They bandied around the bush, sensitive of the tragedy but more are openly saying it: maybe we have to let New Orleans go. The devastation of the Gulf area from Hurricane Katrina last year was widespread, but New Orleans is a shallow bowl that the waters that surround it are determined to fill back up, and reclaim. Also, my nephew Darryl Walker's Katrina/Rita Blog of last year from the frontlines of the Houston area of Hurricane preparedness in dispatches of last year as we remember those times...
4 Katrina Chronicles -- A New Pompeii? Is New Orleans Our New Pompeii? Will We Know What It Means To Lose New Orleans? Part IV - Isn't it time to let New Orleans go? -- Darryl Walker's Hurricane Rita Blog from the Port of Houston by Kevin J. Walker thewordnetpaper@excite.com Milwaukee Wis USA http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com
http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/politics Part I - Katrina Devastates Gulf; Govts Powerless as Millions Affected Part II - Chaos and Confusion in a Black-Run City Part III-- Politics, Race Laid Bare from Katrina Disaster Gulf of Mexico Geography works against efforts to preserve Gulfport/Biloxi frontage; New Orleans in its old form; or the doomed Lower Ninth Ward at all The Gulf of Mexico is the largest gulf in the world. Although the Pacific Ocean is warmer than the Atlantic, the Gulf contains its waters and the winds, and can heat them up to a surface temperature to 90 -plus degrees, which enervates any hurricanes that wander over in there. Since there is land all over the Gulf somebody is bound to get hit if, as often happens, a Caribbean-spawned tropical storm gets in there and starts buzzing around, gathering power and dangerous winds. The Gulf Port-Biloxi complex was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for having the longest man made beach at 35 miles. This has been erased -- along with their string of casinos -- by a sea surge when the Gulf Of Mexico was lifted almost 30 feet and pushed onto land by the winds of Hurricane Katrina. The Tsunami of Dec. 26 in the South Pacific did something similar, but it took an undersea earthquake. A surge like Katrina's Force 5 hurricane winds went a mile inland, carrying boats, and even oil platforms. In one famous picture, one such offshore platform was plucked from the ocean like a daisy and deposited inland, stopped after being wedged underneath a highway underpass. This is why the authorities were telling everybody to get the hell out! It wasn't just the winds, or the rain; although as seen in New Orleans it played a part in the destruction of the city. New Orleans, much like Nashville to anyone who has flown into it, is a geographic bowl. The problem is that New Orleans, like the region is largely a swampy peninsula that is at or below sea level, with plenty of water from the Mississippi, Lake Pontchatrain to the north, and the surrounding loop the Mississippi makes around the Crescent City as it enters the nearby Gulf of Mexico. Like the Great Lake port and river cities of Milwaukee and Chicago, New Orleans was built on swamps, which they drained and occupied. Milwaukee is 642 feet above sea level and not threatened by the snowmelt-fed Great Lake of Michigan which now flows into the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway. New Orleans' problem is its mostly below sea level. The levees, or earthen dams are made of banks of soil instead of concrete. Once they became soaked and battered by the surge they gave way, flooding 80 percent of the city of New Orleans to depths of 15 or more feet. THINGS THAT MAKE TERRORISTS GO "HMMM..." Once the earthen dams were breached the bowl was filled with water, which quickly became a soupy, muddy mess of industrial chemicals, oil, human and animal sewage, sometimes teeming with alligators and serpents. Mosquitoes are becoming a problem with all the water, and the fears are that West Nile Virus infections will be added to the health problems of the area. One of the post 9-11 reports stated that along with blowing up fuel installations, crop-dusting cities with biological poisons, or suicide bombing commuter trains; terrorist plots would include blowing up levees and dams which would cause widespread destruction. Hurricane Katrina has affected a region the size of the British Isles in the states of Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, and Alabama. You can bet that al-Qaida and Osama Bin-Laden are sitting over in Afghanistan going "hmmm..." at the television reports of strife and terror the flooding has caused. LOUISIANA PURCHASE SET THE STAGE The purchase of the land from France doubled the size of America from roughly Iowa out to Montana, along the bounds of the Mississippi and Arkansas rivers, and looking like a giant boot with Louisiana at its base. France unloaded the unneeded colony from the times when Europeans were carving up America to raise money to fight the Napoleonic Wars to take over EurAsia. In fact, the laws of the region are based on the Napoleonic Code of the treaty and the Purchase. The city as much of the area is named after something or other in France such as the region of Orleans, the province in the north of France noted for St. Joan of Arc, the warrior priestess who kept it from British domination but who was burned at the stake by them. The 1804 expedition of Lewis and Clarke which celebrated its Bicentennial was sent to check out the new territory, with the teenaged Indian maiden Sacajawea as one of their guides. Native American tribes and the Spanish held the rest of the land to the Pacific Ocean, and that didn't last long as the concept of "Manifest Destiny" led America to expand out "From Sea To Shining Sea." This story will be playing out for weeks. The idea that rebuilding a geographically flawed and wrongly cited city, architecturally deficient, and locally corrupt shouldn't even be attempted anew is starting to get some traction. A modern version of Pompeii may be New Orleans' future, better suited for tourism and its oil service infrastructure. Canal Street is the biggest street in the world, with dedicated lanes for bus, taxi, and personal autos in two directions. It was put under water early and is now a big lake, but one with treacherous metallic water plugs sticking out to catch boat propellers. The city's pumps are the world's mightiest. Unfortunately, they only place the water right back into the lake, whose hurricane-induced flooding breached the two city blocks-long break in the first place. The pumps that would take the water level down are themselves under water and inoperable for weeks, which means months. Only then can the level be taken down, since once again the city of New Orleans is on average from 8 to 25 feet below sea level. They're pretty much screwed, in other words. REP. HASTERT IS RIGHT: LET IT GO! New Orleans might not be rebuilt for human occupation as a city at all if it is left to the engineers. It was a mistake being founded where it was anyway, when a hard-headed French architect and city planner wanted a port city for trade that was near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico instead of building it inland as he was begged by his engineers in the 1600s. There's already talk by some high up who have influence in funding these matters such as Illinois Rep. Dennis Hastert, the GOP Majority leader in the House of Representatives who suggested that maybe it wouldn't be such a good idea that perhaps billions of taxpayer monies be spent to rebuild a city almost twenty feet below sea level. An apology was immediately demanded by the Governor of Louisiana, who said Rep. Hastert was taking their hope away, and that was all the homeless and destitute had left. But Hastert has a point, and its not just him saying it. Its time for a reality check - again - and let the place go back to Nature, which evidently wants it back, but bad! MISSISSIPPI GULF COAST REBUILDS WHILE LOUISIANA DEVOLVES One thing that is also being seen is what is not happening: Black people not looting and acting crazy over in Mississippi and Alabama, which received the head-on 170 mile and hour winds and sea surge from Hurricane Katrina. The differences between the two areas are stark. All things are equal -- most of the people involved are of African descent, but one city of the region is lawless and so self destructive and illogical they shoot at people who are coming to save them and their neighbors; the others are sensibly banding together to get their city and towns back on track and restore quality of life and much needed commerce. In Gulf Port, Mississippi the lights are starting to come back on, and gasoline stations are opening up for business. The people of the area have rolled up their sleeves instead of collapsing into a self-destructive homicidal spiral that necessitated Martial Law. New Orleans however, is depopulated, flooded, and covered with a sewage and corpse-strewn, West Nile carrying mosquito larvae, hungry alligators, Cotton Mouth serpent-infested toxic soup that has rendered the city uninhabitable, while the contractors and Army Corps of Engineers try and restore functionality to its infrastructure. And snipers are shooting at the workers and rebuilders whenever they show up with their tools! Meanwhile, the pumps needed to remove the floodwaters are themselves unusable and underwater, and without electricity. And when they are working they only dump the water right back into Lake Pontchartrain, which is what flooded New Orleans in the first place when it was filled past overflowing with the rains of Hurricane Katrina! In other words, despite all that brave talk about the city rising again, bigger and better, blah blah, blah, New Orleans is pretty much screwed as a place of human habitation. (But you didn't hear that from me!) The unprecedented is now on the verge of becoming reality with the loss of a major American convention and tourist city, as well as a hub for train travel, a port city that delivers the Midwest's agricultural and other goods up and down the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico. The region is also the resource nexus of a region that provides a major portion of the nation's energy supplies. Wisconsin is already hurting; our farmers have summer's crops ready to move through its unusable ports, and we receive our fuel oil, gasoline and natural gas through Louisiana's gulf pipelines.
------------------------------------------- Darryl Walker's Houston Hurricane Rita Task Force Blog Sep. 27, 2005 Katrina unfortunately wasn't the only hurricane that afflicted the region in a year that set a record for them. This was so much so that they ran out of letters of the alphabet and had to reset to Greek nomenclature. It also gave wind to the asinine prattlings that Global Warming caused by humans was responsible, although these proponents have yet to posit a model as to how warming the air can warm the earth's oceans, which is where hurricanes come from. Mars, Jupiter and so forth global warming on other planets has been observed by scientists, which gives credence to Solar induced warming. But that will be dealt with in the Brotha Science articles. For now, my nephew has an insider's perspective on Hurricane preparation from his job for the Port of Houston in his blog which was reprinted last year: ------------------ DARRYL WALKER'S HURRICANE RITA BLOG Dear BWP Wire Division Readers: Usually I write about science, film or social issues. This week I step aside for another writer. It is indicative of the power of the Internet and Cyberspace that people with firsthand knowledge can now get their thoughts, messages and perspectives out to inform the public. My nephew Darryl Walker works for the Port of Houston, and their Hurricane Rita pro-active preparations stand as a stark contrast to the ineptitude of the city of New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. The following is a Family and Friends blog sent out to us by my nephew Darryl Walker in Houston, who works for the Port Authority of Houston, Texas. As one of the environmental point people, he was on duty to ensure the environmental integrity of the city of Houston if the area sustained a hit from Hurricane Rita. Mindful of what happened to New Orleans when it was flooded and many homes in areas made unlivable for months, perhaps never from the stew of chemicals from their petroleum industry, Houston was determined to make sure that it wasn't going to happen to them. They assembled teams of experts in a pro-active fashion, as contrasted to the fiascoes, FUBARs and SNAFUs seen in Louisiana. The following is a blog of Darryl's activities sent over the days leading up to Hurricane Rita, combined by me into journalism style for clarity and readability. As a person who taught Journalism for Marquette University I can readily see that he is a talented writer with a drive to let others know of his thoughts, which is the main requirement of being a writer. Writers, simply put WRITE. They don't talk about, aspire to, or think about, or one day plan to write. They just write their thoughts and observations or creations down, and then they let others know what it is they thought about by their writings. And I'm not just saying that because he's my nephew! --kjw ------------- DARRYL WALKER'S HURRICANE RITA BLOG Although I'm not the writer my sister and my uncle are, I thought I'd try my hand at writing my first blog as a record of my experiences going through Hurricane Rita. Here goes... Sep 23 9/23 -7:15pm: As promised to most, I am emailing to let you know I have arrived at our Emergency Command Center where I will be through at least Sunday. I arrived around 3:00 p.m. just as the winds were picking up. Our Facility Security Officer (FSO) took me on a quick tour of our facility while I took a couple of "before" pictures. Ironically, we were in the midst of planning a drill based off a event such as the one we are now going through, so the pictures will serve well as we will be assessing our response to this afterwards. There are approximately 25 of us here, made up of our police officers, marine fire-fighters, environmental (me) risk manager, Ops manager, and our contract security personnel. We also have a reporter here who will be staying overnight to do a story. Right now we have one response line that is manned 24/7. Ten of us including me were put on schedule to man the phone line for two hour shifts which I did from 5-7pm (and will again @ 5 am). Afterwards, I went back out on the terminal and saw how the storm had really picked up. The downtown skyline is aglow in a beautiful shade of orange as the sun is setting, while due south the sky is dark gray/black. Now we play the waiting game as Hurricane Rita is soon to make her landfall. By now it's apparent the hurricane won't be making a direct hit on Houston/Galveston and instead will hit Port Arthur, with East Texas and Louisiana receiving the "dirty" side. We'll still get our share of heavy winds and rain and flooding. The fire department just got a emergency call at our facility south of Pasedana. I'm going to roll out with them. Get back with you all later. -- DW ------------------------------------ This is the end of the articles and news feeds that were written while the Katrita disasters unfolded a year ago. They are being presented again just as they are, except for spelling. This includes such as the erroneous information proffered by the mayor of new Orleans and even his police chief on the supposed carnage happening inside the Superdome. I make no apologies for the errors while as many others we were caught up in the unfolding drama. If the city leaders say "people are being killed" and raped inside their city; Junkies crazed under withdrawal are running amok; and street gangs are shooting police; the media would be inclined to take their official word for it. In a media conference we'd be using them as our informed sources because we'd think with their inside access they knew what they were talking about. Silly us. There will be another series of such articles near the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, again presented just as they were of that awful day and the aftermath. (If there is any doubt, just go to the original stories in the authors link by clicking Walker's picture above the stories). We also will be including something we call Terrorism Video Views, or movies with a tie-in to terrorism or similar disasters, such as Denzel Washington's "Under Seige" when multiple sleeper cells wreak disaster after disaster upon NYC; and homegrown terrorists in "Arlington Road" with Jeff Bridgesas an academic who uncovers a homegrown Middle Class terrorism cell led by Chicagoan Joan Cusack and Tim Robbins, in the government-hating Oklahoma City Timothy McVeigh mode. http://wordnetpaper.tripod.com
http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/politics Milwaukee Wis USA
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Our Partner:Kevin Walker
Mr. Walker is a print journalist who often includes Science and Travel articles among his forays on political and societal observations. A past professor of Journalism at his Alma Mater of Marquette University, Walker has written extensively for several newspapers on urban issues, and is presently compiling his essays on the phenomenon of intractable trans-generational familial poverty into the book in progress "The Culture of Poverty," based on his observations on the effects of Welfare Reform in his hometown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He often writes from an Undisclosed Location in the Hidden Valleys retreat inland from the Mississippi River in western Wisconsin, where he indulges in his first intellectual love, amateur Astronomy and stargazing.
Milwaukee, WI, 53202
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