Snarkpit Forum Index » General Banter » New Orleans
New Orleans
1
23
...
4 next page »
Post Reply
Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by French Toast on Fri Sep 2nd at 3:27am 2005

http://www.comcast.net/news/index.jsp?cat=GENERAL&fn=/2005/09/01/212898.html

Ouch, didn't realise the situation was so bad down there. Kind of an eye opener...




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by rs6 on Fri Sep 2nd at 3:32am 2005

You have to relize (god I can't spell) that a good portion of the people still in the city chose to stay there agaist mandatory evacuations, makes me think they were planning to loot and stuff, or they're just plain stupid.
/rant

Other than that this was a pretty bad hurricane. I experienced a tropical storm once and it was bad, this was a F-5, that's 160 mph winds, I can't even imagine how bad it must have been to be in the path of that storm.



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by French Toast on Fri Sep 2nd at 4:03am 2005

Regardless, I still found it a little unnerving when they described the bodies floating around, and the panic that people felt... I dunno.




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by KungFuSquirrel on Fri Sep 2nd at 4:53am 2005

To an extent, it's true that some people left behind have only themselves to blame. But let's not reduce it to that.

New Orleans is (was, I suppose... we'll see if it still will be) a bustling tourist destination. Thousands of tourists were in the city, many of whom flew in from out of state or out of the country. When the evacuation was ordered, only a few flights made it out before the airports shut down. Many tourists were stuck in their hotels without any good place to go. Some were able to get rental cars and get out of the city, but nowhere near all. A member of the Spanish parliament is still stuck there.

Universities in the New Orleans area magnified the problem. Parents were bringing their children to school, which would have started this week, only to be stranded in the path of the storm.

Many of the thousands still in New Orleans when the storm hit did not have the means to evacuate at all... whether a result of low income, sickness, dependents, etc. Three elderly patients at a nursing home died just in the process of trying to move to a safe shelter, but couldn't leave town. You can imagine the situation the rest of that nursing home is in now. Patients in hospitals were too fragile to be moved from their locations, and people are lying without food, water, or power, in need of respiration and even dialysis.

The superdome was also made available as a refuge for those without the means to evacuate... tens of thousands (I think the tally was ~30k?) people did take the effort to go there to ride out the storm (making do the best they could); it's only now after the storm hit that the logistics of the situation are crumbling and the panic and despair are setting in.

There's some stupid and downright despicable people (see: those shooting at hospitals) on the loose in New Orleans right now, but don't place the blame on those who are stuck trying to survive as best they can in unfortunate circumstances.

Now the one really sobering thought: this wasn't even the direct hit that everyone feared. A glancing blow was enough to shear the roof covering off the biggest 'safe' structure and tear holes in its roof. A direct hit could have flooded it with thousands inside; I shudder to think what downtown NO would look like had katrina hit dead-on as a category 5.


<A HREF="http://www.button-masher.net" TARGET="_blank">www.button-masher.net</A>



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Crono on Fri Sep 2nd at 5:19am 2005

Interesting enough: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by keved on Fri Sep 2nd at 9:14am 2005

? quoting Crono
Interesting enough: http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,372455,00.html[/quote]

"No One Can Say they Didn't See it Coming"

On this note, what I've never understood is the apparent American preoccupation with building residences from wood. Obviously states in South-East America such as Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, etc are prime hurricane territory, yet from all the images I've seen over the years it looks as though the vast majority of homes in these southern states have wooden outer shells. I actually watched the movie 'A Time To Kill' yesterday which set in Mississippi so paid particular attention to people's homes, and virtually all the residental non-apartment block buildings looked to be constructed entirely from wood (by all means, correct me if this isn't the case.)

Sure, here in the UK most residential buildings have wooden floors throughout, but almost always have an outer shell of two layers of bricks and/or concrete blocks. Obviously the building material used wouldn't have helped with the flooding, but surely the apparent 80% of New Orleans which has been levelled wouldn't have been as bad as if stronger building materials where used?

Same applies to building hillside homes on stilts in California - surely a disaster waiting to happen when a large earthquake eventually occurs?





Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by WarloK on Fri Sep 2nd at 5:18pm 2005

Muahahahahah!!! Thats Karma for yaz'





Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Dr Brasso on Fri Sep 2nd at 6:06pm 2005

would you care to elaborate there, mr warlok??

Doc B





Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Tracer Bullet on Fri Sep 2nd at 6:42pm 2005

? quoting keved
On this note, what I've never understood is the apparent American preoccupation with building residences from wood. Obviously states in South-East America such as Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, etc are prime hurricane territory, yet from all the images I've seen over the years it looks as though the vast majority of homes in these southern states have wooden outer shells. I actually watched the movie 'A Time To Kill' yesterday which set in Mississippi so paid particular attention to people's homes, and virtually all the residental non-apartment block buildings looked to be constructed entirely from wood (by all means, correct me if this isn't the case.)

Sure, here in the UK most residential buildings have wooden floors throughout, but almost always have an outer shell of two layers of bricks and/or concrete blocks. Obviously the building material used wouldn't have helped with the flooding, but surely the apparent 80% of New Orleans which has been levelled wouldn't have been as bad as if stronger building materials where used?

Same applies to building hillside homes on stilts in California - surely a disaster waiting to happen when a large earthquake eventually occurs?

In the USA, 95% of all residential buildings are constructed primarily from wood. I expect this has something to do with the fact that we still have forests whereas those in Europe were already logged off by 1300 AD. It's much more expensive to build brick structures when wood is so prevalent.

If you want to talk about a disaster waiting to happen, it was really the fact that most of New Orleans is/was below sea level... In truth, "disaster waiting to happen" describes many American cities. Seattle, and LA are just two examples that spring to mind. We all know theses things can happen, but it simply isn't in human nature to do anything about it until the catastrophe strikes. You Europeans are just lucky that there are no natural threats to speak of on your continent.




Some people are like slinkys...

They aren?t really good for anything, but you can't help but laugh when one tumbles down the stairs.



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Spartan on Fri Sep 2nd at 6:54pm 2005

? quote:
Muahahahahah!!! Thats Karma for yaz'

Your such an asshole, I swear.

It pisses me off that the entire world was bashing America for not doing enough when the tidal waves hit southern asia, but now that we need some desperate help no one gives a s**t.




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by fishy on Fri Sep 2nd at 7:17pm 2005

? quote:
If you want to talk about a disaster waiting to happen, it was really the fact that most of New Orleans is/was below sea level... In truth, "disaster waiting to happen"

Which the whitehouse was well aware of. A cat5 hurricane hitting new orleans was in a list of top 3 disasters most likely to hit the U.S., according to some alleged report that Bush allegedly commissioned and then allegedly ignored.

well the ignore part is probably true, since the federal funding for SELA (Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project) has been slaughtered over the past few years, and areas of previously protected wetland, that offered some protection from surges, have now been sold to developers. gg george.




i eat paint



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by French Toast on Fri Sep 2nd at 7:26pm 2005

Hey there Dr. Brasso, what's with your avatar... looks familiar...

<img src=" SRC="images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif">




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Captain P on Fri Sep 2nd at 7:36pm 2005

? quote:

It pisses me off that the entire world was bashing America for not doing enough when the tidal waves hit southern asia, but now that we need some desperate help no one gives a s**t.


Heh, I've been thinking that too, actually. Now what's happening in New Orleans is less heavy than what has happened in Asia, but it's shocking nonetheless and indeed, I haven't heard any other country about sending help.

I wonder if all help and money that was promised for Asia really came in. I think not...



Create-ivity - a game development blog



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by French Toast on Fri Sep 2nd at 7:40pm 2005

I've heard thathelp was offered fromother countries, but the U.S. politely declined. I'm not sure how true that it, but I can see why...




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Crono on Fri Sep 2nd at 8:24pm 2005

keved, wood is cheaper and MUCH more adaptable. Say 30 years down the line the owner wants to remodel, that's a little harder to do if you did something like a concrete structure (which is fundamentally better then wood, but it's a one time shot)

Also, most places that have bricks on the outside aren't completley made out of bricks ... that's just crazy, that'd take a very long time to build if they were.


Blame it on Microsoft, God does.



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by pepper on Fri Sep 2nd at 9:08pm 2005

? quoting Spartan

It pisses me off that the entire world was bashing America for not doing enough when the tidal waves hit southern asia, but now that we need some desperate help no one gives a s**t.

Interesting, i assumed that if you can build up a middle easter country and send over 10's of thousends of troops, then i would also be able to assume that you can create a proper plan to help the city after the hurrican hit. Afterall they knew it would happend.

my 10cts




RUST Gamedesign
pepper design

The strength of the turbulence is directly proportional to the temperature of your coffee.



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Nickelplate on Fri Sep 2nd at 10:29pm 2005

? quoting Spartan

? quote:
Muahahahahah!!! Thats Karma for yaz'


Your such an asshole, I swear.

It pisses me off that the entire world was bashing America for not doing enough when the tidal waves hit southern asia, but now that we need some desperate help no one gives a s**t.

agreed. on the radio this morning, they were criticizing the government for not having all the sewage and wreckage cleaned up like 3 days after it happened.

Pepper. We're too busy doing all this overseas s**t. We SHOULD have a plan, but your tone is all wrong. "You are all up in another country's grill and now it's your fault that a hurricane hit." that's what it sounds like to me. and YES we need financial help, have you seen the value of the dollar lately?

Anyway, lots of brits were against our "war on terrorism" but then when they got hit, it was a new perspective for them, maybe holland just needs a wake-up call.




I tried sniffing coke, but the ice cubes kept getting stuck in my nose.
http://www.dimebowl.com



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Hugh on Fri Sep 2nd at 11:48pm 2005

For sure, Nickel. The world has been giving us aid but not that much, Australia was the most with 7.7 million USD, the rest were like... 200k USD, at the most. Umm... yeah. The feds just passed $10 billion in assistance but that was yesterday or something so it couldn't even be spent (legally) until then... whatever. If I lived in New Orleans and there was a hurricane coming, and there were calls for evacuations, I'd be bugging out pretty quick.



One day you'll know what you're talking about, I can hardly imagine

Maps! - Audio blog!



Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Addicted to Morphine on Sat Sep 3rd at 1:31am 2005

? quoting rs6:
You have to relize (god I can't spell) that a good portion of the people still in the city chose to stay there agaist mandatory evacuations, makes me think they were planning to loot and stuff, or they're just plain stupid.
/rant


Sorry, but you're wrong.

The majority of the people who are still stranded (and starving and dying of dehydration and squalid conditions) are the marginalized poor... most of whom are black and lived in close proximity to the levees. These people, who were too poor to own a car or even buy bus fare out when news spread of the coming disaster are essentially trapped and dying because they couldn't afford to leave. Stupidity or bad intentions is not the reason most of the people trapped in New Orleans were there in the first place. They were poor and the government didn't come up with an evacuation plan despite the high likelyhood that something like this would happen.

Anyway -- that's the gist of what I read in the New York Times today.




Quote
 Re: New Orleans
Posted by Dr Brasso on Sat Sep 3rd at 4:08am 2005

okay well......theyve got the cavalry at the door now, so lets see how they do shall we?.... to be continued.

ps......to this point, im quite dismayed....i think part of the problem has been the sheer shock of it all. like a punch in the forehead with a brick. never dealt with a situation like this whether they saw it comin or not, so there has to be a slight learning curve here......but dont get me wrong, im plenty pissed.

i hate having egg on my face.....

Doc Brasso...

pss....told ya i was gonna steal it frenchie...:dodgy:






1
23
...
4 next page »
Post Reply