Proyecto De Ingles De Katrina

Katrina

Posted By: JeffMasters at 12:24 PM GMT on August 28, 2005 Updated: 12:36 PM GMT on August 28, 2005
Katrina is in the midst of a truly historic rapid deepening phase—the pressure has dropped 34 mb in the 11 hours ending at 7am EDT, and now stands at 908 mb. Katrina is now the sixth strongest hurricane ever measured in the Atlantic. At the rate Katrina is deepening, she could easily bethe third or fourth most intense hurricane ever, later today.
He gives a list of some all-time biggies, then continues:
Katrina’s winds and storm surge Maximum sustained winds at flight level during the 7am Hurricane Hunter mission into Katrina were 153 knots, which translates to 160 mph at the surface, making Katrina a minimal Category 5 hurricane. The winds are likely to increase to “catchup” to the rapidly falling pressure, and could approach the all-time record of 190 mph set in Camille and Allen. Winds of this level will create maximum storm surge heights over 25 feet, and this storm surge will affect an area at least double the area wiped clean by Camille, which was roughly half the size of Katrina. Katrina has continued to expand in size, and is now a huge hurricane like Ivan.Damage will be very widespread and extreme if Katrina can maintain Category 5 strength at landfall.
They’re talking about this being the kind of storm that can reshape coastlines. Hurricane-force winds could be felt up to 150 miles inland. The Mayor of New Orleans has ordered a mandatory evacuation, and the governors of Louisiana and Mississippi have ordered that all the lanes on theinterstates be switched to “outbound.” Best-case scenario for New Orleans still has the levees breaking and the city under fifteen feet of filthy water—and it doesn’t look like we’re going to be a best-case scenario. As of mid-afternoon, the storm’s stats are worse than Hurricane Camille’s—and while Camille was intense, it was also physically small. Katrina is huge.
Rose White (of Yarnivore), writing inthe comments thread, reports that the National Weather Service is using language she’s never seen before. Neither have I. Click through on the link.
Major casualties a strong possibility: Walter Maestri, New Orleans’ Director of Emergency Management, is saying on TV that FEMA has modeled this scenario, with a Cat. 4 or Cat. 5 hurrican making a direct hit on metropolitan New Orleans, and that FEMAestimated 40,000-60,000 casualties.
There are tens of thousands of people in New Orleans who don’t own cars. The city kept its light rail system; that’s why it’s so charmingly walkable. I’m not seeing any news reports of non-automobile-based evacuation plans. The Army might have been able to help deal with this, but they’re not at home.
Something useful you might do: This would be a very goodmoment for people outside the Gulf Coast area to put up “Hi Mom, I’m okay” check-in pages. Here’s the rule: Collect names. Swap lists. Keep it simple. Bill Shunn put up a good one on 9/11. It allowed you to type in your name plus a one-line message. He expected it would mostly be the NYC SF community checking in there. By the time he had to shut it down, people all over the world were going to hissite to try to find news of their missing loved ones.
I’ll add one suggestion to the general rule: if you put up a page, police and moderate your lists. Bill Shunn had jerks posting all kinds of garbage to his site. There weren’t a lot of them, but nobody needs to read that crap. Also, if you don’t delete vandal posts, you’ll get lots more of them—it’s like graffiti.
American RadioWorks’prescient article, Hurricane Risk for New Orleans. Read it now before the site gets swamped.
Where’s the Louisiana National Guard while all this is going on? A lot of them are in Iraq. Overseas deployment of Reserves and National Guard units have stripped emergency-response resources all over the country. (For instance, small-town and rural police departments, volunteer fire departments, and...