Katrina
A hurricane?
Jimmy Huck will blog it… afterwards.
Simple descriptions: Apocalyptic. Biblical.
Ian McGibboney gives the skinny on how to prepare.
But the reality is there’s just been three Category 5 hurricanes to hit the US mainland in the 20th Century. 423 died, mostly in the Florida Keys, in the Labor Day hurricane of 1935. In August 1969, Hurricane Camille struck the north Gulf Coast, killing 143 people there and another 113 due to flooding in Virginia. And Hurricane Andrew, the worst of the three, struck south Florida in September 1992. Though it only killed 23, its damage was awesome, taking down some concrete block condos I’d helped build at Naranja Lakes just 18 years earlier.
With category 5, it’s the tornadoes spawned that add to the destruction. Andrew made landfall with sustained winds of 165 MPH. Katrina’s max sustained winds have dropped from 175 MPH to 160 MPH, so it’s gonna raise some serious hell for residents, and for gas prices all over the country.
The winds should be htiting the Big Easy in about two hours. But Ernie the Attorney is going to ride it out!
So that’s the New Orleans bloggers to be watching that I’m aware of. And that’s where it’s gonna hit. It’s one bad mutha.
We at the American Street wish all the residents safety and hope the worst forms of property damage are averted.
August 28th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
Katrina’s had so much coverage I thought it was another missing white woman.
August 28th, 2005 at 10:29 pm
I’m mixing messages about how the neocon policy games have set people up to be hurt by this disaster with stuff about the evolving tragedy.
Right about now, at 11:10PM on AP we have
“The center’s latest computer simulations indicate that by Tuesday, vast swaths of New Orleans could be under water up to 30 feet deep. In the French Quarter, the water could reach 20 feet, easily submerging the district’s iconic cast-iron balconies and bars.
Estimates predict that 60 percent to 80 percent of the city’s houses will be destroyed by wind. With the flood damage, most of the people who live in and around New Orleans could be homeless.
‘We’re talking about in essence having - in the continental United States - having a refugee camp of a million people,” van Heerden said.’”
It looks really bad, right now.
(Above XPosted on MYDD.)
I am also hearing that ten of thousands could be killed by this thing.
From the point of view of the market (the economy also kills people) they are saying that this cound totally disrupt the entire U.S. eeconomy. Oil is (just) now above $70 a barrel.
Just about all the off-shore oil rigs have been hat hard. and the storm is expected the smash the huge on-shore refineries.
August 29th, 2005 at 2:29 am
Reuters says US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad called the Iranian-inspired charter “the most progressive document of the Muslim world”
I guess it depends on your definition of €œprogress€
Thanks to Bush and his neocon friends it will now be legal to stone women to death for adultery, Christians will be required to pay a specific tax (called €œJizya€ or fiscal punishment), and cafes across Iraq will only serve lemonade and milk shake€
Secular and moderate Sunni Arabs who have ruled Iraq for the past 13 centuries will have to abide the strictures of Persian-Shiite fundamentalist jurisprudence and will be treated as second class citizen in their own country- they might get consolation from being slightly above women and Christians in Iraq€™s new €œdemocratic€ social hierarchy.
Good job Dubya!
Dr Victorino de la Vega
http://www.mideastmemo.blogspot.com/
August 29th, 2005 at 6:43 am
Katrina€™s had so much coverage I thought it was another missing white woman.”
David: best media commentary yet. If only she were somehow a target cause of the Theocrats, BushCo would interrupt his vacation to rush back to Washington to do his job. Golf is on his schedule today.