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Post-Katrina Images on Google Maps
breadiu writes " Satellite imagery of New Orleans taken on Wednesday, August 31st is now available on Google Maps. Enter 'New Orleans' in the search field at the top of the page, or drag and zoom the map to the area. A red 'Katrina' button will appear at the top right of the map, next to the existing map buttons. Older images for the area are still available too - click the "Satellite" button to switch to those."
Or used an old ID in order to capitalise on the sympathies of others.
For those interested in reading on geological hazards, check out Engineering Geology, An Environmental Approach:
0 52770X/qid=1126049667/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl 14/002-0778082-8548014?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/013
Not intended as flamebait (I contributed $100 to the Red Cross), but people just refuse to learn to move away from flood-prone areas, even after they are destroyed.
The author survived the 1972 Rapid City flood in which 237 people were killed and adopted the philosophy of never rebuilding homes in the flood plain. Rapid City learned its lesson, and only commercial and industrial buildings are allowed in the flood plain. There are also a lot of parks and public use areas on the flood plain.
Yet, the monetary amount of damage done by floods increases with time as people continue to develop flood plains and barrier islands. Folks, flood control structures fail too often to justify their cost to the country's taxpayers. It is a shame thousands died in New Orleans and we will again fail to learn our lesson.
The Federal Disaster Area declaration is nearly as large as the United Kingdom. How would you go about getting everything to everyone in a few days?
Also in the US disaster preparedness and recovery are normally the venue of the States and localities. By tradition they are supposed to ask for aid. Supposedly, I cannot find the story right now, the LA Govenor asked Bush for some time before calling out the Guard. It is the State that "by tradition" orders the Guard, Bush respected that but sometimes I think traditions stink. There are 330,000 Guard members in the US currently. I would think more than a small percent could be moved provided the States will act.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Hey, I agree they need housing, support, etc, and I've no opposition to everyone doing what they can. But it sounds to me that the current plan of action is based more on looking good than doing good. Large population migrations of this kind impact everything from culture through to the economy. You can't just throw tens of thousands of people around the country and hope for the best.
(Well, you can. Germany did, when it unified. Damn near destroyed West Germany, with zero benefit to East Germans. Virtually all the problems in the Middle East are due to mass population migrations. In fact, virtually all long-term problems in history have been because of mass population migrations.)
The day it became obvious that Katrina was going to hit Category 5, work should have started on getting ready for an inevitable refugee crisis. They didn't, ok, so they should be working on long-term impact assessments NOW, and working on making sure that further harm isn't done.
Of course, they aren't. Right about now, they've bugger all idea of what the long-term consequences are. What about health consequences? I doubt the refugees have been checked in case of contageous diseases. I am pretty certain that people who left under their own steam, after it became obvious that rescue wasn't on the way, haven't been checked. The risk probably isn't great, but it's certainly not zero.
There are other risks. More than a few of these people will be armed, all of them will be suffering from PTSD, none of them are likely to have the money needed to get adequate support. That's a very high-risk combination, particularly as grudges may well be carried for the lack of support and the perception of abandonment. To make things worse, there WILL be resentment towards the refugees by other Americans, especially in areas where the "ideal" of absolute self-support is a religion. Violence seems certain.
After the draining, there'll be further stresses as refugees try to return home - or are pushed into doing so. Even after draining is complete, the entire region should be decontaminated and then checked for subsidance, prior to anyone trying to live there again. The reality is, that isn't going to happen. In turn, that means that there is a risk of death by disease or structural failure.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Dude, it's California. Do you know how many "van people" I have parked outside my house that match that exact description with out of state plates? Lots of people seem to live out of their vehicles in California, b/c the weather's so good.
They had the cash to pay for the gas to get all the way to California in a van, and they want a free $100 tent? I don't buy the story, but then again I'm pretty cynical and jaded.
"No, no, no. Don't tug on that. You never know what it might be attached to."
Here we have revealed the bare Bush blame-game talking points. In pure essence. First, try to say the New Orleans damage wasn't bad. Then, blame the "human-caused damage" on the humans, the New Orleanians. Then, when a rational person is outraged by your gibberish, spin it into some kind of impossibly parsed meaning, and swerve into blaming the Democrats, governor of LA and mayor of New Orleans.
Next you'll spout that "no one anticipated that the levees would break".
You certainly won't be quoting the fact that LA Governor Blanco asked Bush for, and was told she was getting, military assistance, days before the event. Or that she was offered NM National Guard (from Democrat Governor Richardson) before the event, but the required Bush admin approval didn't arrive until 4 days after the disaster. Or the huge relief ship that's been bobbing offshore since the disaster, waiting on the Bush admin go-ahead.
Or that the mayor isn't responsible for the levees or most other crisis management: Bush and his hirelings are. Or that Bush can send in the military legally, even if the governor or mayor didn't. Or that he could have sent them in anyway, even if it were illegal, to save everyone, and no one would have said anything. Or even if anyone did say anything, he'd get off. Or even if he didn't get off, that's what leaders do: they sacrifice to save their people.
You didn't mention that Bush heard about the devastation, and went to California to make a political speech instead. Or that he went golfing on Friday, as Gulf Coasters continued to die.
Nah, why would you tell the truth? You're a ghoul, to whom thousands of Americans dying are just a chance to lie about politics. You are a subhuman pig. When the floods rise in Sioux Falls, you better hope that your government comes to the rescue. Or maybe you're just depending on your rifle to keep you dry. You probably worship Bush because you hate the government, ignoring how they subsidize your paycheck at the nursing home, and are happy about the way he's proving the rightwing theory that "government can't do anything right". You are a dangerous fool.
--
make install -not war
http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings
From the opinion piece:
No, I do not believe controlled migration is a good idea. What I do believe is a good idea is supported migration. If an area is going to suddenly face meeting the needs of N extra people, then it should be able to acquire the resources needed to support N extra people. Once integration is complete, everything should balance itself out. Until it does, however, you can't expect the newcomers to survive on hot air and vaporware.
My concern is that we're going to get a lot of mass migrations with absolutely zero backup. No support, no supplies, no resources of any kind. If that is indeed the case, it will be a disaster for those who have been displaced and a catastrophe for everyone else.
It is time the Federal Government woke up and smelled the coffee. There are no "Get Out Of Crisis Free" cards in real life. This is going to cost, and it is going to cost a lot. It is going to require considerably more planning than has been done, to get things to function smoothly, and is going to be a logistical nightmare without some damn good experts developing a way to do this effectively.
With the airlines on the edge of bankrupcy, Greyhound slashing services to and beyond the bone, Amtrak contemplating suicide and most of the military in Iraq, HOW are the people going to be moved around the country in anything like a meaningful timeframe?
The answer would seem obvious enough - all of these have the means to move the population, they just don't have the money. It would be trivial for the Government to pay Greyhound to move every single unused bus to an evacuation point and carry the people around the country. They could pay Amtrak to do it. The airlines aren't short of capacity, they're short of cash.
Is this happening? So far, I've not heard of a single extra dime going towards paying for the mass exodus.
What happens when they get to where they're going? Who is going to pay for their shelter? For the uninsured or the elderly, where is the extra money for medicare going to come from? And for those insured by companies based in a flooded-out area, nobody is going to take an insurance card from a company that might never reopen so what are they going to do?
My gripe is that there is a great deal you need to do to get this kind of operation to work well, rather than to end in a disaster for all concerned, and that the Federal Government isn't doing any of it. If they're going to get bugger all support, they would probably be better off building a refugee camp and relying on aid from the Red Cross and other organizations that will, at least, come through for them.
As of the political situation right now, the choice is between being camped in dismal conditions but at least getting basic needs met, or being ferried to God-Knows-Where (assuming the Federal Government even bothered telling God), finding the social services simply don't have any extra cash, and ending up homeless on the street.
My personal preference would be for the Federal Government to fund social programs adequately (for a change) and for the evacuees to have living conditions worth the living.
My biggest concern is that right-wingers generally don't believe in social programs at all and may well prefer people homeless on the streets to being visible in a camp.
My next-biggest concern is that the right-wing may attempt to use the disaster to prove that social programs aren't needed. (If you don't need extra money for an extra ten or hundred thousand, then maybe you don't need any money at all.) With this Government in particular, but America in general, fearing the worst in politicians seems to be a generally good idea.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
...I was making reference to.... the incompetence of the Mayor of NO and the governor of LA.
Here's the simple take-home point:
Do you think your city, your family and loved ones, will be safe when it is your city that needs to be evacuated?
With Katrina we had several days' notice of a disaster -- and you use that to blame Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.
But the next terrorist attack will give no warning. The attacked city will be relying entirely on FEMA -- there'll be no Nagin, no Blanco for apologists to blame.
Some four years after September 11th, both FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security have demonstrated that they can't protect Americans -- indeed, their leaders in abject and total failure can only blithely deny news footage we're seeing with our own eyes.
The fundamental purpose of any government -- as any conservative will tell you -- is the protection of its citizens.
In the last four years, our "leaders" have ignored crucial evidence preceding the September 11th attacks, have failed to get those responsible, have been willingly fooled by colossally bad intelligence about WMDs in Iraq, have fired those who correctly predicted we'd need far more troops to avoid a quagmire in Iraq, and have now let thousands of your fellow Americans die from their incompetence and lack of preparedness.
Our so-called "leaders" have repeatedly failed to uphold their end of the social contract. One "understandable" mistake after another -- and no one's been fired except whistle-blowers and those who were in retrospect proven right in their predictions.
How many more mistakes rewarded by Presidential Medals of Freedom will you tolerate? How many more Americans must die from sheer incompetent failure at the highest level of government before you find your anger?
How much longer will you trust your life, your children's lives, and your country's future, to the "protection" of these miserable failures?
How much longer?
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
While I've seen some people with legitimate objections (even though I don't really buy the validity of a highly politically-motivated redefinition of a word which has been in use for a long time indeed), most of the complaints I've heard about the word really do boil down to that. It's not objection to the word; it's denial that it's being applied to us, something which feels like an insult when it really isn't anything more than a simple statement of fact.
-PS
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Got any proof of that, or are you just parroting the anti-Bush talking points?
The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength. Local authorities are ALWAYS responsible for the first 72-96 hours of a disaster, that's how all the plans are made, and it's primarily because of the dithering incompetence of the local Democratic pols and the collapse of the New Orleans police department that so many people could not be rescued this time.
The military won't put people and equipment directly into the path of a hurricane, lest they become victims themselves and lose their airlift capability. But shortly after the storm passes, they pour in.
Military air, sea, and land operations began on Aug. 30, and in fact, there were more than twice as many soldiers on duty by day 5 of Katrina than on day 5 of Andrew in 1992. And that's after moving them in over a much larger area than Andrew affected. You can't wave a magic wand and move people and machines in an instant, but that seems to be what some of the ignorant anti-Bush ranters are expecting.
Unless you have invented a Star trek transporter beam, just can the ill-informed bitching and do what you can to help, OK?
-ccm
Too much Law; not enough Order.