Google Maps and New Orleans
Today I noticed for the first time ever that Google now has post-Katrina satellite imagery of the entire city of New Orleans available on its Google Maps and Google Earth services.
I googled “google maps new orleans” (isn’t google great?) before I decided to write about this, and it turns out that an AP news story came out late last week lambasting google for not having post-K imagery online. The article makes it sound like google is part of some hurricane denial conspiracy. But to my knowledge, there NEVER WERE any post-K images up on google, aside from a small part of N.O. East and the Lower 9th Ward that did disappear after a few weeks. I wrote about that last summer. I use google maps and google earth all the time, and I know for a fact that when I was using it two weeks ago to look at real estate in Mississippi, those maps were not using post-K data. So I ask the A.P. and whoever else, when was it that they reverted to old imagery? Could it be that they never were using new imagery?
So it seems google has been pressured into using newer imagery. The problem with using post-k imagery is that geographic information is now changing very rapidly down here. I gauge the date of the current imagery to have been captured sometime between Nov. 2005 and Feb 2006. The Superdome roof is patched (but not repaired) and the Carrollton Ave. Sav-A-Center is still closed. I’ve been looking for other clues that would let me pinpoint the date better, but I can’t find many. The live oak trees are very barren, having been stripped of their leaves by Katrina. Tons of blue roofs. In many ways these images are more inaccurate than the pre-K ones, and remind me how far the city has come in just over a year. I don’t know how useful this is, unless you’re looking to gawk at more destruction. Frankly I think I’d rather have the Pre-K photos up there just so I could reminisce about the good old days.
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The area of Gentilly I live in doesn’t even show the buildings I live in that were there in early 2004. My guess is the NOBTS area- Gentilly/Chef- pictures are from early 2004 or before.
And they did have some post-Katrina pictures up in the 9th and in other areas. I hadn’t looked in the last couple weeks, but they were there at least in January. So they were up a year prior to them being taken down.
No conspiracy, though. I just wish they could find Nagin.
By my dad’s BP station on Canal and Robt E. Lee, the houses are all destroyed from the tornado, so it was sometime around then.
From the fact that no work has been done on my roof it looks like the uptown/Freret pics are from prior to March of last year - how much prior I don’t know.
Google did have post-Katrina imagery on their Google Maps website prior to this. They started off with small sections of New Orleans, as you pointed out, but after a short while had managed to cover the entire area. I was able to use these images to check on the condition of various areas of St. Bernard, Slidell, Covington, etc.
I HIGHLY doubt that this is any kind of conspiracy (and those that have suggested it have simply proven that they have way too much free time on their hands), but personally I’m glad they put the post-Katrina imagery back up. True, it’s not as pretty and it makes it harder to reminisce, but it more accurately reflects the situation today. It also provides an easy way to give those who haven’t seen the devastation first hand an idea of just how bad it really was (and still is).
The images from different parts of the city may not be all from the same time period. But the barge is gone from the Lower 9 so it would have to be from later than February ‘06 in that part of town.
I totally agree about the manufactured conspiracy. What a bunch of dumbasses. I especially like the LSU geography professor quoted in the AP article who talks about how Google Maps is critical to his teaching and how he uses them every day…yet he didn’t notice until last week that the maps were of pre-K vintage? I hope he doesn’t have tenure yet.
Arguably more telling than the city of New Orleans maps is the coastal region. The shape of Louisiana that we all learned as yutes (that’s Chicagoese for young people) is no longer true. What will it look like in 10 years? 20? Will N.O. be a coastal city?
It wasn’t even so much that they were pre-K that really got me - it’s that they seemed to be really old. I was trying to figure it out a couple of weeks ago and they seemed to be around 3 or 4 years old in some areas. I do like having the new images up and I hope they update them regularly since it would be a good way to track progress should any progress on that scale get accomplished. So far the Dome and the barge are good ones, I can’t think of many more.
Incidentally, no one seems to mind that microsoft is still using the old maps for their mapping software ironically named Live
I saw that the cigarette butt I had thrown out the window on St. Charles was not there, so it must have been March 11, 2006 at 3p.m. UuUUUUUUuuUUuUuUUUUUuUUUuuUUUUUUUUGHHHHH!
Call me crazy but I miss the pre-K photos…it was nice to pull up my house and see both our cars by our house and know that we were home…
I’m outraged that the corner of Burdette and Freret shows no tornado damage. They’re trying to pretend it never happened.
I am pissed. 4 weeks ago I had FOUR radio towers up and already paid for according to google. Now I am left with that same bent ass 1/2 a tower and I gotta pay for new ones now. Fuckers