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Shepherd Smith reported live at approximately 2:25 p.m. CDT today that New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter escaped catastrophe, though buildings there did suffer some damage. Some grabs:
Looking down Bourbon Street.
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Intersection of Bourbon St and Bienville
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Intersection of Bourbon St and Bienville, looking the other way
My wife and I spent our honeymoon in the French Quarter in 1980. We haven’t been back since then, though we have wanted to revisit. Maybe now that the FQ is still there, we’ll go. After all, New Orleans has been threatened by a hard hurricane three years in a row now. We’re happy their luck has held thus far, but one day the Big One will hit.
As I mentioned to my church yesterday, though, for New Orleans to dodge the big bullet means that it strikes someone else. I doubt that the people of coastal Alabama are rejoicing that they took the major blow rather than New Orleans.
Although the FQ escaped major damage (as reported so far), reports from the rest of the city are not so good. There are reports of some sections of the city under several feet of water and major structural damage to buildings.
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August 29th, 2005 at 2:51 pm
When I lived in N.O. going to Tulane, the streets flooded pretty regularly after a big rain. Those pictures don’t look bad at all. Thanks for posting the pics, it put my mind at ease.
August 30th, 2005 at 7:37 pm
The disaster striking New Orleans is miniscule compared to what might well happen!
The major threat now facing Gulf Coast area, which nobody in the media is talking about, is that the heavy rainfall from Katrina in the incredible large Mississippi River watershed which is right where what is now tropical storm Katrina is dropping a huge amount of water.
The potential disaster of equivalent magnitude, and similar shape, to the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. You can learn a little bit about that disaster in the Wikipedia encyclopedia which you can find by searching on “Great Mississippi Flood of 1927” with google. One correction to that article; 246 is a ridiculously small number for the number of people killed by that disaster. That may be the number of reported deaths; a characteristic of that disaster was that there was almost no recording of the extant of the disaster. It was a case of “the dead don’t talk.” Based on other information in the Wikipedia article, I would guess that over a million people died. Others more expert than myself might have better guesses.
If there river does begin to rise, the Bonnie Carrie spillway may well protect New Orleans from leaks below the spillway, but, taking a lesson from the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, that is not where most of the damage will occur.
Most historians agree that the “Great Mississippi Flood of 1927” was the greatest natural disaster to strike the U.S. in the last 80 years. You will find claims that the great flood of 1993 was the worst disaster to strike the U.S. in “recent history,” but, that is simply weasel-wording - the implicit assumption in such claims is that anything whic h happened for than 70 years ago is not “recent history.” The Wikipedia artilce does a good job of explaining all that.
So why is the press not talkiing about it? Well, historically, government press releases have downplayed potential dangers to our country. So one can speculate, but, that’s all it is. In my opinion, though, the more people who are aware of immeninent danger, danger which makes 9/11 look like child’s play, the better. That’s why I am writing this letter.
August 31st, 2005 at 7:16 am
[...] r Current events/news, Hurricanes
Monday it looked like the French Quarter had dodged the bullet. This was a scene in the Quarter just af [...]