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9 Weeks to Pump Out New Orleans?
Cr0w T. Trollbot asks: "It looks like New Orleans is going through something very close to the worst case scenario right now. This somewhat prescient study, written well before the hurricane, describes some of the challenges (engineering and otherwise) facing New Orleans. 'In this hypothetical storm scenario, it is estimated that it would take nine weeks to pump the water out of the city, and only then could assessments begin to determine what buildings were habitable or salvageable. Sewer, water, and the extensive forced drainage pumping systems would be damaged. National authorities would be scrambling to build tent cities to house the hundreds of thousands of refugees unable to return to their homes and without other relocation options.' The hypothetical is looking awful close to reality right now. What can be done about draining and rebuilding New Orleans in light of the massive flooding, and what can be done to prevent and/or lessen such disasters in the future?"
Salvation Army Online Donation - Money goes directly to help with Katrina relief.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
The Army Corps of Engineers is working on better flood detection and protection, and anyone with expertise in this area could contact them and lend a hand.
New Orleans has been living the way the Dutch have, through a system of pumps and levees.
The Dutch don't get hurricanes.
A couple of factors against simply rebuilding over the water are excessive cost and safety issues, historical purposes, and once the water drains away everything will be on stilts, since the sea level there fluctuates depending on the outflow of the Mississippi and the tides.
And the mosquitoes. Mosquitoes suck.
What makes more sense, is what was done in Gavelston after it was wiped off the face of the map in 1900 by a hurricane. They dredged the surrounding inland waterways and raised the entire island by some 17 feet. In areas of New Orleans that require existing structures be razed could have this done.
cheers, ben
cheers, ben
Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
The Dutch have the advantage of being on the northwest coast of a continent in the northern hemisphere, where hurricanes move from southeast to northwest. While hurricanes do sometimes turn northward (remember the one last year that ended up near Iceland?), the Netherlands generally don't have to deal with storms of this ferocity.
The wall around the Netherlands is longer than the Great Wall of China and is thought to have cost 1.5 trillon dollers to build.
(Source: The Guardian Newspaper, Monday 29th August)
"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Popular Mechanics also did a piece on the disaster that was just waiting to happen in New Orleans. Check it out.
Do not read this sig.
from Wikipedia:
Here is a map of Netherlands showing the areas under sea level:
The Tragically Hip are correct. New Orleans is sinking, and will continue to sink.
The land is a flood plain. It depends on annual Mississippi flooding to deposit silt and moisture to maintain the land mass. The river levees cut off this replenishment and the land sinks.
The problem will only get worse, and there's no obvious solution.
Secondly, If you just build over the water, then you will have a city built upon an inherintly unstable foundation i.e. A large cavern underground. Would you want to be in an office building that is built over a city sized hole in the ground?
When you build skyscrapers or bridges, you don't just build on top of the ground soil, you dig your foundations piles deep into the groundrock below. Then you use these to build your structure. If you look at any coastal city with skyscrapers, you will see that they excavate underground for many reasons, including in order to seal the foundations from groundwater leakage and to provide underground services (car parks, metro systems, storage, communications).
Many Scottish cities were built in a similar way. Edinburgh was built on seven hills - the Victorians basically built high streets that spanned each valley, with the empty space being used as storage basements for the high street departments stores, and also as an underground rail service to deliver goods direct by train from London to the stores.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
This was done is several areas along the Mississippi River following the floods of 1993. The government bought out a lot of flooded land and turned it into parks and such. Hopefully, something similar will be done in N'Orleans.
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
The problem isn't that it's below sea level, it's that the entire city is sinking. Without the seasonal overflow of the Mississippi, there's no new silt being built up to replace the silt that's settling. Backfilling won't help much because the fill will eventually settle, too.
In fact, this problem isn't unique to Louisiana, it's affecting most of Southern Louisiana. It's the reason why wetlands are disappearing and why there's so much coastal erosion. When the Army Corps of Engineers tried to control the Mississippi, they met limited success at great cost to the ecosystem in the region.
New Orleans, and Louisana as a whole, is facing a very severe environmental problem with complex geologic issues. Filling the area is a very temporary solution and saying "don't live there" would render nearly half a state uninhabitable (not to mention destroy nearly the entire Cajun culture). There isn't really an "easy" answer.
Disclaimer: IANAGOOES (I am not a geologist or other environmental scientist) but I did take some geology classes at Tulane!
If they want insurance, let them pay the real cost of it. If they don't, let them take the risk themselves.
Get with the times. For almost three decades the federal law has specified that houses built after 1975 pay actuarial rates for federal flood insurance, so FEMA breaks even. There is no taxpayer subsidy on these houses.
The problem for older houses is more difficult. Suppose you built your house when an area was not flood-prone, but then the Corps of Engineers built levees upstream that channeled other people's floods onto your doorstep? Now you live in a floodplain because of someone else's action. Is it your fault that someone else built levees or paved over wetlands?
In the case of New Orleans, they have mostly themselves to blame for the flood hazard---the city has been subsiding because of the levees and pumping out ground water and has been perhaps the most active supporter of building levees and channelizing the Mississippi---but people living elsewhere, such as on the Bayous, are suffering from the environmental effects of the federal government's decisions about managing the river and thus deserve some relief.
I posted a torrent to the helicopter flyover video of New Orleans (from a news station earlier today) in the other hurricane-related discussion:
o rrent
http://wrpn.net/~kremit/files/wgno26flyover.wmv.t
It's about 46 minutes long and in Windows Media format (I didn't create it and didn't feel like converting it).
One of the continual options the OMB lists at budget is to stop subsidizing insurance on repeatedly flooded properties at a cost of a couple hundred million every year.
e x=450-05
See http://www.cbo.gov/bo2003/bo2003_showhit1.cfm?ind
You're right, they have started trying to charge more realistic estimates of insurance recently, but they still have all those grandfathered structures that they subsizide.
They also keep rebuilding destroyed structures. That's the real loss, when they let people build their newly re-insured structure in the same place the last one got washed away and get the same insurance again.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
The Battle of New Orleans
The battle of New Orleans
Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was in a precarious state -- caught in an ongoing war with the mighty Mississippi River.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
By John McPhee
Aug. 30, 2005 | For those watching the near-cataclysmic results of Hurricane Katrina, and wondering how New Orleans ever fell into such a precariously vulnerable position, John McPhee's great 1989 book "The Control of Nature" offers concrete answers. Each of the three parts of the book deals with a different region where man has been at war with nature: in Los Angeles, Iceland and, most important at this moment, the lower Mississippi River. Katrina is, of course, a case of nature waging war on man. But its damage and devastation may be felt all the more in places like New Orleans, where sturdy and deeply rooted men and women have faced off with the great river we call the Mississippi again and again. In this excerpt from "Atchafalaya," the first chapter from "The Control of Nature," McPhee draws affectionate portraits of the men of the Army Corps of Engineers and others who toil on behalf of "progress." Yet, it's clear which side he comes down on in these fights. His work reminds us that there are things more powerful than we are, and that nature, however hard we try to control it, will run its course.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Something like half of New Orleans is now below sea level -- as much as fifteen feet. New Orleans, surrounded by levees, is emplaced between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi like a broad shallow bowl. Nowhere is New Orleans higher than the river's natural bank. Underprivileged people live in the lower elevations, and always have. The rich -- by the river -- occupy the highest ground. In New Orleans, income and elevation can be correlated on a literally sliding scale: the Garden District on the highest level, Stanley Kowalski in the swamp. The Garden District and its environs are locally known as uptown.
Torrential rains fall on New Orleans -- enough to cause flash floods inside the municipal walls. The water has nowhere to go. Left on its own, it would form a lake, rising inexorably from one level of the economy to the next. So it has to be pumped out. Every drop of rain that falls on New Orleans evaporates or is pumped out. Its removal lowers the water table and accelerates the city's subsidence. Where marshes have been drained to create tracts for new housing, ground will shrink, too. People buy landfill to keep up with the Joneses. In the words of Bob Fairless, of the New Orleans District engineers, "It's almost an annual spring ritual to get a load of dirt and fill in the low spots on your lawn." A child jumping up and down on such a lawn can cause the earth to move under another child, on the far side of the lawn.
Many houses are built on slabs that firmly rest on pilings. As the turf around a house gradually subsides, the slab seems to rise. Where the driveway was once flush with the foor of the carport, a bump appears. The front walk sags like a hammock. The sidewalk sags. The bump up to the carport, growing, becomes high enough to knock the front wheels out of alignment. Sakrete appears, like putty beside a windowpane, to ease the bump. The property sinks another foot. The house stays where it is, on its slab and pilings. A ramp is built to get the car into the carport. The ramp rises three feet. But the yard, before long, has subsided four. The carport becomes a porch, with hanging plants and steep wooden steps. A carport that is not firmly anchored may dangle from the side of a house like a third of a drop-leaf table. Under the house, daylight appears. You can see under the slab and out the other side. More landfill or more concrete is packed around the edges to hide the ugly scene. A gas main, broken by the settling earth, leaks below the slab. The sealed cavity fills with gas. The house blows sky high.
"The people cannot have w
taxing people in North Dakota and Virginia to pay for protection for people who built homes below sea level.
Funny that you should pick North Dakota as your first example. For every dollar that those badlands leeches pay in income taxes, they get back about TWO dollars in federal largesse.
Care to know which states really deserve to complain about their tax dollars being handed out to others? That would be Wisconsin, Delaware, New York, California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Minnesota, Illinois, Nevada, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and the most robbed of all, New Jersey.
What you're talking about is the Port of Southern Louisiana, which is located along a 50-mile stretch of the Mississippi river. Most shipping is not actually in the city of New Orleans (at least not for the past few decades). This sprawling port does not require the city of New Orleans in order to operate, although some debris will indeed have to be cleared out of the river.
It's true that it does require people in the vicinity to operate the various facilities, but there is no reason they can't be located further inland. New Orleans is in just about the worst possible spot in the region, located below sea level, in a bowl, in a swamp, between a river, lake, other lake, and the gulf.
If New Orleans were rebuilt 30-40 miles upriver, the port could continue to operate just fine, and the residents would be in a safer and more sustainable location. There is absolutely no reason to continue to maintain a city that is an average of 10 feet below sea level, when there is perfectly good above-sea-level land not very far away.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
While they don't get "Hurricanes" per se, they do get what is called an Orkan, which is pretty much the same.
That would be because "Orkaan" is the dutch word for "Hurricane".
And no, the Netherlands doesn't really get that many hurricanes. The Netherlands greatest problems with flooding tend actually not to come from the sea but from the Rijn, one of the biggest rivers in Europe, which exits to the sea via the Netherlands. It floods regularly.
The way the dutch cope with this is through dijks ('dykes' in english?) and, more recently, through controlled flooding: as it's simply become impossible to fully contain the Rijn, the thinking is now to let it flood as much as possible into farmland and hence reduce the strain on dijks around more important inhabited lands.
The atlantic threat is there too, while not near hurricanes in power, atlantic storms are far more frequent. It seems easier to contain though. There are barriers in place around the entrances to the Zeeland tidal estuaries, which you can see in the map the previous poster gave as blue lines, and there's a truly gigantic floating set of metal arms, which are rotated into place and then sunk, to protect the mouth of the Rotterdam waterway. (To consider how huge these must be, Rotterdam Europoort, the busiest shipping port in the *world* apparently, can just be seen in part to the right in the picture above, with a ferry sailing down that large channel..)
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
As a local resident, I defer to your local expertise. But while you joke on, may I suggest you get out if you are able? As you say, the flood waters are coming, and this bad situation is going to get much worse for you. Please be safe.
They don't bury the dead in New Orleans. The highest point in the city is only 6 ft. above sea level, which makes for watery graves. Fearful that rotting corpses caused epidemics, the city limited ground burials in 1830. Mausoleums built on soggy cemetery grounds became the final resting place for generations. Beyond providing a macabre tourist attraction, these "cities of the dead" serve as a reminder of the Big Easy's vulnerability to flooding. The reason water rushes into graves is because New Orleans sits atop a delta made of unconsolidated material that has washed down the Mississippi River.
Think of the city as a chin jutting out, waiting for a one-two punch from Mother Nature. The first blow comes from the sky. Hurricanes plying the Gulf of Mexico push massive domes of water (storm surges) ahead of their swirling winds. After the surges hit, the second blow strikes from below. The same swampy delta ground that necessitates above-ground burials leaves water from the storm surge with no place to go but up.
The fact that New Orleans has not already sunk is a matter of luck. If slightly different paths had been followed by Hurricanes Camille, which struck in August 1969, Andrew in August 1992 or George in September 1998, today we might need scuba gear to tour the French Quarter.
"In New Orleans, you never get above sea level, so you're always going to be isolated during a strong hurricane," says Kay Wilkins of the southeast Louisiana chapter of the American Red Cross.
During a strong hurricane, the city could be inundated with water blocking all streets in and out for days, leaving people stranded without electricity and access to clean drinking water. Many also could die because the city has few buildings that could withstand the sustained 96- to 100-mph winds and 6- to 8-ft. storm surges of a Category 2 hurricane. Moving to higher elevations would be just as dangerous as staying on low ground. Had Camille, a Category 5 storm, made landfall at New Orleans, instead of losing her punch before arriving, her winds would have blown twice as hard and her storm surge would have been three times as high.
Yet knowing all this, area residents have made their potential problem worse. "Over the past 30 years, the coastal region impacted by Camille has changed dramatically. Coastal erosion combined with soaring commercial and residential development in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama have all combined to significantly increase the vulnerability of the area," says Sandy Ward Eslinger, of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Coastal Services Center in Charleston, S.C. Early Warning
Emergency planners believe that it is a foregone conclusion that the Big Easy someday will be hit by a scouring storm surge. And, given the tremendous amount of coastal-area development, this watery "big one" will produce a staggering amount of damage. Yet, this doesn't necessarily mean that there will be a massive loss of lives.
The key is a new emergency warning system developed by Gregory Stone, a professor at Louisiana State University (LSU). It is called WAVCIS, which stands for wave-current surge information system. Within 30 minutes to an hour after raw data is collected from monitoring stations in the Gulf, an assessment of storm-surge damage would be available to emergency planners. Disaster relief agencies then would be able to mobilize resources--rescue personnel, the Red Cross, and so forth.
The $4.5 million WAVCIS project, which is now coming on line, will fill a major void in the Louisiana storm warning system, which was practically nonexistent compared to those of other Gulf Coast states. A system of 20 "weat
I'm Dutch, and considering the 1,5 trillion pounds is spread over _50_ years i think this is quite good estimate, the Zuiderzee works are only a small part of our total infrastructure against flooding.
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
Jeff Parish President. Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.
FEMA numbers to begin assistance process 1-800-621-FEMA or http://www.fema.gov./
(Disclaimer; I'm not associated with FEMA. Message copied from wwltv.com. AFAIA conserned this message is provided "as is".)
The 17th street canal levee that broke was solid concrete... A large number of the levees that are actually directly up against water (most of them are some distance from the water to allow for some flood area) have a concrete facing up against the water to protect from erosion.
A large number of the pumps seemed to have worked fine for a while... Some pumps on the west bank of the river are manually controlled diesel pumps (they're rarely needed) so those couldn't be started up...also their roofs blew off and they were claiming that no one could get to them to start things up.
They just built a brand new pumping station along the interstate along the evacuation route, and I believe those failed pretty quickly.
The last ones to go were just overwhelmed by the breach in the levee. Basically they were constantly pumping water into the lake, only to have it flow right back in. I can understand that a little bit more... They eventually overheated and shut down I believe.
It's better to be poor and free than slightly less poor and enslaved.
This is something that only somebody who's lived under tyrannical socialism can understand.
Charles (from Budapest)
While the North Sea does not get 200 MPH gusts, or even 165 MPH sustained winds, the North Sea has one nasty aspect. In essence the North Sea is a funnel, open at the north end and constricted at the south (the channel). South of the channel high and low water tides can actually be more than 10m apart (33ft).
In the Netherlands, the height of the dykes has been determined based on the requirement to withstand a superstorm coinciding with high tide (the lunar type, not the daily ones). Therefore, depending where you are in the Netherlands, the height of those dykes is between 5m (16ft) and 10m (33ft) above sea level, depending on the probability of being breached (must be less than 1:10000 years).
So, if New Orleans had followed a similar approach, it would have been clear that their defenses were woefully inadequate given the level of the risk.
Global warming has nothing to do with it, this is pure risk management and making informed choices. I do pity the folks in New Orleans and the general area and wish them good fortune in getting their lives back together.
"It's 8 miles (give or take) from the Causeway Bridge to Chef Menteur Highway."
:)
Nit-pick: The Causeway ends in Metairie, Jeff Parish. On the East Bank I can't remember where Jeff ends and Orleans begins, but I do know Causeway ain't it.
"A great majority of the people in New Orleans has feet and the ability to use them. Even getting to La Place, 25 miles west on either I-10 or Airline Highway, is better than sitting in New Orleans."
Uh... no. Assuming they would allow pedestrians on the interstate in an emergency, starting west of I-310 in St. Charles Parish and going well into St. John, I-10 is elevated over water, probably not the best stretch of road to be caught on when the storm starts coming.
Airline is even worse. For example, the Airline/I-310 exchange is notorious for being the first place in St. Charles to go underwater when it starts to rain, even though that's supposedly part of the hurricane evacuation route for St. Charles Parish. Closer Orleans, I hear Airline is closed and sandbagged over in order to suplement the levees there.
As for LaP lace itself, if Lake Pontchartrain has breached the levee in Orleans Parish, why do you believe the situation is any better for other parishes on the lake?
"the emergency services currently being used to airlift Boudreaux, Scioneaux and Arceneaux (yes, those are real names) off the roofs of their houses"
You forgot Thibodaux, or is he still waiting for the airlift?
I'm also not sure about most of federal spending being in the North. The North had far more infrastructure, to be sure, but it was paid for parimarily by private money, and secondarily by state funds. The age of federally funded improvements really only came in 1864, when the Republican Congress enacted the Homestead Act, transcontinental railroad subsidies, land grant schools, etc. And then, as now, most military spending was concentrated in the South and West.
So in the absence of sources, I don't believe a word of your snark.
Don't bother trying to fix it. You're fighting a losing battle. Same goes with the Atlantic coast beaches.
I have two words for you: PRIVATE FUNDING.
You want to live below sea level in a hurricane zone? Fine by me, but don't ask me to bail you out. Want to build a million dollar house at the beach? Fine, but don't ask me to spend billions of dollars to rebuild the beach for you.
It all goes back to foolish people doing foolish things. If it were me, I'd deny insurance claims to anyone wanting to rebuild, and I'd require that anyone rebuilding MUST place their first floor above sea level on a flood-resistant foudnation which can withstand 145mph winds.
What? That sounds too extreme? Guess what, dumbshit, THAT'S THE THE REQUIREMENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL (i.e. US) BUILDING CODE!* They rebuild all these historic strucutres without these requirements because they've been "grandfathered". They shouldn't be rebuilt.
*I happen to be a strucutral engineer, and have the building code next to me. I design flood foundations. I design for hurricane winds. I happen to know that most builders and building officials outside of Florida wouldn't know proper high-wind construction if it fell on them. And as for the 145mph winds...well, grab a copy of ASCE 7-02 "Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures". Page 37. The 140MPH contour happens to pass right over Lake Ponchitrain. The next contour, which covers the entire coastal area is 150MPH. In fact, the entire coast from Houma, LA through MS and AL all the way to the FL border is a 150MPH zone. If all the buildings were up to code, there wouldn't have been anything but extremely isolated structural damage. But you don't listen. So you die.
I'd like my 7mil in cash, if you wouldn't mind.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The refineries aren't that badly damaged. The problem is that they have no power. As for higher prices, there's a more immediate concern: The gas and oil pipelines in the region have no power. They may not get power for another two weeks. Atlanta has not received new gasoline in two days. Retailers typically have a ten day reserve.
So my immediate concern is not how much gas will cost but whether there will be gas to buy at all. I guess we won't be driving to Grandma's for Labor Day after all.
This is not my sandwich.
Worldwide, although ocean temperatures have risen, the overall number and strength of cyclones have not.
Ahh, but total energy consumption by hurricanes over the last few decades has increased worldwide because they are lasting longer. Here's a quote from an interview with Kerry Emanuel, Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
"[When you look at] their intensity and you look at how long the hurricanes lasted and you measure the total amount of energy released by the hurricanes, that is going up decidedly in most of the world's oceans, and we have tried very hard to see whether this might be an artifact of the way hurricanes are measured or the data, but no matter what you do, you get this signal. And that signal lies on top of regional phenomena."