<VV> H. Katrina

[Tony Underwood]

At 05:08 hours 08/31/2005, Charles Cromwell wrote:
>
>You are right. They need all they can get.People have
>no idea how bad this is. I just left there ahead of
>the storm.My grand daughter is stationed at Gulfport.
>She came thru it ok.But many did not.



It's worse than even that.  Most of the city of N.O. is below sea 
level sitting in a large basin surrounded by either higher ground or 
levees to keep the river and lakes out.   There is a levee that's 
broken and water is pouring out of  Lake Ponchartrain (a salt lake 
that gets fed by the gulf) into downtown New Orleans and there's not 
a lot anyone can to do stop it before the city simply fills up like a 
soup bowl.    And once it fills up, even after the levee is repaired, 
there's nowhere for the water to go outside either waiting for it to 
evaporate (yeah right) or mobilizing a huge amount of equipment and 
pumping it all back out.   It's gonna be an enormous undertaking that 
will take months if they can't stop the water from filling the city 
and with a breach in the levee the size of what's been on TV, they're 
not gonna stop it.

The city has been sinking ever since it's been there.   The 
continental crust in this region is weak (very large fault system 
runs under the region) and the city sits on a layer of river silts 
and sand several miles thick which keeps loading the weakened crust 
underneath, causing it all to slowly sink under the weight of the 
river-deposit silt and sand above, thus N.O. keeps dropping lower and 
the levees keep getting built higher and higher.   New Orleans is 
doomed to sink even lower as time passes, which means that it was 
only a matter of time before something like this comes along and 
throws a big monkey wrench into the machinery.    Without those 
levees, the area occupied by New Orleans would be a part of the Gulf 
of Mexico or at least part of lake Ponchartrain... and Nature is 
trying to do just that as we speak.

Don't expect things in N.O. to ever get back to what would be 
regarded as normal for a very long time.   It's gonna cost *all* of us.

I'm kinda bummed out over this...  New Orleans is in a bad way and 
it's getting worse by the minute and there's no end in 
sight.    Anyway, I've rattled on long enough; the Red Cross is gonna 
need some help...  anyone with a deep enough pocket might consider 
lending a hand.    Expect fuel prices to go up, again.


tony..