[hurricane season 2005] Katrina op ramkoers met New Orleans

quote:

Governor Says All of New Orleans Needs to Be Evacuated

With conditions in the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans rapidly deteriorating, Gov. Kathleen Blanco (search ) announced late Tuesday that people now huddled in the Superdome and other rescue centers need to be evacuated.

"The situation is untenable," Blanco said during a news conference. "It's just heartbreaking."

Rescuers in boats and helicopters struggled to reach hundreds of wet and bedraggled victims of Hurricane Katrina (search) along the Gulf Coast Tuesday, while New Orleans slipped deeper into crisis as water began rising in the streets because of a levee break.

The magnitude of the disaster — and the death toll in particular — became clearer with every tale of misery. Mississippi's governor said the number of dead in one county alone could be as high as 80.

"At first light, the devastation is greater than our worst fears. It's just totally overwhelming," Blanco said the morning after Katrina howled ashore with winds of 145 mph and engulfed thousands of homes in one of the most punishing storms on record in the United States.

quote:

Op woensdag 31 augustus 2005 01:52 schreef LuukBes het volgende:
Ze bouwen gewoon veel teveel van hout, die vervuilers. Kijk die hoge flats nou eens kaarsrecht staan, en kijk vervolgens eens naar al die houten villa's. Blijf van de bomen af en ga met cement bouwen, kutvervuilers.

En waarom in de fakking hell moet de olieprijs weer omhoog gaan als daar geen enkel olieproduktie zit. Olie-Maffia-eikels.

quote:

Op woensdag 31 augustus 2005 01:16 schreef Hallulama het volgende:
Posted: Tue Aug 30, 2005 10:11 am Post subject: Local Coverage

--------------------------------------

Good morning. Just heard from my husband who has made it back to Mandeville. New Orleans is under Marshall Law.

Homeland security is keeping the media from filming or reporting how bad it really is. (there are literally bodies floating in the street in New Orleans) They are trying to control the panic and pandemonium that would occur if broadcast to the nation.

quote:

Op woensdag 31 augustus 2005 04:21 schreef HarigeKerel het volgende:
En Bush is nog gewoon op vakantie

quote:

NAVY SHIPS AND MARITIME RESCUE TEAMS SENT TO REGION
Tue Aug 30 2005 21:33:11 ET

The Pentagon late Tuesday ordered five Navy ships and eight maritime rescue teams to the Gulf Coast to bolster relief operations as worsening conditions overwhelmed the initial response.

The NEW YORK TIMES plans to report later tonight: One Navy amphibious assault ship, the Bataan, with six Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters that could be used for search and rescue missions.

The ships will carry food, fuel, medical and construction supplies, as well as hovercraft that can be used for evacuation and search-and-rescue missions.

The Navy was also considering sending the hospital ship Comfort.

Developing...

quote:

Katrina Should be A Lesson To US on Global Warming

eems like everything is President Bush's fault. One day after Katrina hammered the Gulf Coast, German commentators are laying into the US for its stubborn attitude to global warming and Kyoto.

Hurricane Katrina is big news for German commentators, whatever their ilk. For some, the powerful storm which slammed the Gulf Coast on Monday, is a symbol of the sort of environmental terrors awaiting the world thanks to global warming and proof positive that America needs to quickly reverse its policy of playing down climate change. For the more conservative, it is simply another regrettable natural catastrophe.

Regardless of how one views it, Katrina has not only devastated parts of Louisiana and Mississippi and killed dozens, it also has threatened the US and its trading partners with economic instability. The Gulf Coast states refine about 30 percent of America's oil supply and Katrina's damage is threatening to cause already-high oil costs to skyrocket. The fun-loving town of New Orleans, beloved for its moody, French-inspired bars, crooning jazz riffs and free-for-all Mardi Gras spirit, has transformed into a watery ghost town, with 80 percent of the city's 480,000 residents obeying the mayor's call to evacuate. The pictures tell it all: frantic racing through chest-deep water, flooded city streets and uprooted trees. The storm even ripped off a chunk of the roof of the New Orleans Superdome, where close to 10,000 people had run to for cover.

The toughest commentary of the day comes from Germany's Environmental Minister, Jürgen Trittin, a Green Party member, who takes space in the Frankfurter Rundschau, a paper owned by the Social Democrats, to bash US President George W. Bush's environmental laxity. He begins by likening the photos and videos of the hurricane stricken areas to scenes from a Roland Emmerich sci-fi film and insists that global warming and climate change are making it ever more likely that storms and floods will plague America and Europe. "There is only one possible route of action," he writes. "Greenhouse gases have to be radically reduced and it has to happen worldwide. Until now, the US has kept its eyes shut to this emergency. (Americans) make up a mere 4 percent of the population, but are responsible for close to a quarter of emissions." He adds that the average American is responsible for double as much carbon dioxide as the average European. "The Bush government rejects international climate protection goals by insisting that imposing them would negatively impact the American economy. The American president is closing his eyes to the economic and human costs his land and the world economy are suffering under natural catastrophes like Katrina and because of neglected environmental policies." As such, Trittin also calls for a reworking of the Kyoto Protocol -- dubbing it the uncreative title of "Kyoto 2" -- and insisting that the US be included.

The left-leaning Die Tageszeitung also delivers a punchy plea for more attention to global warming, saying politicians should pay more attention to Katrina's alarming images than to election polls and economic forecasts. "Hurricane Katrina has delivered terrible photos. Experts are already calling it the worst hurricane of all time. But this year's hurricane season has only just begun. Flooded villages, mud slides, sandbags....Scientists are quite calmly saying that we will see this kind of thing more often. After all, this is what they have been forecasting for years -- climate change, human-caused and irreversible. But a change of policy is not in the cards. Politics is trapped between voters and industry lobbyists. And of course, there is the killer argument: Protecting the environment impedes economic growth." This is not how it should be, the paper opines. Indeed, more "pictures from New Orleans should encourage us to follow science's advice on climate protection."

The business daily Handelsblatt has a more pragmatic approach to viewing the catastrophe. Instead of harping on the cause of hurricanes and other disasters, it insists that the world should better help those in danger get protection. "People will argue about the causes of climate change for a long time to come," the paper writes. "But its effects are already reality. They are called Katrina, or the flood catastrophes in southern Germany, Romania, Switzerland and Austria.... It's not enough now to just call for measures against climate change. Such policies need decades to take effect. But now we must begin taking different kinds of measures, ones that better protect people affected by extreme weather incidents." The best way to begin, says the paper, is to identify areas of the globe most in danger. In Germany, that includes areas around the Elbe and Donau rivers, while in the Netherlands, much of the nation is under sea level. More needs to be done, says the paper, to prevent building in potentially dangerous areas and to create high water emergency policies. The world, too, needs to help nations like Bangladesh, which doesn't have the means to reduce the risks its people face alone. "All of this will cost time, a lot of money and the eradication of old habits. But only in this way can people be protected and the even-higher costs of post-catastrophe damages be reduced."

The Financial Times Deutschland refrains from any commentary about the human costs of the hurricane and focuses on the economic impact it will have on oil supplies. "For the already-strained global energy market, Katrina is a small nightmare: The huge world-wide demand for oil has left producers and workers pushing their limits of capacity. If production platforms and refineries on the Gulf of Mexico have to shut down, the supply holes will not be easy to fill." Even if the current projects of the economic impact of Katrina are exaggerated, one thing is clear, the paper says. In the end, the storm will have proven "the vulnerability of the oil-dependent world economy."

The Süddeutsche Zeitung uses its feature page as a defacto editorial by focusing on the hurricane as its theme of the day. Among its articles, it cites a study by US hurricane expert Kerry Emanuel of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that shows a rising tendency for hurricanes that exactly reflects the curve of greenhouse gases. German scientists from the Max-Planck Institute hail the study as the first proof of a real link. "If this man-made warming continues, we will have to expect stronger storms in future" Emmanuel tells the paper.

The conservative Die Welt, naturally, has an altogether different take on Katrina, insisting that despite the terrible images broadcast, we should not get hysterical about the environmental implications of the hurricane or start screaming for change. After all, it says, "hurricanes are a natural phenomenon. They occurred long before humans could be affected by them. Whether the frequency and intensity of these storms has truly increased in recent years has not yet been proven with statistics." Whether humans have aversely affected the Earth's climate or not, the paper says, one thing is clear "we have modern technology to thank that Katrina was not able to do more damage." Indeed, thanks to early warning systems, the people of New Orleans were evacuated before the storm hit. "One hundred years ago, a tropical storm as strong as Katarina would likely have caused many deaths, because it would have hit people unawares." Now, says the paper, we should be grateful technology allows us to save so many lives.

quote:

Op woensdag 31 augustus 2005 04:05 schreef francorex het volgende:
CNN heeft het momenteel over 70 slachtoffers. De sfeer in de Larry king show is veronrustend.
Verwacht jullie morgen maar een verrassing qua slachtoffers is zo mijn vermoeden.

quote:

Deteriorating conditions in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina are forcing authorities to evacuate the thousands of people who sought refuge at shelters in the city amid reports of looting and shootings in the flooded metropolis.

quote:

...
The Mayor announced at 6:30 Tuesday evening that the 17th St. Canal breach has widened, efforts to repair it had failed, and the pumps are unable to contain the additional water. An additional 9 to 15 feet of water is expected to flow into the city during the night additionally compromising virtually every area of New Orleans and especially threatening Downtown, which had previously fared well relative to other more heavily flooded sections of the city.
...