Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 08:08:39 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: ARE Search For Atlantis 2007 Results
http://mysterious-america.net/bermudatriangle0.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

"The Mother Of All Storms"

Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: "The Mother Of All Storms"  (Read 195 times)
0 Members and 38 Guests are viewing this topic.
Caitlin Cone-Hoskins
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3653



« on: August 31, 2008, 12:55:55 pm »

Gustav Threatens New Orleans, "The Mother Of All Storms"





Rhonda Landry, 43, left, and Altus Causey, 42 wait to be picked up for evacuation from New Orleans Sunday, Aug. 31, 2008 as Hurricane Gustav approached the Louisiana coast. (AP Photo/Bill Haber)

NEW ORLEANS — Hurricane Gustav charged across the Gulf of Mexico on Sunday as residents fled New Orleans and the National Guard prepared to patrol evacuated neighborhoods in a city still recovering three years after Katrina.

Mayor Ray Nagin instituted a dusk-to-dawn curfew to take effect at sunset and continue until the storm has passed. The curfew allows officials to arrest residents if they are not on their own property.

"Looting will not be tolerated," Nagin said. "Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was headed to the region Sunday and planned to stay through the storm.

"I'm well supported in terms of my ability to communicate back to the president and back to Washington, so I'm comfortable that I'm not going to lose touch," Chertoff said. "And so I'm not worried about my own safety."

With the storm speeding up and strengthening more quickly than expected on its way across the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, some hospitals changed plans and decided to evacuate patients they had planned to keep on hand, Chertoff said.

"A number of the hospitals that originally planned to shelter in place have now decided they are going to actually try to evacuate their critically ill and medical needs patients," Chertoff told reporters before leaving for Louisiana. "As a consequence, we've had to increase the tempo of our air flights into New Orleans in order to make sure that we can accommodate the flow. We're going to be watching this very carefully today."

Long before Nagin's mandatory evacuation order took effect Sunday, residents were already streaming out of New Orleans and other communities along the Gulf Coast. On Bourbon Street, where the party seemingly never ends, only stragglers toting luggage were sporadically seen on the sidewalks.



Still, there were a few holdouts.

"You'd be a moron" not to be worried about the storm, Inez Douglas said at Johnny White's Sports Bar & Grill.

But while she was keeping an eye on the storm, she wasn't going anywhere.

Gustav crossed western Cuba on Saturday and has already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean. It picked up speed upon reaching the gulf and was moving northwest at 17 mph with winds of 120 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center's 11 a.m. EDT update. Hurricane-force winds extended 50 miles from the storm's center.

Its center was about 325 miles southeast of the Mississippi River's mouth. The storm could bring a storm surge of up to 20 feet to the coast and rainfall totals of up to 15 inches.

A hurricane warning was in effect for over 500 miles of Gulf coast from Cameron, La., near the Texas border to the Alabama-Florida state line. Alabama Gov. Bob Riley issued a mandatory evacuation order for some coastal areas of Mobile and Baldwin counties.

In New Orleans, Nagin used stark language to urge residents to get out of the city, calling Gustav the "the mother of all storms."

"This is the real deal, not a test," Nagin said as he issued the evacuation order Saturday night. "For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life."

The mandatory evacuation of New Orleans is the first test of a revamped evacuation plan designed to eliminate the chaos, looting and death that followed Katrina.

Residents of suburban Jefferson Parish, swollen by residents who did not return to New Orleans after Katrina, were also ordered to leave in the first-ever mandatory evacuation of the entire parish.

The city will not offer emergency services to those who choose stay behind, Nagin said, and there will be no "last resort" shelter as there was during Katrina, when thousands suffered inside a squalid Superdome.

For residents with no other means of leaving the city, the last buses were going to leave at 3 p.m. Sunday.

Lines for the evacuation buses queuing up at the city's main transit center were much shorter Sunday than they'd been a day earlier.

"I'll be glad when it's over and I hope it doesn't mess up the city too bad," said Johnny Clanton, 59, waiting with a bag, hoping to catch up with a friend who also planned to leave the city.

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney will skip the Republican National Convention because of worries about Gustav. Bush had been scheduled to speak late Monday night in St. Paul, Minn.

And likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, were traveling to Mississippi.

___

Associated Press writers Peter Prengaman, Janet McConnaughey, Alan Sayre, Allen G. Breed, Mary Foster and Stacey Plaisance contributed to this report from New Orleans. Doug Simpson in Baton Rouge, La., Michael Kunzelman in Gulfport, Miss., and Peggy Harris in Little Rock also contributed.

Report Spam   Logged

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

Caitlin Cone-Hoskins
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3653



« Reply #1 on: August 31, 2008, 01:08:20 pm »

Take care, everyone in the path of the storm!  You're in our prayers.
Report Spam   Logged
Keith Ranville
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 2387

*


« Reply #2 on: August 31, 2008, 01:26:03 pm »

New Orleans

A 4oo mile wide Storm, the eye would be the the most dangerous; Hurricane Gustav is reported to be a Catigory 3 According to CNN. I heard it's going to be a doozer I guess this is related to Global warming?  Woman and the elder there is no order on in who gets evacuated. One woman waiting to leave out of the path Gustav says its horrable her pregnant sister wasn't on a priority list in the evacuation list?
« Last Edit: August 31, 2008, 01:46:03 pm by Keith Ranville » Report Spam   Logged
Behold, I am Death, Destroyer of Worlds
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3444



« Reply #3 on: August 31, 2008, 08:45:34 pm »

Those who have it the worst are the elderly.  50% of the people that died in Hurricane Katrina were 75 and older.

Don't be deceived if the first reports of landfall state that it was a mild hit.  They said that about Hurricane Katrina, too, on the Monday that it hit, too.  It was only on Tuesday when people began to get the full scope of the damage.

Of course, it wasn't until Friday when the federal government got off it's miserable ass and began to do something. 
Report Spam   Logged
Keith Ranville
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 2387

*


« Reply #4 on: August 31, 2008, 08:51:18 pm »

Government has no soul
 Roll Eyes
Report Spam   Logged
Keira Kensington
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 4705



« Reply #5 on: August 31, 2008, 10:17:52 pm »

Nearly 2 Million People Flee Hurricane Gustav

Report Spam   Logged
Dorissa Moore
Full Member
***
Posts: 27



« Reply #6 on: August 31, 2008, 11:41:19 pm »

Gulf Coast Braces For Hurricane Gustav





NEW ORLEANS — With a historic evacuation of nearly 2 million people from the Louisiana coast complete, gun-toting police and National Guardsmen stood watch as rain started to fall on this city's empty streets Sunday night _ and even presidential politics took a back seat as the nation waited to see if Hurricane Gustav would be another Katrina.

The storm was set to crash ashore late Monday morning with frightful force, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina's devastating blow to the Gulf Coast. The storm has already killed at least 94 people on its path through the Caribbean.

Painfully aware of the failings that led to more than 1,600 deaths during Katrina, this time officials moved beyond merely insisting tourists and residents leave south Louisiana. They threatened arrest, loaded thousands onto buses and warned that anyone who remained behind would not be rescued.

"Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House."

Col. Mike Edmondson, state police commander, said he believed that 90 percent of the population had fled the Louisiana coast. The exodus of 1.9 million people is the largest evacuation in state history, and thousands more had left from Mississippi, Alabama and flood-prone southeast Texas.

Late Sunday, Gov. Bobby Jindal issued one last plea to the roughly 100,000 people still left on the coast: "If you've not evacuated, please do so. There are still a few hours left."

Louisiana and Mississippi temporarily changed traffic flow so all highway lanes led away from the coast, and cars were packed bumper-to-bumper. Stores and restaurants shut down, hotels closed and windows were boarded up. Some who planned to stay changed their mind at the last second, not willing to risk the worst.

"I was trying to get situated at home. I was trying to get things so it would be halfway safe," said 46-year-old painter Jerry Williams, who showed up at the city's Union Station to catch one of the last buses out of town. "You're torn. Do you leave it and worry about it, or do you stay and worry about living?"

There were frightening comparisons between Gustav and Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans. There was no doubt the storm posed a major threat to the partially rebuilt city and the flood-prone coasts of Louisiana and southeast Texas.

Mindful of the potential for disaster, the Republican Party scaled back its normally jubilant convention _ set to kick off as Gustav crashed ashore. President Bush said he would skip the convention altogether, and Sen. John McCain visited Jackson, Miss., on Sunday as his campaign rewrote the script for the convention to emphasize a commitment to helping people.

The nation's economic attention was focused on Gustav's effect on refineries and offshore petroleum production rigs. The combination of prolonged production interruptions, such as occurred when Katrina and Rita damaged the Gulf infrastructure, could trigger rising prices.

Billions of dollars were at stake in other wide-ranging economic sectors, including sugar harvesting, the shipping business and tourism. The Mississippi Gaming Commission ordered a dozen casinos to close.

Forecasters said Gustav could strengthen slightly as it marched toward the coast. At 11 p.m. EDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was centered about 220 miles southeast of New Orleans and was moving northwest near 16 mph. It had top sustained winds of 115 mph, and was likely to stay a Category 3 storm when it made landfall west of New Orleans. Category 3 storms have winds between 111 mph and 130 mph.

Rain started falling in New Orleans before sunset, and tropical storm-force winds had reached the southeastern tip of the state.

New Orleans will likely be on the "dirty" side of the storm _ where rainfall is heaviest and tornadoes are possible, but the storm surge is lower. If forecasts hold, the city would experience a storm surge of only 4 to 6 feet, compared to a surge of 10 to 14 feet at the site of landfall, said Corey Walton, a hurricane support meteorologist with the National Hurricane Center. Katrina, by comparison, brought a storm surge of 25 feet.

Surge models suggest large areas of southeast Louisiana, including parts of the greater New Orleans area, could be flooded by several feet of water. But Gustav appears most likely to overwhelm the levees west of the city that have for decades been underfunded and neglected and are years from an update.

Against all warnings, some gambled and decided to face the storm's wrath. On an otherwise deserted commercial block of downtown Lafayette, about 135 miles west of the city, Tim Schooler removed the awnings from his photography studio. He thought about evacuating Sunday before deciding he was better off riding out the storm at home with his wife, Nona.

"There's really no place to go. All the hotels are booked up to Little Rock and beyond," he said. "We're just hoping for the best."

The final train out of New Orleans left with fewer than 100 people on board, while one of the last buses to make the rounds of the city pulled into Union Station empty. Police made final rounds around 7 p.m. Every officer in the department was on duty, and the 1,200 on the street were joined by 1,500 National Guardsmen.

The only sign of life on St. Bernard Avenue _ a four-lane artery through the partially rebuilt Gentilly neighborhood that flooded during Katrina _ was a brown and black rooster meandering along the street.

"When the 911 calls start coming in, we'll know how many people are left in town," said police superintendent Warren Riley.

Even as they pressed to complete the evacuation, officials insisted there would be no repeat of the inept response to Katrina's wrath. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said search and rescue will be the top priority once Gustav passes _ high-water vehicles, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, Coast Guard cutters and a Navy vessel that is essentially a floating emergency room are posted around the strike zone.

West of New Orleans in Houma, he wished passengers well as stragglers boarded buses for Shreveport and Dallas.

"It's going to be hot on some of the buses. It's going to be a long trip," Chertoff said. "So it's not going to be pleasant, but it's a lot better than sitting in the Superdome and it's a lot better than sitting in your house."

Melissa Lee, who lives in Pearl River, a town near the boundary of Mississippi and Louisiana, was driving away to Florida Sunday. Before she left, she heard neighbors chopping down trees with chain saws, trying to ensure the tall pines that surrounded their homes wouldn't come crashing down.

"I sent my son out with a camera and said, `Go take pictures of our backyard. Because it's going to look different when we get back.'"

___

Associated Press writers Janet McConnaughey, Robert Tanner, Cain Burdeau, Alan Sayre, Allen G. Breed and Mary Foster contributed to this report from New Orleans. Vicki Smith in Houma, Doug Simpson in Baton Rouge and Michael Kunzelman in Lafayette also contributed. Kelli Kennedy reported from Miami, and Shelia Byrd contributed from Pearl, Miss.
Report Spam   Logged
Keith Ranville
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 2387

*


« Reply #7 on: August 31, 2008, 11:55:41 pm »

"Looters will go directly to jail. You will not get a pass this time," Mayor Ray Nagin said. "You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You will go directly to the Big House."

This must mean a message to the McCain camp? My guess they will be there pandering to steal votes from the hardship of Americans, the Republicans can only achieve the Big House oppose to the white House.   
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy