New Orleans is definitely still taking on water...this is a major breech in the levee system:
nola.com
A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.
As night fell on a devastated region, the water was still rising in the city, and nobody was willing to predict when it would stop. After the destruction already apparent in the wake of Katrina, the American Red Cross was mobilizing for what regional officials were calling the largest recovery operation in the organization’s history.
Police, firefighters and private citizens, hampered by a lack of even rudimentary communication capabilities, continued a desperate and impromptu boat-borne rescue operation across Lakeview well after dark. Coast Guard choppers with search lights criss-crossed the skies.
The Vice-President of the Tulane University Medical Center was on CNN about 10:30 pm PST, saying that the water there was rising about 1 foot an hour... and that they may have to arrange helicopter evacuation of patients. TUMC is about 10 miles or so from where the levee broke, so everything in between is presumably suffering rising waters too. The worst may well not be over for the city, the death toll from the NO metro area is undoubtedly in the hundreds already, and rising.
Do not create any sort of fire, no matter how much you want to do so, so that means no smoking, no flambe's no fire. For any reason.
Errr, the mayor issued a "boil water" advisory earlier this afternoon, because the public water supply was contaminated....what'll it be, death by flame, or by dysentery?
Here's a cheery thought from the Chief Administrative assistant of Jefferson Parish :
http://www.nola.com/newslogs/breakingtp/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_Times-Picayune/archives/2005_08.html#074980
"Unfortunately, the message we have for residents is that while the storm is passed, life as we know it in Jefferson Parish is gone for several months. In fact, I don't think that life as we know it will ever return." |
