New Orleans Levee Break(s) Before and After

[Preface, September 12th, 2005: It is now nearly two weeks since this blog post was begun. In its initial draft it was quite short. As more information came in, it was revisied, corrected and expanded on the fly. Some of the information may be out of date. -KC  9/23: For info in the new breaches, see New Orleans Area in Trouble from Rita Storm Surge. -KC]

I'm probably violating all kinds of copyrights here, but since I haven't seen it elsewhere, here is that levee in New Orleans before and after the break (or at least a levee before & after). Note that the expanse of water in the after picture was formerly (or perhaps currently) occupied by houses.

The first picture comes via Matthew Harris's Flickr account, extracted from Google Earth. [SEE CORRECTED IMAGE w/ BREAK IN A DIFFERENT PLACE FURTHER DOWN THE PAGE.]

The second comes via a comment in Making Light and originates at the URL http://www.hunt101.com/img/319526.JPG, beyond which I don't know its provenance.

I don't guarantee that these are actually the same spot, because of the vagaries of all this. There are some differences in the buildings, but I don't know when the Google Earth picture was taken.

UPDATE: At Making Light, David Bell comments

Looking at Kathryn's pictures, the red-roofed building is very prominent on the Google Earth imagery, by the north end of the canal. It's on the lake shore. In the background haze you can see the high-rise buildings of the city centre. And the trees and the buildings on the opposite side of the canal are good landmarks on Google Earth.

30d01m07s N 90d07m17s W

And that looks like a 200-foot breach, similar width to the canal.

So the marked breach on the one photo may not be the same as the other. Is there more than one? I'm on a Mac so I can't get at Google Earth.

(Additional aerial photo references appreciated.)

FURTHER UPDATE: in the comments a fellow named kevin has accomplished what I haven't. He has gotten me a corrected "before" shot. I have them from Google Maps and GlobeXplorer, but couldn't seem to either link to them, or get copies. (They're too clever for the likes of me.) I had my digital camera in my lap all ready to take pictures of my screen, when his link arrived.  Thanks, kevin!

The question that remains is what the Harris picture represents. Is it the breach that was reported earlier?

(Web collaboration is a beautiful thing.)

Matthew Harris clarifies his breach picture, saying, Note these images are not current they are from older aerial photos that have been superimposed with graphics, they are for illustration purposes only. There are two breaches:

He has a second, closer, "Before" picture:

Via email, Mark Bernstein points out that it is being reported that the I-10 Bridge has been destroyed. Here's a Before shot, taken with my digital camera pointing it at my LCD monitor. Anyone got an After pic?

And here's the Houston Chronicle write-up:

Portions of the Interstate 10 high-rise bridge over the mouth of Lake Pontchartrain, east of New Orleans and south of Slidell, have collapsed. Some sections of the I-10 twin span — a lifeline between the south and north shores of Lake Pontchartrain — are missing; others have shifted position but are still standing.

"We know that the I-10 twin span has blown over, is no longer with us," said Mark Smith, spokesman for the Louisiana Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Here's an AP photo of the state of the bridge. The car is the same one as in the CNN video. Watching the CNN video a couple of times, it looks like something is flopped over the steering wheel, though you can't see into the car from this angle. (Follow the link for a crisper image.
This is from the Times Picayune, where I finally did get their slide-shows to work.

 

An Afterthought: we blog-folk are doing this by the seat of our pants and actually getting somewhere. But as Xeni Jardin asks, "media evacuates, there is no grid, damage map?" Why do you see this attempt here and not on the CNN of MSNBC site?

This isn't a disaster movie. It's real. People care about specific people in specific places. They want to understand precisely where the water is 20 ft. deep, where the water is coming in. Many, many people have very specific, individual relationships to this city. The specifics we are being given just don't cut it. If I can look this stuff up, why don't they?

St Bernard's Parish, via dipdewdog on Flickr, provenance unknown, though it looks like a news photo:

Here is what I gather is roughly the same area from Google maps (again, via my digital camera. Anyone know how to do screen shoots in Tiger? [8/31 UPDATE: I've been given much helpful advice. Thanks.]).

[9/2: A Google Earth image for comparison is available in the album, thanks to Scott Sherris.]

Returning to the subject of breached levees, here is another photo from Flickr, this one posted by darrelf, again of unknown provenance, though it looks like a news photo. His caption reads, New Orleans, LA -- notice the water coming over the levee at the bottom.

Peter Trei notes that this break in an MSNBC graphic is not one of the ones we've been talking about, but is instead at 30 01' 12.39" N 90 04' 14.72" W ( decimal: 30.020108° -90.070756°).

I'm trying to get a good Before Satellite photo to position it. UPDATE: Trei has helped me out and sent me a couple:

He remarks:

The MSNBC.com front page shows a breach about 150 feet long. I've managed to identify the location in Google Earth, based on the shapes of the houses. . . . Google earth shows that this is on a different canal than the others - its on the west side of the London Avenue Outfall Canal, opposite Pratt Street, a few houses south of the bridge carrying Robert E Lee Blvd.

In a subsequent email, Trei point out this MSNBC picture, which I think is of the same break as the image I got from darrelf, about which he says:

This one appears to be a highly foreshortened view of the bridge the carries State Hwy 39 over the short canal connecting the river and the Main Outfall canal.

The breach appears to be at opposite Jourdan Ave, near N Roman Street, at about 29 58 12.48 N    90 01 24.64 W

The thing I don't understand is that the water in this photo seems to be flowing  INTO the canal.

 

Here is a hybrid sat photo street map, also courtesy of Peter Trei, showing the location:

The governor has announced a complete evacuation of New Orleans, for obvious reasons.

MEANWHILE, a post-apocalypse SF novel plays itself out. This is from the Times Picayune (via email from Mark Bernstein).

Law enforcement efforts to contain the emergency left by Katrina slipped into chaos in parts of New Orleans Tuesday with some police officers and firefighters joining looters in picking stores clean.

At the Wal-Mart on Tchoupitoulas Street, an initial effort to hand out provisions to stranded citizens quickly disintegrated into mass looting. Authorities at the scene said bedlam erupted after the giveaway was  announced over the radio.

While many people carried out food and essential supplies, others cleared out jewelry racks and carted out computers, TVs and appliances on  handtrucks.

Some officers joined in taking whatever they could, including one New Orleans cop who loaded a shopping cart with a compact computer and a 27-inch flat-screen television.

Officers claimed there was nothing they could do to contain the anarchy, saying their radio communications have broken down and they had no direction from commanders. . . .

Inside the store, one woman was stocking up on make-up. She said she took comfort in watching police load up their own carts.

“It must be legal,” she said. “The police are here taking stuff, too.”

 

The caption on whitehouse.gov begins, President George W. Bush is handed a map by Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin.

Shawn in the comments is really onto something, figuring out a way to superimpose media images on Google maps:

Finally -- because I plan to go to bed shortly -- here is a photo from the Washington Post showing the flood waters rising around the stadium which, as far as I know, still has 10,000 people in it.

4:38 AM, 8/31: Shawn writes via email,

The google earth community is really flowing with people matching up arial photos to the levee breaks. There's one group of people setting up an auto updating google earth file. I placed all of the good ones I found at tehsquee.com

You need Google Earth to be able to use the files he's posted there.

For more images, see my subsequent post. The superimposed images are toward the bottom.

NOTE 8/31 at 3:36 PM: the fist NASA comparison satellite photos are in.

9/1: CNN has an interesting animation/video of how the levees broke.

PS: If you are trying to make a comment and it gets rejected, email it to me at kathryn.cramer at gmail.com.

 

Navigation aids

For those new to blogs, here are shortcuts to information about our collaborative maps project:

First of all, my Katrina archive contains all blog posts related to Katrina. The archive page is updated each time I make a new Katrina post, so it would be the best place to bookmark.  On the other hand, it contains many images, so on a dial-up connection it would be slow to load. Also, separately, I have an online album of Katrina map images, Katrina Floods New Orleans, 2005.

As of now, my individual Katrina posts related to maps are:

1. New Orleans Levee Break(s) Before and After
2. not too far from filling in the bowl
3. NASA's First Katrina Before and After Comparison
4. Google Earth Helps Place the Flow from a New Orleans Neighborhood into the Canal in Context
5. DigitalGlobe's New Orleans Before and After Images Are Up
6. How to Find Out if Your New Orleans House Is Under Water
7. How to Find Out if Your New Orleans House Is Under Water, Part 2: We Really Need to Integrate Topo Maps and Known Water Depths into the System
8. Escape Routes for Hurricane Victims
9. Welcome, Forbes and BBC Readers
10. Associated Press & Digital Globe Make Zoomable New Orleans Satellite Map Available
    Meanwhile, New Orleans Burns
11. New Orleans: Notes from My Parents
12. Welcome, New York Times Readers
     

Also, my sister, Karen Cramer Shea, has been guest-blogging for me while I was away over the weekend. Her posts are:

1. Lost in Katrina
2. Rebuilding New Orleans

Comments

[matthew]

I'm pretty sure you've got the wrong spot. follow that canal all the way to the lake, that red spot on the first map is probably that red roofed building in what is called bucktown.

[kevin]

here you go. tried to line up the angles as best i could.

[kevin]

let's try that again...

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v323/shad0wcaptain/katrina/breachbefore.jpg

[ryan]

for mac screenshot of an active window hit...

command-shift-4. the cursor will become a crosshair. select the active window you want a picture of and then hit spacebar. the crosshair then turns to a camera. simply click the mouse button after this anywhere in the highlighted window and it will save the pic to your desktop

[ryan]

also you can use command-shit-3 for an instant screenshot of the whole screen. you may the need to open and use "save as" to convert to jpeg or desired file type as the default is a PNG file

[Stephanie]

Cmd-shift-4 will get let you select portions of the screen for the capture. But that (and ryan's cmd-shift-3) will generate a PDF; in order to get a usable web image, add the control key to the mix. (That becomes difficult to manage, but what I usually do is hit cmd-shift-4, let go, use mouse to drag the crosshairs where I want them, then hold down ctrl while releasing the mouse button.) Paste the result into an image editor of some kind and save.

[Joe in Australia]

I know the location identified in the photo - it's Lake Marina Ave, opposite the marina. It's very close to the Southern Yacht Club, the burning building featured on the news. If anyone has a current photo showing the Marseilles condominium, a highrise about 200 yards / metres along the road in the bottom left corner of the photo, it would make my mother-in-law very happy indeed.

[Shawn]

Here's a Google Earth Image overlay. Download this and open it with Google Earth and it will place the image on the Google Earth Globe.

I wish there was some way, where we could work together and get a lot of these flood pictures up and overlayed over GE.

Any takers to spear head this? Set up a wiki or some such?

[Shawn]

That didn't go so well.

The url is

http://insubordinate.net/temp/MSNBCRisingFearsGE.kmz

Here's what it looks like in GE

http://insubordinate.net/temp/rising.jpg
http://insubordinate.net/temp/rising.jpg

[Shawn]

I'm posting the overlays into the google earth community.

I'm posting them into this thread.

http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/showthreaded.php/Cat/0/Number/90791/an/0/page/0#90791

So far there's the MSNBC picture from above, and the overlay of the I-10 bridge damage.

To open them into google earth File > Open, and then select the KMZ file. It will fly you right to the overlay. The perspectives are off in these images, but they work and give you an idea.

[Rachel Snider]

For taking screen shots on OS X Tiger, open the application Grab. You can then capture either the enitre window, screen, or a drag and click section there of.

[melissa]

Here's a better pic of the I-10 damage:
http://www.wwltv.com/sharedcontent/breakingnews/slideshow/083005_dmnkatrina/16.html

[Bill G]

Darling, this world neeeds more of you!

Stay bright and safe,
Bill
HFE
Art & Design

[JoeK]

"The breach appears to be at opposite Jourdan Ave, near N Roman Street, at about 29 58 12.48 N 90 01 24.64 W

The thing I don't understand is that the water in this photo seems to be flowing INTO the canal."

What's even more interesting is that the apparent flow is towards the north along the canal, away from the mississippi river... it instead looks to be taking the less obvious, though more immediate route to the Gulf.

[ckd]

Further to Rachel's recommendation of Grab, you can actually do this from the Preview application in Tiger, which saves some steps.

Under the File menu in Preview there is a Grab submenu. You'll probably want Selection or Window. It will pull it in as a TIFF, but you can Save As... to get a JPEG/PNG/whatever suitable for web uploading.

[David]

Any idea if there are additional aerial shots from the lake to the east of the breach area .... basically of the UNO area and neighborhood to the east? family has home there and would love to see.

Here is the terraserver image of the area you are discussing:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/usgsentry.aspx?T=4&S=13&Z=15&X=485&Y=2076&W=3&qs=Oriole+Street%7cNew+Orleans%7cLA%7c

[krimpet]

Re: Screenshots
In the not-unlikely event that the Grab submenu is unavailable, got to Applications>Utilities>Grab. Once in the application, the otions under the Capture menu will provide a variety of Screenshot methods. There are key commands for them which sidestep this whold process.

Nice work with photos, very impressive.

[Rich]

The reason that the water seems to be flowing into the canal is that it is, in fact, flowing into the canal. There are news reports that in one part of the city, the canal level has receded below the level of floodwaters and they are flowing back into the canal.

I agree, nice work with the photos, and I'm especially impressed that someone was able to match roof shapes up to google earth. (Sorry to say, the breach in the London Ave canal is on the block where I grew up...bet my parents' house is underwater right now.)

[Thad]

Okay, there seems to be some confusion about OS X screenshots.

Command-Shift-3 and Command-Shift-4 screenshots in Tiger are PNGs by default, not PDFs. (They were PDFs in 10.3 and earlier.)

However, you can change the default screenshot format to just about anything you like -- BMP, GIF, JPEG, PICT, TIFF, etc -- using a utility like Cocktail. (Go to "Interface -> Misc -> Screenshot file format.)

You can also modify the default screenshot file format using the terminal, but Cocktail is easier.

I see no advantage to using Grab. The screenshot shortcuts can be activated with simple keyboard shortcuts and don't require the use of any additional application or application service.

Thanks for your work on this, Kathryn. Maps are important. Looks like the mainstream media is finally getting around to putting some up.

[Elisabeth Porter]

Hi. Quick question from an amateur. First of all, this along with the link where I found you is the most useful site I have found on the web (U Texas Maps). Do you think that a new waterway/river is forming from the Lake to the Mississipi or canals? That would explain the flow into the canal.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Here is the answer as I understand it: The lake, usually filled to about 1 ft below sea level, is filled to 3 ft ABOVE sea level.

[Kyle Goetz]

You said Google Maps was too smart for you, so here's how to beat them:
Once you have the Google Maps image exactly how you want it on their site at maps.google.com, click "Email", which is located near the upper-right corner of the site. It will bring up an email box with a link. This link will take you to exactly what you are now looking at.

[Laurie]

Hi,

I really appreciate the efforts put in by all to provide info on the flood damage. Does anyone have any information, images relating to the Longue Vue estate on Bamboo Road? It's towards the end of the 17th Street Canal near the Country Club. The home was donated to the city by some family friends, The Stern Family. They are wanting any information as to how high the flood waters are in that area. The home is a New Orleans treasure. Thank you, Laura

[John Wright]

The city was dirty any way. Filled with crime and dirty politics running in all areas of government. Hopefully this water will clean out the city. great things happen out of tragedy

[Karen Cramer Shea]

I have heard that the lake is subject to the Gulf of Mexico tides and now the city is as well. the water was receding in some places because of the tide but they were expecting it to return at high tide.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Reader Chuck Lee says via email:

I've spent some time in New Orleans, and it's important to understand that the water levels in the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchatrain are not the same. See: New Orelans Flood Risk cross section about half-way down this Lousiana State University page.

The images you have of the levee break near the Highway 39, North Clairborne Street bridge, is just north of a lock on the waterway. This waterway, called the Inner Harbor Navigation Channel, is the connector between the River and the Lake -- it was the prime reason New Orleans was founded.

Based on USGS maps from Microsoft Terraserver, Lake elevation is about 7 feet MSL, and the River elevation is less, under normal conditions. However, since things aren't normal, the Channel is serving as a drain from the flooded area towards the Lake. It appears in your photo that the Lock south of the bridge is still holding, so it seems River water has flooded that area (another broken levee riverside), and is trying to drain into the Lake vis the Channel levee break.

Hope this helps.

[Joshua Gabrielson]

here is a link with before and after sat shots of new orleans.

thanks
Josh

[Joshua Gabrielson]

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/126535main_neworleans_flood_0831.jpg

[ckd]

Preview's Grab submenu is apparently a 10.4 feature, though since Kathryn asked about Tiger, she should have it available.

[Melissa]

Kathy, any shots of the corner of Paris Ave and Lakeshore Drive, 70122, in New Orleans?
Anything you have is appreciated

[Kathryn Cramer]

Chuck ads a furth comment via email:

Kathryn,
I can't believe how fast you jumped into the investigative mode. I've been glued to the TV for 4 days. This is not like me. Watching the hurricane cat 5 approaching the gulf coast. Today, I decided I better come into work and I found myself on the web.

I found myself, yesterday, wondering what and where the breach was. No pictures of the breach all day on CNN and the weather channel. Yet, the news choppers were everywhere viewing rescues. This didn't make sense. Intuitively, I suspected they were covering up for panic's sake.

Today, as coverage showed the breaches the stories didn't make sense. The were conflicting reports. I did see one quick flash of water pouring over a breach in Lake Pontchartrain. Then, I got lost in the confusion. Is it disinformation?

Your picture of water flowing back into the canal got me back on track, because you asked the same question, I wondered. Why is water flowing into the canal? Obviously, the Lake was breached and water is flowing over lower land to a lower canal.

Last night, I did a spin through the web and by a Google search, I was in awe to learn that New Orleans, La., Fema and many other authoritative agencies were warned frequently, since 1965 by very intelligent research groups that this disaster was in the making. ( I have bookmarked many sites) In fact, many groups stated, this is the greatest US disaster waiting to happen. (Even with a Cat 3 hurricane)

We must ask ourselves,
1st, How are our past and current leaders responsible for this?
2nd, Are they covering their butts? CYA
3rd, Are they lying to us now and thus all the ensuing confusion of reports?
4th, Did they properly educate New Orleans residents of the risks of even a cat 3 hurricane?
5th, Before this hurricane, did they persuasively speak of the known total risk of a cat 3 hurricane and above, so as to persuade everybody to leave?

Right now everybody's eyes are focused on the disaster.

My eyes are open to the history and I am wondering why the past failures and I am smelling cover up. Just thought I would share my thoughts.
. . .
For more thought: Are leaders in our country acting responsible, and being held accountable, when so much squeezes through the fingers of the bureaucratic beast with many heads making decisions?
2nd, Are there ways to change the decision making process in our country to make sure such major items are prioritized and dealt with correctly.

[Kathryn Cramer]

I'm in the process of posting an album mostly of Google Earth superimpositions of disaster photos created by Shawn's group. There's a small chance you might find what you are looking for there, but I don't know in deatil what they covered. NASA has started releasing new satellite photos (no close-ups yet), so you might get what you need eventually.

[Kathryn Cramer]

A reader named Jeannie Dominguez asked me to post this comment, sent via email:

I was just listening to our President and I cannot stop crying. Ronald Reagan often said, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."

I am new at this blogging stuff but I just had to say what I think about the news being reported. Katrina was a catalyst and responsible for tearing everything apart and much flooding. KATRINA WAS GONE AND THE LEVY BREACHED AFTERWARDS. So while we keep saying "Katrina" the truth is that emergency management all the way up to the President are responsible for the thousands that are likely to be dead due to the flooding that came afterwards.

The breach in levies now reaching and hiding rooftops, with the noticeable exception of the French Quarter, have yet to be plugged? Like most Americans we are following the news regarding the effects of Katrina. No one is DEMANDING to know about what is being done? When reporters do ask or report about it, they seem to just accept the ridiculously lame EXCUSES that in turn they and the media project to its viewers? Why have we not stopped, just stopped, the incoming water? What kind of reporting neglects the fact that we have not stopped the incoming water? Is anyone asking themselves the same questions?

On Good Morning America, someone reported the breach could not be stopped with a hung shoulder attitude, as if the leaders of this city could not brainstorm and gave up because the sandbags are swept away. The governor was interviewed and the question of plugging the levy was not asked. Today on the 12:00 news, I was spoon fed, that the Army of the United States of America could not plug it using HUGE sandbags. Our troops, that are dying, having toppled a government and paved the way for big oil business and huge federal contracts are in New Orleans already? They could not plug the breach? We are not looking for neatly placed, in little rows solutions. We do not need a structure requiring engineers and whatever other stupid justifications there are. We need to plug a hole. It is and should have been the priority. Maybe I just watch too many movies of communities battling flood waters and successfully saving the farm and saving the day. Maybe I have visions of Volcano and the Emergency Manager that blew up a building creating tons of cement to block and divert the lava into the ocean. I can't remember the actor's name and that pisses me off too.

Hell you could just pick up slabs of Highway 10 with a cable and dump them where the levy is breached. Why aren't we dropping or placing massive amounts of anything that will stop the water from coming in? Where are scenes of our helicopters, the Marines or our ships that went all the way to Sumatra? What kind of emergency management is it that gives up and does not mobilize instantly every resource we have and instead just shakes it's head and gives in to hopelessness? What kind of reporting does not pounce all over this? Don't tell me or tell us all that the breach is impossible to sandbag or obstruct with the considerable amount of cement and debris that is all over the place.

Why is "can't" part of our vocabulary in such dire circumstances? The public at large is watching this and wondering why the city and its people are being literally murdered with the toxic water that no one cares to stop from continuing to enter. One asks themselves what agenda is in play here when no one is saving the homes of the poor and displaced. They are figuring out where to get rid of them as opposed to saving their homes. Most of those that did not evacuate and are trapped are poor.

Is this gross incompetence or a new way of clearing land for prime real estate for big business development? Of course we do not know but is it not so odd to revert to paranoid thinking when we see the mass destruction of the already poor.I am not a fortune teller but I predict that New Orleans will be reconstructed alright, but not for the people that were displaced.

Leaving conspiracy theories aside because I want to be taken seriously, let's look at what WE DO KNOW. We need to prioritize our focus. The focus should not be the damage or the tragedy because that is clear to us all by just looking at the images we see. We should be enraged at the value given to a human life lately since the war and now blatantly at home on our own soil. The focus should be on what we cannot see, yet we know for fact: the inexcusable lack of action or reaction to the broken levy. It is unconscionable that now our troops are the scapegoat. It is solely the government leaders at all levels, including the Army brass all the way to the Commander in Chief that are responsible for this shameful response that no doubt will benefit someone. We just do not see it yet. Remember this letter when New Orleans rebuilds.

Ronald Reagan often said, "The most terrifying words in the English language are: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you." I have never been so ashamed of my own government and so ashamed to be American. You should know that I do not vote or have political favorites when I say that the people of New Orleans should take the governor and the mayor and now with the 12:00 news, our Commander in Chief and hang them by the thumbs because they have failed them and are directly at fault for the immense loss of life and property; Katrina is not; not really.

Jeannie Dominguez

PS I am no writer. So if someone wants to point out that this is not well written then please correct and criticize all you want. As long as you read it and get the idea. Then you can write something about it and write it well. I am sending this to anyone that won't press delete because they think they know it all. I think I too have something of value to say and this time I plan on saying it no matter how it comes out.We should all be writing letters and demanding answers with regard to the gross incompetence and the placing blame where it needs to be placed. We should demand answers for the dead and for the homeless. We should demand justice for the abandoned and the murdered.

[Dr James Cuthbertson Smyth]

Do you have a private income or something?

As a working class Englishperson I can't remember the last time I saw someone with so much free time available to wank off in cyberspace. Congratlations. Maybe you'll make it on to a chat show some day. Really.

James. London (England, not Candada).

xxx

[Kathryn Cramer]

Thanks. Actually I am at home with two kids and no child care, and am trying to get them ready for school, clean up the house, and unpack from our vacation, prepare for a visit from my mother-on-law, and I also have a book contract deadline shortly.

I just happen to have a very fast computer and Internet connection and to be rather good at this.

The real secret is narrowing your focus to what you think are the really essential questions. It seemed to me that the most essential unanswered question was the location and nature of the levee breaks.

Also, I suspect that not having cable TV is a help rather than a hindrence.

[Thad]

As a working class Englishperson I can't remember the last time I saw someone with so much free time available to wank off in cyberspace.

But apparently you have plenty of time to complain about the "wanking off," eh, James?

[Kathryn Cramer]

Reader Jon O. writes via email:

Wanted to get this information out to someone who might
be able to do something.

It is possible to use a high-power laser capable of
making patterns to send messages to the people
stranded in New Orleans. These lasers can display
images, pictures and text on the sky and can be
seen for miles in all directions. The image will
need some amount of cloud cover, fog or other
particulates in the air to reflect the image.

Do not reject this idea if you haven't seen
one of these displays. It's hard to imagine,
but the images are reflected off clouds and
can be seen for miles. It looks just like
the Bat signal -- seriously.

Disaster relief agencies could use this technique to
provide information to those who are stranded
in the city, including instructions, gathering
points, pick-up points, etc.

With no electricity, or phone service, using
lasers to project information into the clouds
so a large number of people can see the text
could be very useful.

FEMA or the Mayor should put out a request
for one of these high power lasers and control
systems and see if they can get one down there
ASAP.

Some examples:

Companies advertise with long range lasers, able to
dominate the sky within a radius of 50 km.
http://www.amtsgym-sdbg.dk/as/sky.htm

Images of text and logos:
http://www.lasertainment.com/adlaser.htm
http://www.ctalasers.com/outdoor-lasers.htm

http://www.laseronics.com/main.html
http://www.laserfantasy.com/government.asp
http://www.lilaser.net/noflash/logos.htm
http://www.lilaser.net/noflash/graphandanimation.htm

[Tom]

The Bush administration intentionally broke the levees, just like they intentionally demolished the World Trade Center and sent a missile into the Pentagon. What a perfect opportunity to sabatage the country!

[Jeanette Dominguez]

The United States of America, the most powerful government in the world is defeated by a hole in a wall.

Some News Links:

New Orleans WAS One Lucky Big Mess http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30/national/30orleans.html (Dire predictions of 20-foot-deep toxic rivers running in the streets and huge buildings coming apart did not materialize)
Officials Say Broken Levee Not a Problem http://rdu.news14.com/content/headlines/?ArID=73854&SecID=2
Levees Breached on Purpose to Relieve Pressure? http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9145473/ (Interesting is the fact that the levees on the side of the ocean with the immense storm surge did not fail. The levees on the lakeside did. Levee repair is yet to begin)
Levies Initially Held http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/08/0831_050831_katrina_flooding.html
New Orleans must be abandoned http://www.cbc.ca/story/world/national/2005/08/31/New_Orleans20050831.html?ref=rss
Authorities Surrender http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/weather/orl-bk-katrina083105,0,5886773.story?coll=orl-home-headlines&track=rss
Did this have to happen? http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ep/20050831/en_bpiep/didneworleanscatastrophehavetohappen

[Jeanette Dominguez]

"As a working class Englishperson I can't remember the last time I saw someone with so much free time available to wank off in cyberspace. Congratlations. Maybe you'll make it on to a chat show some day. Really."

Adolph Hitler said: "What luck for the rulers that men do not think". Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr:. said: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

We the People need to see more then that which is fed to us in the news.

[Kathryn Cramer]

Reader Krysia asks via email that I post this coment:

I found your site after doing a Google search for "New Orleans levee breaches". I was searching because I read an account of a person cut off on CNN talking to Wolf Blitzer. He was supposedly telling Wolf that he and others in St. Bernards Parish have been fighting for 10 years to have that canal closed exactly because this sort of thing might happen, to no avail. I don't know about that account but it is something to see that the breach did not occur on the lake or the river, but along this canal. Not sure if you have familiarity with this issue (haven't been able to read all your info) but thanks for posting the photos.

I should emphasize that I didn't see this report myself. I read about it somewhere else on the internet but was intrigued by the theory (especially if the guy was really cut off on national TV). Would be interesting to see it looked into.

[Eagle]

If you want to be angry, be angry. But don't waste it on the wrong problem. When I first heard about the first levy break, it was said to be 300 feet long. That's 100 yards - the length of a football field. You think blocking that is easy? Anything big and heavy enough to block it would be too big and heavy to move into place. It takes time to accomplish what you are suggesting. Being mad about that time is like... like getting angry about the aftermath of an avalanche. The results were already inevitable long before you became aware of them.

Instead, be angry at the structure and nature of our political system. In particular, be disgusted at the senority system which turns tax-dollars into pork projects for Senators who manage to stay in office the longest, and get the top jobs on the most influential committees. If someone had asked for 10 billion to build a Dutch-style levy system around New Orleans even last June, they'd have been laughed off Capitol Hill. There are too many higways to build in West Virginia and name after Robert Byrd. There are too many bridges to build in the wilderness of Alaska. It's a lot more important to replace one working highway with a risky, unbelievably expensive one in Boston than to build a new levy in the dirty South!

This is going to get spun into a recent failure, as if the levies wouldn't have breached under the same conditions if they had occurred in 1999, 1991, or 1987, or as many administrations back as you want to go. Don't believe it. The problem is built into the system, and it has been for many, many years.