thing I have ever seen. So because a few people there dont share your political views, you no longer want to help them after this devastating tragedy. What would you think of someone who said that to you when you had just lost everything? Also, it’s pretty “unfair and uncalled for” that LA is less prepared for situations like this because he cut their budgets.
And I agree about not criticizing people who stayed behind…many people were informed late, or simply had no way to leave. Imagine how scared many of them were. I was watching Fox News this morning and one of the repoters really pissed me off, because he was completely cutting down those that stayed behind, and pretty much calling them idiots.
Any info on the Marigny? looks like it fared pretty well, but I am stuck in Birmingham and have no info.
New Orleans has one of the biggest populations in America of people that rely on public transportation. I don’t even have any friends in New Orleans that has a car. Everyone rides their bikes. Hurricane Katrina came so damn fast, I usually watch the hurricanes for a long time and this one seemed to jump up on us. My boyfriend and I rented a car to leave, and if we had been 15 minutes later to the car rental place (even though we had a reservation) there would have been no cars available.
We were so so lucky. There would have been nothing we could have done if we hadn’t gotten that rental car. So don’t blame anyone for staying.
and yes, my name really is katrina and its my 25th brithday in 28 minutes. damn. what a great birthday present
From what I can gather, the eighth and ninth wards are pretty much flooded to at least the first floor all the way from the lake to the river. Anyone know for sure? Has anyone made it into or out of the lower ninth or talked to someone who has?
The protection of coastal wetlands shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s a no brainer, and the facts are the facts. Even my almost illiterate grandmother understands that you need something to break the force of massive storms - and 40 years ago when she lived through 2 massive hurricanes in New Orleans, there were a lot more coastal wetlands than there are now.
But you don’t have to believe me, even if I do know what I’m talking about and couldn’t care less who is currently making bad decisions in Washington. You can get your news where everyone else does, and it doesn’t have to be blue or red news. For your average middle of the road coverage, meant to inform, not inflame, try msnbc:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9113550/
“Experts have warned about New Orleans
Any word on Metairie? Have family there aroung 7th Street.
To all of you wanting to know about English Turn. On CNN, check out the transcript from the Aug 30th show of Paula Zahn Now. She talks with a 78 year old guy, named Jack Fine who sounds like he is in English Turn. It’s not much, but for Westbanker’s, it’s about all we have.
Do anyone know anything about Maple Leaf Apartments in Algiers? There is no coverage and there are lots of people who needs any type of information about that area. It floods a lot there and we don’t know what happended.
Not from the N.O. area, but Mayor Nagin comes across on national news as way out of his league and over his head (no pun intended) with this crisis and just plain not the man for the job. Maybe Rudy Guilani is available to step in. Using the work “frickin” in describing the exhaustive work of many people who are better prepared to manage a crisis than he is was out of line and it indicates that he’s probably not a consensus builder and probably should be out of the loop in many of the decisions being made anyway. I hope he pulls himself together and can emerge out of this disaster as a real leader who saved the city. Otherwise, his leadership or lack of same, will be long remebered.
Is Ormand Estates in Destrehan, LA flooded? Is
it possible to access Ormand?
Ray Nagin was told that the sandbagging would begin the day before he made that statement, but the helicopters did not show up due to miscommunication caused by too many people giving orders. That was the language of a man angry that his city is drowning and attempts to fix the problem are being delayed by having too many people in the loop.
looking for Jack and Susan Vandigriff, from Diberville, MS
To post with question on Ormond.
A friend of mine visited his house in Ormond yesterday. Little wind blown damage and trees down. Only a few houses with water but not too many.
Any news on flooding in the westbank. Bellchase? English Turn?
How can I find out what ward a friend’s house is in and how much flooding in that ward?
The address is: 2317 Jena St. What ward is this and can anyone tell me what the flooding situation is there? My friend has a friend and animals who are there. Thank you.
Any info on 10th Street in Covington? Have a friend who evacuated to a area hospital, don’t know which one. Can’t contact.
I LIVE IN ALGIERS THE WESTBANK SIDE THAT IS STILL CLASSIFIED AS NEW ORLEANS. MY FAMILY ALL LIVED THERE FOR OUR ENTIRE LIFE. WE DO NOT KNOW THE CONDITIONS OF OUR HOMES. THE MAYOR HAS NOT ONCE SHOWEN VIEWERS WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE OVER THERE. WE ARE PART OF NEW ORLEANS ALSO AND WE WOULD LIKE TO SEE SOME SORT OF COVERAGE OVER THERE. BEING A CITY WORKER FOR 24 YEARS I BELIEVE WE ARE AS IMPORTANT AS THE EASTBANK PEOPLE. FEMA DOESN’T KNOW THAT ALGIERS IS ALSO A PART OF NEW ORLEANS. THE WESTBANKERS NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING IN OUR SECTION OF NEW ORLEANS.
Has anyone got an update on the conditions in Destrehan, specifically the Ormond Country Club Estates.
Lived there in the 90’s rode out Andrew and was myself flodded. Still have friends but cannot make contact…
Txs. S. Lewis
DO WHAT IS RIGHT TO SAVE NEW ORLEANS
It really bothers me that some leaders in the talks to rebuild New Orleans are saying we should rebuild the lower 9th ward. Believe me, I love New Orleans and I hate to see the people that lived there being forced to rebuild somewhere else, but it has to be done. Turn the lower 9th into wetlands and build sound levee walls around these wetlands. This will mitigate flooding and could save other parts of New Orleans from future disasters. If this is planned out, you could maybe even turn these wetlands into some recreational opportunities.