Governor: Everyone Must Leave New OrleansFloodwaters from Hurricane Katrina cover a portion of New Orleans, La., Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2005, a day after Katrina passed through the city. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip)
Red Cross:1-800-HELP-NOW
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Updated: 1:03 p.m. EDT (17:03 GMT), August 31, 2005 'NIGHTMARE'
David Keifer, leads his sister and son through flooded streets in New Orleans today. Rescuers, residents struggle
• Watch: Looters take to streets | Dome must be evacuated
• Watch: Saved from gators | Horses to get help
• Storm Roundup: Katrina's effects at a glance
• Special Report: Trail of destruction | Gallery | Levee system
• Citizen journalist: Your e-mails | Gallery | Share your story
• Hotlines: Emergency info |Red Cross
• Feds fan out for storm recovery efforts |
• Wife makes desperate trip with husband's body
• Watch: Wife searches for missing husband
• 'It's like being in a Third World country' |
• Biloxi: We swam among floating cars |
• Mayor blasts failure to patch levees |
WorldChanging: Another World Is Here
Foresight in the Age of the Storm
To Know It for the First Time – Place, Environment and Ecology Jamais Cascio
In
the age of climate disruption, clear-eyed foresight is a necessity --
but hurricane Katrina was a reminder that foresight means more than
imagining the worst and preparing for it.
Katrina came as a surprise to few of its victims. The storm, which had been just a Category 1 when it crossed Florida, grewstronger over the warm ocean as it drew towards the Gulf Coast; in the age of real time satellites and doppler radar, residents of the region had ample warning that danger was coming. Nor was Katrina's arrival a surprise to meteorologists at the National Weather Service, who had earlier this month predicted that this hurricane season would be a strong one. Katrina's strength was certainly no surprise to climate scientists such as Kerry Emanuel or Kevin Trenberth, each of whom had published recent articles in top-notch journals arguing that greater hurricane intensity is the inevitable effect of global warming.
No, climate foresight means recognizing the signs that the game has changed, and that simply doing more of the same, but better, won't suffice.
Continue reading "Foresight in the Age of the Storm"Posted at 06:01 PM on August 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack (1)
Katrina and the Levees To Know It for the First Time – Place, Environment and Ecology Emily Gertz
Check out "After Centuries of 'Controlling' Land, Gulf Learns Who's the Boss," a thorough, readable, straight talking, and slightly arch article in today's New York Times on the suite of environmental factors that have contributed to Katrina's enormously devatating impact on the Gulf Coast.
Reporters Cornelia Dean and Andrew C. Revkin chart development and depletion of coastal ecologies in the region since the 18th century, "when French colonial administrators required land claimants to establish ownership by building levees along bayous, streams and rivers":
As long as people could control floods, they could do business. But, as people learned too late, the landscape of South Louisiana depends on floods: it is made of loose Mississippi River silt, and the ground subsides as this silt consolidates. Only regular floods of muddy water can replenish the sediment and keep the landscape above water. But flood control projects channel the river's nourishing sediment to the end of the birdfoot delta and out into the deep water of the Gulf of Mexico.Continue reading "Katrina and the Levees"
Posted at 02:12 PM on August 30, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (2)
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