Katrina Update #76Katrina Update #76May 29th marked nine months since Katrina. Unlike the widely rumored baby boom of the 1977 New York Black Out, there were no reports of increased birth rates. How could there have been? It's really hard to do that when you are driving for 30 hours to get out of harm's way. And 8 people in a hotel room isn't exactly what most people (I did say most people) would call romantic.
We did have one birth, however – sort of. When Jarret, Janis and I returned last Sunday from our California trip we were greeted by a most pleasant site: the one pepper plant that survived 5 weeks of no water and virtually no sunlight after Katrina had given us about a dozen plump red peppers.
Our "Katrina" plant.
It's not much, but it is symbolic for us – especially as June 1st marked the official start of hurricane season.
You can't flip through the local or national TV news – or the local paper – without massive amounts of media coverage regarding hurricane season:
CNN: "Hurricane Season started today and we set out to see what residents of New Orleans are doing to prepare."
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MSNBC: "As hurricane season begins, are New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast ready for what is predicted to be another above average season?"
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FOXNEWS: "The White House confident repairs to the badly damaged levee system will keep New Orleans dry this hurricane season."
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WWL-TV: "With Hurricane Season upon us, what changes has the state made to the contraflow system to get people out of New Orleans in the case of a storm?"
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WDSU: "The Army Corps of Engineers is confident it will have the flood gates operational by July 1, one month after today's official start of Hurricane Season."
As you can imagine, the Internet is chock-full of all sorts of banter about this year's storm season as well.
Getting Ready for the Gathering Storm on CNN.com talks about preparedness from a government standpoint.
CNN.com actually has a whole section devoted to Hurricanes here.
Yes, hurricane season started on June 1, and its not impossible that we could get a hurricane this early. But it is about as likely as getting one in January (which is also not impossible, btw). From this point forward, the odds of a storm forming out in the Atlantic increase each day. Although it is not uncommon to get a tropical storm or two in July, what we really need to worry about is the period from about August 15 - September 30. That 6 week period is when the most intense storms tend to form – and the closer we get to those dates, the more nervous people down here will get.
A local newscast said that there is an 82% chance of a major hurricane striking somewhere along the U.S. coast this hurricane season. Well, that's not very encouraging, is it? If you could bet on hurricanes, 8 out of 10 odds are pretty good. Due to the weather patterns being what they are, however, there is only a 34% chance that New Orleans will get hit. (By the way, there is a 69% chance the upper part of the east coast could get hit – anywhere from the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia area up to New York and Boston.)
Nonetheless, people are already nervous down here – and scared. It is in the air. While there is cautious optimism, people just aren't going about business as usual yet. It is as though everyone is doing just what they have to do to get by, and will save the real work for after October 1, when the threat of hurricanes is vastly diminished. I think there will be one heck of a Halloween party in New Orleans this year if we escape major damage.
On a grander scale, the odds favor New Orleans (as opposed to storms). On average, a category 3 or higher comes within 40 miles of New Orleans every 9 years. A category 5 comes within 40 miles of New Orleans every 40 years. Before Katrina, the last category 3 storm was Georges in 1998. The last category 5 storm was Betsy in 1965.
Here is what accuweather.com has to say about this year's hurricane season:
The 2006 hurricane season forecast this year is highlighting the region from the Carolinas northeastward as the prime area for above-normal risk of impact from hurricane activity. While the Carolina coast has had direct hurricane landfalls several times since the start of the current multi-decadal cycle in 1995 (Bertha and Fran in 1996, Bonnie in 1998, Floyd in 1999 and Isabel in 2003), Long Island and southeastern New England have escaped a hurricane strike. Other areas at elevated risk are the Gulf Coast from central Louisiana westward, especially early in the season, with an eye toward the southwestern Florida (Gulf) coast later in the season. The only good news is that this pattern suggests a significantly reduced risk, relative to normal, for the eastern and central Gulf Coast - an area hit by four named storms last season, two of which were major hurricanes. The initial landfall forecast is for three major (Category 3 or greater) hurricane hits this year on the United States coast, two hurricanes of Category 2 or less and one tropical storm - a total of six storms making landfall.
Finally (in this section at least) I'd like to draw your attention to a really great article that tells you what the media missed in covering Katrina. The two big take-aways are these:
1). The entire rescue operation was based on "triage." Which is to say those in most imminent danger of dying were flown out first. Most of the people you saw on overpassess didn't get there on their own: they were rescued from rooftops and floodwaters and deposited there so the rescue workers could get to others more quickly.
2). As unpleasant as living conditions were in the Superdome (and there is no disputing that), the National Guard was, in fact, there and everyone had food and water.
You can read the entire article here, and I recommend you do.
- Tom Taylor is back in the Atlanta area managing a restaurant called "Nonna Maria's Italian Eatery." Janis and I will be in Atlanta later this month and plan to look him up. If you are in or around Atlanta, here's the address:
Nonna Maria’s Italian Eatery
1445 Rock Quarry Road Stockbridge GA 30281
Tel: (678) 565-9500 / fax 565-3700
- Laura Roe has headed to upstate New York where she is the Costume Mistress for a renaissance faire. She has done this every summer for several years. She certainly has it figured out: escape the hottest months of the year to a place of relative comfort, then return towards the end of the heat (and hurricanes!).
- Matt Gone will be featured on a program on The Discovery Channel on June 19th. Matt is one of the world's most tattooed individuals with tattoos over 97 or 98 percent of his body. The show is called Medical Incredible.
- Another sweeping revitalization initiative was unveiled this past week. This one is spearheaded by Hyatt Hotels and calls for demolition of several buildings near the Superdome, including the New Orleans City Hall, the existing Hyatt, and the New Orleans Shopping center. The area will be turned into a modern 20-acre multi-use National Jazz Center and park buttressed by public office buildings. Here are a couple of pictures of the proposed project:
Proposed National Jazz Center and Park
Under the plan, two state office buildings, city hall, the city hall garage, the New Orleans Shopping Center and parts of the Hyatt would be demolished to make way for a park anchored by the National Jazz Center. City hall would move to the Dominion tower office building, state office buildings would be rebuilt at the site of the Civil District Court building, and the entrance of the Hyatt would move to Loyola Avenue.
The multi-level six-block park will include a 20,000-square foot jazz performance center with seating for 1,000 people, a smaller theater with seating for 300, a children’s theater, workshop, rehearsal studios available to local musicians and an archives for jazz research. The Canal Street streetcar would be extended down Loyola Avenue, connecting the park, sports facilities and public office complexes with the French Quarter and Convention Center.
The result will be a swath of green space leading from Tulane Avenue to the sports complexes of the Superdome and New Orleans Arena surrounded by modern buildings designed by renowned architect Thom Mayne in association with local architect Ray Manning and others. Developers on a panel convened by Hyatt and working with other stake holders from New Orleans envision an area that will be an internationally known destination for the arts and tourism which will be used day and night.
The New Orleans Jazz Orchestra will be based at the Jazz park, which will also be a destination for national touring jazz acts.
Developers hope to have all the pieces of the project and financing mechanisms in place within 12 months, and that construction of the project would take three years.
Hyatt has fronted nearly $3 million of the project’s development so far, and say they have about $400 million in financing lined up. About 53 percent of the project’s financing would be private. Developers now need to work with public agencies, explore tax credit projects, approach foundations and seek additional investors to put together the rest.
If this happens, it could truly mark a serious renaissance for New Orleans. Pardon me for being skeptical, however. If there is one thing New Orleans has more of than jazz and "character," it is bureaucracy and it's own "good ol' boys" network that do as much to stifle progress as promote it.
- Not surprisingly, a just-released study found that New Orleans was sinking at a fairly rapid clip before Katrina, and that could have contributed to it's flooding (gee, ya think?).
- As true as that might be, the real fault of New Orleans' drowning was the Army Corps of Engineers, who officially fessed up this past week. They pretty much had to, since a 6000 page report pointed the finger mostly at them. "This is the first time that the Corps has had to stand up and say, 'We've had a catastrophic failure,' " Lt. Gen. Carl A. Strock, the Corps chief, said. You can read the entire article here.
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