Absolutely bloody terrifying: a PSA

[vulgarweed]

As I'm sure most of you in the US have heard, Hurricane Katrina is a Category 5. It looks like this.
It is in the Top Three of all-time recorded US hurricanes for its size and intensity.

It has sustained winds of 175 mph, and gusts up to 215. It might bring up to 30-foot storm surges. That will overwhelm the levees and sea walls built to protect places that are at or below sea level. There's no pumping system that can handle that. It is not being alarmist to say that the destruction of New Orleans, by most accepted definitions of that word, is a very real possibility.

There are an estimated 100,000 people in New Orleans who do not own cars and have no way to evacuate.

Those of you on the flist who are religious, magical, and/or spiritual in any way, please take some time out for this today. Everybody: clear a little space in the budget for the Red Cross if possible.

Comments

[divinetailor.livejournal.com]

holy shit. will do.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Yeah. *boggles*. Great!

[hjbender.livejournal.com]

Good Lord. Katrina was little more than a tropical depression when I last saw her, and now she's a bloody monster. And it happened so quickly.

I will keep New Orleans and her people in my thoughts and prayers.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

It happened literally overnight - I was watching some of the weather blogs late last night when it shot up to Category 4, and it was a 5 when I woke up this morning.

They say it's because the water temperatures in the Gulf are in the 90s. "Like kerosene on a fire."

[waxbean.livejournal.com]

I've been watching this develop in the news as well as in the online satellite feeds. It really is horrifying -- have you been to New Orleans? I used to go for Spring Break back in college- I've long thought the best word to describe NO is "fragile." Most of the town is just old and brittle and already tired.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I've never been there, though I've always wanted to...I hope I still can someday. :(

It seems that old historic quality is so much of its charm, but...it always has been fragile, I guess. Sinking slowly over the centuries too, I think.

[catherinecookmn.livejournal.com]

I've been, once, to Jackson Square and the French Quarter. Yes and yes -- lovely and fragile.

Over at DailyKos, there's a thread for folk in the area who can offer to put up NO residents. Another thing you can do: Donate blood. (You can do it through the Red Cross or America's Blood, a network of independent non-profit blood banks.

[quantum-witch.livejournal.com]

I've only been there once, and I agree with Prof. Mary. It's so ancient and delicate. And filled with such history you can almost taste it in the air.

My prayers/spells/whatever I can throw out there are already out there. More will follow. I am drawing madly today, and when I do that I tend to trance out completely. While doing this, I will endeavour to push myself a little further.

Believe that certain angels and demons don't want the place to disappear. They really like the atmosphere.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Such a wonderful place...but also with a lot of poverty and not a lot of resources to deal with this, though it's always been known something like this could happen and it would be disastrous.

Thank you so much for the focus. And there is comfort in this: if there's any city in America that has a lot of Forces and Powers looking out for it, NO is the one. :)

[scieppan.livejournal.com]

We'll be lighting candles and sending good thoughts.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Great!

[happiestwhen.livejournal.com]

God, my friend lives north of New Orleans, and she left around 2am last night to evacuate to Texas. I visited her at the end of June - it was my first time in Louisiana. Wow, this is just surreal. I hope things turn out okay. *wibble*

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I'm really glad she got out!

[labellerose.livejournal.com]

Holy crap. Un-be-LIEVE-able. One of my good friends lived in NO as a child-I always loved her descriptions of life there. I am sending out all the good vibrations I can.

[notlefthanded.livejournal.com]

It's really scary. I was watching the Weather Channel report a few minutes ago and they showed the difference between Hurricane Charley last year and this new one. Last year I was in Florida to see my grandparents after Charley and was shocked to see huge metal light poles, etc, twisted and bent like cocktail straws. And this one is SO much bigger, and the storm surge is terrifying.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I know, it looks horrific. I have a dear friend from my teenage years who was several years older than me - he was a military brat, and his family was on a base on the Gulf Coast for a while: he was a small child when Camille hit. He's still got scary memories of what that was like.

[ladylisse.livejournal.com]

I've spent most of the morning trying to track down my friend and hoping like hell that all the incommunicadoness means she stuffed herself onto one of Tulane's busses to Mississippi. Or at least one of the busses to the Superdome. Broke grad student = no car.

My sis said she heard they were evacuating Gulfport and looking at evacuating Mobile too. That thing's like half the size of the Gulf.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Oh, I hope so too. Extra prayers for her - but if Tulane had its own drive to get people out, that's good, good chance she was there, right? I imagine the big universities would have organized something...

I can't believe how HUGE it is.

[ladylisse.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping she was there. I'm going through Tulane's site now and it looks like they're just stuffing people on busses. I'm just hoping she doesn't decide to ride this out -- if she's anywhere near Tulane's campus, she's right in the middle of downtown NO.

It's only going like 12-15 mph, so it's just picking up steam from the Gulf temps. I'm trying to remember the last time I saw one that big.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

I don't think you can remember. The last one with this kind of intensity and pressure this low to hit the US was Camille in '69. Katrina is larger in area.

[dphearson.livejournal.com]

Here's the crappy bit:

My neighbors next door went down there to attend a wedding, and I can't reach them on the cell phone.

[vulgarweed.livejournal.com]

Oh hell. Adding them to the 'good thoughts' list too.

You've got mine

[murasaki99.livejournal.com]

Prayers and good wishes for the safety of the people of NO. The NOAA web site has a hurricane tracker up if you want to keep up-to-date and an RSS feed.

I have an old colleague from back when I worked for Martin Marietta who has been living down there for several years, I hope he's OK. I have no way to get in touch with him because we kind of lost track of each other over the years, but I believe he ran a restaurant down there. He's a wonderful cook. :-)

The latest NOAA hurricane swath forecast is here
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at2%2Bshtml/145105.shtml?3day?large

It shows hurricane Katrina grinding right over New Orleans and then continuing on up the Mississippi River and finally curving off toward New York by the Pennsylvania route. Hopefully by the time it gets out that far it'll be nothing more than lots of heavy rain but even that can be dangerous I've got to keep all my East Coast friends and my prayers as well.

I'm also going to check out the BBC web site, they're really good about keeping on top of breaking news.

[rathenar.livejournal.com]

(I'm just one of your lurkers, usually, but...)

My gods, New Orleans. I've never been there, but I love it anyway - the story that changed my whole world came from there (Poppy Z Brite's Lost Souls.) It'll break my heart if that city dies.

*puts a shoulder to the Wheel of Fortune, with a will*