the hurricane

[low_delta]

It just keeps getting worse in New Orleans. No, not the reports, the damage. Water is still rising. Lake Ponchartrain is still pouring through the levee. It won't stop until the water levels even out.

Water levels rose so quickly in some places, that residents had to flee in a hurry. Some fled to their attics, but had to break or cut through their roofs to escape the water. I can only imagine how many weren't able to escape that way.


But then you hear stories like this...

"Jenkins, the Moss Point woman who fled her flooded home by boat, told the Sun-Herald that she was confident staying home because she has lived in her house for 29 years and never seen the waters rise to her stoop. "

What were these people thinking?

Comments

[sunshyncat.livejournal.com]

It is easy to deny and think that it will never happen to you. It is just too easy...

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I think many of them are denying it even though they know better. The ones who feel they have nothing to lose, including their lives. I wonder how many of them use the bravado to hide the fact that deep down, they really don't care how they come out of it.

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

they were thinking that the levees have always held, every year, and a lot of them didn't have any where else to go.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

It may be the case with her that she didn't have anyplace to go, and I am sorry for her that the hurricane took her home, but the reason she gave was pure stupidity. She said she'd never seen water up to her steps, when she'd never seen a hurricane. How many others lost their lives for the same sorts of reasons?

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

I wonder how long she had lived there.. to have never SEEN a hurricane? New Orleans is threatened by big storms every year.. granted there haven't been that many direct hits.. but if she has lived in that house for 29 years.. she has SEEN a hurricane!

But to return to your point.. I imagine a lot of them did.. I haven't seen any actual fatality counts from anywhere, just vague "reports coming in" of bodies floating. Of course one also pointed out that many of the bodies reported in New Orleans were from above ground mausoleums... so surely they won't count the already dead in their counts????

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I don't think "bodies" last very long in those crypts. They decompose rather quickly in that climate.

You're right, she's seen a hurricane. I was trying to say that she's never seen one of this magnitude do a direct hit on the city. What I was thinking was that Betsy was 1965, which was before this woman's time, and it was only cat 3. And Camille was '69. This one was cat 5 until just before landfall, wasn't it? They were saying that there would be a 20 foot storm surge, that would inundate the city.

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

I can’t actually dispute the decomposition rate of the bodies in mausoleums with you, because I don’t know, but I do think they are embalmed. It is my understanding that the only people “allowed” to be interred in any way either above or belowground without being embalmed in this country are Jews, and that is because it is against their religious beliefs to alter or slow the natural decomposition process in any way. They don’t use fancy coffins either.. plain pine with holes poked in the bottom to let mother nature in. That is one reason that there are separate cemeteries and or areas of cemeteries for Jewish dead. If you are a like minded individual and would like to NOT be embalmed, you have to gain permission to be buried in the Jewish (section of the) graveyard before you die. I also can’t point out the number of bodies that might have come from graves.. because I am getting that from the news stories, and in case you haven’t picked up on it yet.. I don’t have a lot of confidence or faith that they are reporting any facts at this point. *grin*

I have been thinking of the last big storm that did damage enough to take years to repair in that area, (I was wandering around that area during those years) and I counted back and found it might have been before her time too. I think it was around 80 or 81, and I don’t remember the name of the storm.. just the damage it did and how long it took to repair. I don’t actually remember any of the big storms for more than a couple of months.. because I see so many of them. I DO know that since I have been living in this area again (that would be for the past 11 years) that New Orleans has been threatened and the media reported the possibility of the dikes overflowing and everyone dying from floating red ants. *rolls eyes* I also seem to remember a story of cows in trees or on top of farm roofs in that area, but I think it was either east or west of Lake Pontchartrain that that happened in.

I still see only estimates of a death toll “in the hundreds”, and the confirmation that it is too early to tell in the news. Which.. btw is one of the reasons I don’t give much credence to the news right now.. there IS no way to tell.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

It's all relative, I guess.

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

yep. The fact that the gas stations have run out of gas way out here in nowheresville (on Monday night) and it looks like our supply areas have been disrupted enough that we might not get any gas for a while has more relevance to me than creative damage estimates in some other state.

[low-delta.livejournal.com]

I also wonder how many of them didn't know the true extent of the impending storm. We knew, but we were paying attention. I could see that this storm was going to destroy the city, but I wonder how many residents hadn't heard the whole story.

[ravenfeather.livejournal.com]

or didn't believe it because they have heard the reports of "massive destruction" every single time they have a storm.. and it never happened, and were tired of panic.