Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 23:20 - Category: Unfiled ;
This is going to be an example of a city/government not being prepared for calamity.
The Oil drum is doing a great job covering the impact of Katrina on oil and gas production.
Also, this analysis of the Superdome is exactly what I am worrying about. No studies?
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 19:59 - Category: Unfiled ;
Experts have warned about New Orleans’ vulnerability for years, chiefly because Louisiana has lost more than a million acres of coastal wetlands in the past seven decades. The vast patchwork of swamps and bayous south of the city serves as a buffer, partially absorbing the surge of water that a hurricane pushes ashore.
Experts have also warned that the ring of high levees around New Orleans, designed to protect the city from floodwaters coming down the Mississippi, will only make things worse in a powerful hurricane. Katrina is expected to push a 28-foot storm surge against the levees. Even if they hold, water will pour over their tops and begin filling the city as if it were a sinking canoe.
After the storm passes, the water will have nowhere to go.
Before the levees were built, the river would top its banks during floods and wash through a maze of bayous and swamps, dropping fine-grained silt that nourished plants and kept the land just above sea level.
The levees “have literally starved our wetlands to death” by directing all of that precious silt out into the Gulf of Mexico, van Heerden said.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 19:55 - Category: Unfiled ;
The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, which handles about 11 percent of U.S. imports, closed yesterday. Katrina is one of the most powerful storms ever to enter the Gulf, source of about 30 percent of U.S. oil production and 24 percent of the country’s natural gas.
“Forecasters are saying Katrina could do more energy damage than any storm in recent years,” said Jason Schenker an economist with Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte, North Carolina. “It’s not just that there’s going to be outages for the next couple of days. With shutdowns and damage at platforms and refineries, the bullish impact could be felt for the rest of the year.”
“I think it is easily conceivable that we could see crude futures hit $70 this week,” Schenker said.
NPR just said that futures have already hit $71 on markets that are trading.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 19:46 - Category: Unfiled ;
From the Weather Channel blog, by Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist
What makes this hurricane truly mind-boggling is that not only is it one of the most intense hurricanes in recorded history, it is huge in size.
I sort of feel like The Man Who Knew Too Much. I don’t remember the plot, but that’s the name of an old Hitchcock flick. I and the other men and women who are meteorologists and have studied the science, and know the history of what various hurricanes in the past have done, can picture what this hurricane is capable of doing when it reaches land.
We hope that somehow, some way, it finds a way to weaken a lot before that happens. But it has been The Vortex That Wouldn’t Die for two weeks now, it has a long way to go to weaken enough to prevent a disaster, and time is running out. Katrina may or may not have peaked in intensity - as of this writing the pressure has stopped dropping and even come up a millibar - but it looks like we’re in for a long night and a long day tomorrow.
Here’s an awesome/terrifying satellite photo (if you can get through, their servers are getting pounded)
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 15:03 - Category: Unfiled ;
He is accused of receiving millions of dollars from various corporations in Israel and overseas, for his father’s campaign in the 1999 primaries for the Likud leadership, according to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz.
And what of his dear old dad, Sharon the elder? I’m sure he had NO IDEA such unseemly activities were taking place.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 14:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
Death Row Records CEO Marion ‘Suge’ Knight is in intensive care at Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach this afternoon following surgery to remove a bullet from his leg and repair a fractured bone.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 13:44 - Category: Unfiled ;
This is worse than what an earthquake can do. And I saw the results of the Northridge quake at Ground Zero.
Note the use of the word “all” here, not “some” - “all”
The National Weather Service has issued a special statement outlining the damage that might be caused if Hurricane Katrina makes landfall as a strong Category 4 or Category 5 storm.
“Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer,” says the statement. “At least one-half of well-constructed homes will have roof and wall failure. All gabled roofs will fail, leaving those homes severely damaged or destroyed.
The statement says the majority of industrial buildings will become “non-functional,” with partial or complete wall and roof failure.
“All wood-framed low-rising apartments will sustain major damage, including some wall and roof failure,” the statement said. “Concrete block low-rise apartments will sustain major damage, including some wall and roof failure.”
The statement says high-rise office and apartment buildings will sway dangerously, “a few to the point of total collapse.” And all their windows will blow out.
Power outages will last for weeks because most power poles will be down and transformers will be destroyed.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 08:36 - Category: Unfiled ;
If Katrina moves westward even a little from its current track the carnage will be even worse. Should that happen, the storm likely will approach New Orleans a way that its surge would push water into Lake Pontchartrain, which is where the city’s dozens of pumps send overflow water to.
If that happens, and the water in the city has nowhere to go, New Orleans will fill up like a fish bowl.
According to this LSU storm surge map, that may happen anyway (pdf)
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 00:27 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 00:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
Podcasting and videocasting takes huge pipes. You need lots of bandwidth. Fortunately, some web hosting companies are now offering enormous bandwidth at very low prices. Chief among them is Globat, who are now offering 4 terabytes of transfer a year for $14.95 a month. That works out to 330 gigabytes a month or 13,200 downloads a month for a one hour audio podcast of 25 MB.
I’ve been using Globat for several months now to host audio and video for multiple blogs and websites, including Polizeros. They are growing fast, with quite excellent support. In fact,I just emailed them yesterday about a small glitch and they fixed it in 15 minutes, on a Saturday afternoon.
Their prices are the best I’ve seen. (They just upgraded me from 70 gig a month to 310 gig a month for a one time fee of $30 and grandfathered me in at my current rate of $4.95 a month.)
And in six months we may be getting terabytes a month for that price.
Bob Morris @ Aug 28th 2005 00:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
From Sue:
Something is wrong with this country, when there is a great possibility of a category 5 hurricane innundating New Orleans, and 100,000 poor folk are left to sink or swim. Ditto the tourists. Where are the busses, where are the car pools? Is everyone only out for himself? Do they have no catastrophe plan?
Subscribe
