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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."
Unfortunately, post-Katrina images for only about half the city are available.
A lot of my memories of visiting New Orleans included visiting the great cemeteries there. St Roch and St Vincent De Paul both look flooded. Obviously the living people in the city are more important, but the great landmarks still have a lot of meaning.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I work at a retail store in California, about 40 miles from Sacramento.
The other night, I had a couple come in, claiming to be from New Orleans, showing me an ID as evidence. They looked pretty poor and in dirty clothes, and the ID was correct.
They kept barraging me with questions asking for handouts... wanted a $100 tent for free, et cetera et cetera. I gave them the number to the local red cross chapter.
Has anyone else experienced refugees from the gulf coast in their area? What in the WORLD were they doing here.. no idea heh.
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
This is one of the creepiest things that I've seen in a long time. It reminds me of the before and after pictures from New York and similar stuff from coastline around the Indian Ocean.
Maybe such high resolution pictures of the disaster region will spur people into getting the authorities to do things like pay for the renovation of land features to reduce the effects of natural disasters, rather than divert the money to other projects, leaving victims high and dry (or in this case, low and wet).
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Superdome - before
Superdome - after
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
They're gonna kill me for the bandwidth this uses, but I managed to find a picture of Six Flags (a series of large theme parks for you non-USians, second only to Disney's stuff) after it was hit. It looks pretty disturbing to see rides halfway submerged.
Six Flags:
http://www.ecsis.net/~gregday/park.jpg
Park Map:
http://www.ecsis.net/~gregday/map.pdf
The rest of the NOAA aerial images taken from a Cessna:
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM
But I warn you, it's very creepy.
can be found at NOAA's site, at http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/katrina/KATRINA0000.HTM
The pics were just taken off the plane and thrown on a server. North isn't always up, and the pictures aren't very well labeled. You pretty much have to know what you're looking for before you can make sense of the pictures. But they are much better quality than that of maps.google.com.
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Also, Katrina images have been available on Google Maps since at least Saturday, as I was browsing it Sat afternoon. Kudos to Google - with that kind of speed, they should be running FEMA, too.
Slashdot - the place where you can look like a genius by restating the obvious
According to the Google Blog you can get Google Earth overlays related to the hurricane here.
The company I work for has two franchised, retail stores in the New Orleans area--one on the riverfront downtown, and another in the Metairie area, north of the main town. These satellite images have provided us with the first comfirmation of the damage, and are remarkably useful (in our case, the stores appear to be dry 48 hours after Katrina's passage). The executives were delighted to see this, and earned the IT group some nice brownie points... There is a similar link on the Denver Post site today. The images are from the same company, and for the same date and time, but are markedly different in color from the Google images. Does anybody know why?
1. The new imagery goes in one zoom stop furter than the regular imagery. A sign of things to come?
2. The new imagery doesn't have any obvious copyright notices. Did they skip this step or is there a new invisible watermark?
that there are some places people should not live? Instead of throwing billions at a problem that will occur again it might be best to treat the city as we treated people along the Miss.
Move them.
While the mess in New Orleans is bad too many people are ignoring the devastation caused in Miss. and the surrounding areas.
The port area themselves are not affected as the city proper was. We can try to improve the wetlands. We can even hopefully undo the system underwhich the sediment of the Miss is forced into the sea instead of being used to rebuild the area naturally.
The real fact is, New Orleans has always been on borrowed time. I would prefer very much to spend the money to insure that the victims forever are high and dry.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that 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.
Cool; I got here when I googled slashdot.
Can I take it as a given you are totally against humans living in space. Comets and depressurization happen.
Or would you consider that living in space may be worth it both for the economic opportunities and the beauty? New Orleans was built where it was because of the economic opportunities of being near the mouth of a river that's major transportation for a large chunk of America. You don't choose to build major port cities where it's safest; you by definition have to build them by the ocean. When a river's as big as the Mississippi you have to build them in the muddy delta.
So people shouldn't live where there's the economic opportunity of a port (or, likewise, of the Lagrange Points)? And all those upstream, or down the gravity well, should also do without the economic advantage of a good port?
What about the people in the New Orleans area working the Gulf oil and natural gas industries. That's dangerous. Man, we shouldn't mine asteroids either, right? Everyone can just do without the energy, or the minerals, if the alternative is someone risking their lives in an inherently dangerous place.
I really just want to know. It's hard to understand the new America, where people just shouldn't take risks -- even if those risks can serve to benefit a large part of the society and economy -- so when the risk goes bad the society, despite all the benefits its got from, in this instance New Orleans as a port and as a unique cultural incubator -- without which we wouldn't have either jazz or rock and roll, by the way -- why, let the poor fools drown. What were they thinking, living there?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
This should do it http://www.flashearth.com/ although you'll have to do your searches manually.
Here are Google Maps links for two levee breaches.
1 7275,-90.121467&spn=0.002356,0.002879&t=e&hl=en
7 2056,-90.023303&spn=0.009430,0.011517&t=e&hl=en
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=new+orleans&ll=30.0
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=new+orleans&ll=29.9
Once more into the... never mind!
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
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.
They did, days before Katrina hit, Bush declared it a disaster, invoking the Stafford Act. At that point, the *National* Response Plan took effect and disaster management became federal responsibility, a "Incident of national Significance". That was 3 days *before* Katrina hit. A state of emergency was declared *before* Katrina hit. Martial law was declared shortly after. State and locals were asking for helping, the bush administration just wasn't listening.
The locals did well with what they had. New Orleans, a city of half a million people, was 80% evacuated in two days before Katrina hit, which is astounding and most of the those that were still there were given shelter from the storm.
Unfortunately, the cavalry from the feds didn't arrive in a timely fashion, despite repeated acknowledged requests for assistance.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Gah... can't... move.. damn clouds out of the way.
All the king's horses and all the king's men, could put Pete ba..ck to..ge..ther... Oh, wait, wrong story.
If you don't want crime to pay, let the government run it.
The City of New Orleans had its chance. They let 200 school buses sit idle while people died in their homes.
The State of Louisiana had its chance. They called up the National Guard after the fact, knowing it takes at least 48 hours to gather a unit together and issue equipment under the best of circumstances, and knowing that after the storm hit would be far from the best circumstances. For those who don't know, the states' National Guards, apart from those units called up to be federalized for foreign military action, are under the command of the Governors of the several States, not the President of the United States.
Sure, FEMA fucked up. Bush fucked up. But that's not the end of the story. The City of New Orleans fucked up. Orleans Parish fucked up. Jefferson Parish fucked up. The state of Louisiana fucked up. The level of ineptitude we've seen surrounding this disaster is astounding. No one body is capable of reaching that plateau of incompetence. It takes the federal, state, and local governments, working in dissonance. In short, it takes teamwork to fuck things up to this degree.
Local and state governments are pointing fingers at the federal government for failure to fund levee reinforcement and gutting of FEMA -- and the federal government will of course be pointing fingers at the local/state governments for having no clear plan for short-term evacuation, rescue, and aid. And they'll both be right. But the voting public will see only the most visible elements, like Aaron Broussard crying on Meet the Press and Geraldo Rivera crying on Fox News.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
http://ngs.woc.noaa.gov/storms/katrina/24429365.jp g
Snopes to the rescue again!
In particular:
Even Snopes requires critical thinking when reading.
Such a claim presumes an availability of resources (e.g., experienced drivers, fuel)
Louisana had 25% of the nations fuel refinery capacity and driving a bus is a skill but most people that can drive shift can do in a pinch.
And, given the particular geography of New Orleans, any such evacuation would have had to have begun well in advance of Hurricane Katrina
When are you supposed to evacuate ? After, during, when people are coming back to the city ?
to avoid exposing residents to the potential danger of being stuck in buses on traffic-clogged roads in the path of an approaching hurricane
As opposed to being in a city that is up to 20ft below sea level in places and with an aticipated 28 ft storm surge coming in.
Moreover, any type of evacuation effort would have incurred a substantial outlay of funds from local and/or state governments -- while everyone agrees with the advantage of hindsight that would have been money well spent, many taxpayers might not have been left feeling so enthusiastic about footing the bill for an unnecessary evacuation had Hurricane Katrina not proved so damaging.
That last bit is just sad. The state had been pre-declared a disaster area. This means the local govt only had to pick up 20% of the tab. How much is a casualty worth ? And yes some of those taxpayers might not have been enthusiastic about the bill, how enthusiastic are they now ? At the very least the hospitals should have been evacuated so they would have more room available for the predicatable and predicted casualties from the storm.
I agree but your'e overlooking one thing. It was an emergency area before the storm came in. This enables the gov't to take emergency measures without the usual fear of legal shakedown.
On that same note marshall law could have been implemented after the city descended into chaos to restore order. My point is that the parasitism of the legal class is something that can and is set aside in times of crisis.
I can see my house! Oh, bugger...
http://media.putfile.com/OlbermannSwings
From the opinion piece:
that happens during a normal heavy rain/flood ;)
they just take the coffins and bury them again lol
You really want to put this in perspective?
In July, Cuba, which is by no means a world superpower, evacuated 650,000 people in anticipation of the category 4 hurricane Denis.
16 people died.
The US government has failed its people with catastrophic consequences. Any attempt to deny that is an insult to the dead, and the suffering, and quite frankly is just utterly preposterous.
2. The new imagery doesn't have any obvious copyright notices. Did they skip this step or is there a new invisible watermark?
Because the images were taken by NOAA and are freely available on the National Weather Service Website, I think the images are in the public domain. In fact, from the same website where the original (and higher resolution) images can be found, I dug up this disclaimer:
The information on government servers are in the public domain, unless specifically annotated otherwise, and may be used freely by the public...
While that is taking place, physical and mental health experts need to do a thorough check on the displaced population and provide the absolute level-best treatment where treatment is required. This, to me, also falls into the category of saving lives.
ALSO while that is taking place, economists, sociologists and any other relevent experts need to be running impact forecasts to find the absolute best way to place the displaced population to minimize stress on both those displaced AND those whose areas are being moved into.
ALSO while that is taking place, politicians need to beef up funding for those States people are moving into, so that social programs can accomodate the extra population. (This will involve more than just shifting funds around, as these people will need MORE per person than those who are already settled. This means a serious cash injection.)
They should also give a cash injection comparable to the expected economic impact. For example, it is doubtful many of these people escaped with functioning cars. Existing mass transit systems (where they exist) are on the edge of economic collapse and won't be able to handle the extra demand without support. It would be logical, therefore, for the Federal Government to provide money specifically for putting every available tram, bus and train in service (and to require that States actually do that, rather than divert the funds to pet projects).
Finally, the Federal Government should be looking to fund an emergency R&D program for the decontamination effort. And they should be doing so now. Nobody has ever had to decontaminate an area comparable to the entire British Isles. Most decontamination efforts are crude - the soil is simply replaced - which won't work on that scale and certainly won't work on land that is built on. There is no existing technique for handling a combined biological and chemical hazard that will work, so a new technique will have to be devised. That won't happen overnight, so if anyone plans on starting decontamination work this side of 2100, they'd best start funding a program to figure out how to do so.
If all of that was being done, there would be next to zero crisis. People would know that something was being done, that what was being done was deliberate and competent, and that the necessary resources would be there when needed.
If even one or two of these things were being done, it would likely be massively reassuring.
The truth is that NONE of it is being done. There will be extra burdens on everyone, but no extra resources to deal with them. There will be no serious decontamination work, so I fully expect serious health problems for those who move back. Everyone (other than the rich) will suffer for absolutely no purpose whatsoever.
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)
Just so you know, a typical school bus is rated to fit 70 children. You'll be lucky to get 40 average people in one, let alone adults carrying the personal belongings one typically evacuates with.
I found this out the hard way when a naive driver, just off her route taking home some elementary school students, came to take the high school hockey team (20 guys) to a game. She figured that her bus was rated to hold 40+, so 20 guys would be no problem. The bus ended up fitting the hockey team and some of their gear; the rest had to be loaded onto the coaches' cars and driven separately.
The problem with this idea is that it just wouldn't work very well. People who could evacuate by car already did. You would pretty much only be carrying those who could not drive, and picking them up is not nearly as simple driving around looking for them on the street.
Hell, it takes an hour to do a typical school bus's morning pickups, and that's when the driver knows where to find the kids, the kids are already on the street waiting for the bus, and the route doesn't go more than a couple miles from the school. Keeping in mind that the ones who haven't already gotten out of town are probably eldery or poor with lots of children, can you imagine how long it would take to find all of the people who couldn't evacuate, give them time to get ready, and load them on the bus?
What do you do when you get to Baton Rouge? Drive around until you run out of gas? Find a hotel with a few dozen empty rooms? Drop them off at the city limits?
My guess is the 200 buses would evacuate 5000 people to who-knows-where. Maybe it would be better than nothing, but I can understand why they didn't attempt it.
dom
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.
I live in Southeast Texas. We have an evacuation center in Beaumont. Many black people showed up to the center pre-hurricane landfall. We have some white people who have showed up too and many more people have showed up post-hurricane landfall. New Orleans was 68% black, so seeing a lot of black people shouldn't be surprising. New Orleans is also 20% below the poverty level. The large number of people without cars had no way to get out. Fear didn't have much to do with it. Also there have been a number of hurricanes to miss New Orleans contributing to a sense of invincibility. People just get a bunch of non-parishable food and fill the bathtub with clean drinkable water before the storm hits like their fathers and father's fathers did before them and survived.
Like I said before I live in Southeast Texas and we've had our share of near hits over the past few years. I remember as a child we use to do the same thing, treat hurricanes as an occasion for a party and just ride the thing out. Until 1992 when Andrew grew in strength at the last minute and threatened to hit us. That was the first time I remember our region receiving evacuation orders. What followed was a complete and total debacle. As everyone tried to use the same road to get out all at once at the last minute the traffic came to a halt. We moved 15 mph and not continously either, it was all stop and go. If it had hit us, I wouldn't be making this post. A van on a road ain't the greatest place to be in the middle of a hurricane. That situation was scary as hell.
After that warning shot across our bow, we got much more serious about planning evacuations. I don't know if we were the ones who came up with contraflow lane reversal, but after that we started using it. We set up evacution centers all across the state to handle massive evacuations. We have had a number of evacuations since then that have gone much better. We still try to make a party of it though. Go to some other city, get a hotel room, eat out at all these restaurants we don't have in our town. Treat it like a vacation. This makes evacuations somewhat expensive, but going and living in a highschool gym somewhere for a few days isn't anybodies idea of a good time.
Evacuating major metropolitan areas isn't exactly a cakewalk even when everybody has cars and a tank of gas. There is always some who think they can ride it out and a mandatory evacuation isn't actually mandatory. At least not in Texas, here it's just a declaration no one will help you if you stay. The mayor was lucky to be able to get 80% of his population out of the city pre-landfall. Maybe he could have done better pre-landfall, maybe not. Afterwards, well getting 100,000 people out of a city with one road out left and getting food, water, and medicine in to keep people alive while you do it, and conducting rescue operations, while the criminal portion of your city is in open insurrection just can't be easy. I'm sure a congressional commitee will thoroughly investigate and discover just what went wrong.
Like I said a lot of black people showed up pre-landfall so some of them had the resources to get out, but then a lot of them didn't too. Blacks aren't a homogeneous group of people you know. One should not make widespread generalizations about who has what resources. There are plenty of poor dead white people in Jefferson and St. Bernard parishes amongst others. The reason they aren't on tv is because the media has trouble imagining important things happening outside the city. As if no one lived in the parishes outside the city.
The Feds always take two or three days to show up, and five to seven days to reach full strength
then they should have been there on monday. bush declared a state of emergency several days before the hurricane hit, essentially putting the response under the responsibility of the executive branch (namely FEMA). even if the federal response takes a few days to ratchet up, then they still should have been there sunday or at the latest monday. the storm had passed by monday morning..
as for the local politicians belonging to the 'other party', i might remind you that nagin only became a dem 2 days before the mayoral primary, because he could win more votes as a dem. until then, he was GOP all the way.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!