hurricane Gustav

[Dr. No]

Gustav looks to be a monster storm. If any of you on the forum live in teh path of it please get to safety. I would hate to lose any of you to it. Even you Nash Allthough humanity would be greatful if you didn't go online for a week or two

Things can be replaced houses rebuilt, pleases don't any of you take the chance with your wellbeing

[Kristatos]

I hope New Orleans survives.

[FormerBondFan]

Gustav slams Cuba as Cat 4 storm; many evacuated

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer 2 minutes ago

HAVANA - Gustav slammed into Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane Saturday while both Cubans and Americans scrambled to flee the storm as it roared toward the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.

Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane as it hit Cuba's mainland after roaring over its Isla de Juventud province, where it toppled telephone poles, mango and almond trees and peeled back the tin roofs of homes.

Isla de Juventud civil defense chief Ana Isla said there were "many people injured" on the island south of mainland Cuba, but no reports of deaths. She said nearly all its roads were washed out and that some regions were heavily flooded.

"It's been very difficult here," she said on state television.

Authorities evacuated at least 240,000 people from western Cuba, including Isla de la Juventud.

Gustav was projected to plow into the Gulf of Mexico at full force Sunday, and reach the U.S. coast Monday afternoon. A hurricane watch was issued from Texas east to Florida.

More than a million Americans made wary by Hurricane Katrina took buses, trains, planes and cars as they streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities, where Katrina killed about 1,600 people in 2005.

Gustav already has killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in other Caribbean nations.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav had sustained winds of 150 mph (240 kph), and could become a Category 5 hurricane shortly, with winds above 155 mph (249 kph).

Cuba's top meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said the hurricane's massive center made landfall in mainland Cuba near the community of Los Palacios in Pinar del Rio — a region that produces much of Cuba's famed tobacco.

He said the storm would bring hurricane-force winds to much of the western part of Havana, Cuba's capital, where power was knocked out as shrieking winds blasted sheets of rain sideways though the streets and whipped angry waves against the famed seaside Malecon boulevard.

Felled tree branches and large chunks of muddy earth littered crowded roads.

Cuba grounded all domestic flights and halted all buses and trains to and from Havana, where some shuttered stores had hand-scrawled "closed for evacuation" signs plastered to their doors.

Authorities boarded up banks, restaurants and hotels, and residents nailed bits of plywood to the windows and doors of their houses and apartments.

"It's very big and we've got to get ready for what's coming," said Jesus Hernandez, a 60-year-old retiree who was using an electric drill to reinforce the roof of his rickety front porch.

The government announced it was stepping up emergency production of bread at state-run bakeries and lines formed all over the city as Cubans waited for loaves.

In tourist-friendly Old Havana, heavy winds and rain battered crumbling historic buildings. There were no immediate reports of major damage, but a scaffolding erected against a building adjacent to the Plaza de Armas was leaning at a dangerous angle.

Lidia Morral and her husband were visiting Cuba from Barcelona. She said Gustav forced officials to close the beaches the couple wanted to visit in Santiago, on the island's eastern tip. The storm also prevented them from catching a ferry from Havana to the Isla de la Juventud on Saturday.

"It's been following us all over Cuba, ruining our vacation," said Morral, who was in line at a travel agency, trying to make other plans. "They have closed everything, hotels, restaurants, bars, museums. There's not much to do but wait."

On Cuba's Isla de Juventud, Gustav toppled trees and was peeling back the roofs of some houses on Saturday.

"The rain is not so intense, but there is a lot, a lot of wind," said Isabel Alarcon from Nueva Gerona, the largest city on the island of 87,000 people. "The officials, they have told us the wind will be bad first but then the rain could cause flooding into the night."

By late Saturday afternoon, Gustav was about 80 miles (135 kilometers) south-southwest of Havana and it was moving northwest near 15 mph (24 kph).

Hurricane force winds extended out 70 miles (110 kilometers) in some places.

The U.S. naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, was hundreds of miles (kilometers) to the east, out of the storm's path.

In the Gulf of Mexico, where about 35,000 people work staffing offshore rigs and production facilities, among other tasks, oil companies wrapped up evacuations in preparation for the storm.

As of midday Saturday, more than three-fourths of the Gulf's oil production and nearly 40 percent of its natural gas output had been shut down, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore activity.

The U.S. Gulf Coast accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output, according to the MMS. The Gulf Coast also is home to nearly half the nation's refining capacity.

Analysts say prolonged supply disruptions could cause a sudden price uptick for gasoline and other petroleum products.

On Friday, Gustav rolled over the Cayman Islands with fierce winds that tore down trees and power lines while destroying docks and tossing boats ashore, but there was little major damage and no deaths were reported.

Haiti's Interior Ministry on Saturday raised the hurricane death toll there to 66 from 59 and Jamaica raised its count to seven from four. Gustav also killed eight people in the Dominican Republic early in the week.

Meanwhile, the hurricane center said Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to near the Turks and Caicos Islands late Sunday or on Monday, then curl through the Bahamas by early next week before possibly threatening Cuba.

As it spun over open waters, Hanna had sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph) late Saturday afternoon and the hurricane center warned that it could kick up dangerous rip currents along parts of the southeastern U.S. coast.

[Dr. No]

I hope New Orleans survives.

I was reading an investigative report thsi week on how 2 year later the levies are not up to standard and the pumps that are supposed to handel 20 million gallons of water can only move 6 million. They traced the problem back to the 70's when the government first started putting money in to New Orleans.

I hope people there learned the lesson and evacuate now, even if it misses as it is supposed to (right now) all the rain will swamp New O. and teh storm surge could damage the levies before the rain starts.

[katied]

My .02

Having been to New Orleans recently, I have seen how things are coming along as far as rebuilding goes.But there is still a LONG ways to go.And it's really upsetting to me that Gustav may set New Orleans back, possibly for another few years,maybe even decades.

I give Nagin a lot of credit for telling people to get out WAY in advance of Gustav.They learned the hard way last time

[carl stromberg]

Gustav looks to be a monster storm. If any of you on the forum live in teh path of it please get to safety. I would hate to lose any of you to it. Even you Nash Allthough humanity would be greatful if you didn't go online for a week or two

If they want a thriving city, surely they should pay to protect it?

Hopefully if it is a nasty one, everyone will have left, and there won't five days of lootings and people standed in a superdome.

[FormerBondFan]

New Orleans is vulnerable to hurricanes.

[katied]

New Orleans is vulnerable to hurricanes.

Right, and they KNOW this very well. I love New Orleans,it's one of my favorite cities, but it stinks that it will probably forever be in a state of being rebuilt because of the fact that it's vulnerable to hurricanes.

Not only that they have to figure out a better system for the levees,beause what they have there is NOT working.And I have heard stories about the levees being patched up with used newspaper.That,to me, is just NOT ok *steps off soapbox*.

[FormerBondFan]

The worst part is that New Orleans is under the sea level.

[katied]

^That it is.

But it's not just New Orleans, it's all of the Gulf.

(I would love to live in New Orleans, but not full time and sure as h*ell not duing the hurricane season )

Places like the coast of Mississippi rely on the income they get from casinos.But they got hit just as bad by Katrina as New Orleans did.

[FormerBondFan]

It's a good thing New Orleans is in LALD.

[katied]

There was a reference to "The lost city of New Orleans" on Family Guy. I thought it was hilarious,but then I have a gallows sense of humor.

Watching LALD is interesting, since it was made in 1973, and New Orleans has definitely changed since then.In all the discussions of places James Bond should go in the movies, I'm surprised nobody has suggested he go back to New Orleans again.Katrina probably put an end to that, unfortunately

[FormerBondFan]

There was a reference to "The lost city of New Orleans" on Family Guy. I thought it was hilarious,but then I have a gallows sense of humor.

Watching LALD is interesting, since it was made in 1973, and New Orleans has definitely changed since then.In all the discussions of places James Bond should go in the movies, I'm surprised nobody has suggested he go back to New Orleans again.Katrina probably put an end to that, unfortunately

News Orleans is featured in Everything Or Nothing.

[FormerBondFan]

The Gulf Coast waits: Will it be another Katrina?

By STACEY PLAISANCE and BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writer
34 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - With a historic evacuation complete, and gun-toting police and National Guardsmen standing watch over this city's empty streets, even presidential politics stood still Sunday while the nation waited to see if Hurricane Gustav would be another Katrina.

The storm was set to crash ashore midday Monday with frightful force, testing the three years of planning and rebuilding that followed Katrina's devastating blow to the Gulf Coast.

Painfully aware of the failings that led to that horrific suffering and more than 1,600 deaths, 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.

Louisiana and Mississippi 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?"

Forecasters said Gustav was likely to grow stronger as it marched toward the coast with top sustained winds of around 115 mph. At 5 p.m. EDT Sunday, the National Hurricane Center said Gustav was a Category 3 storm centered about 215 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River and moving northwest near 18 mph.

Against all warnings, some gambled and decided to face its 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 decided 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."

There were frightening comparisons between Gustav and Katrina, which flooded 80 percent of New Orleans when storm surge overtook the levees. While Gustav isn't as large as Katrina, which was a massive Category 5 storm at roughly the same place in the Gulf, there was no doubt the storm posed a major threat to a partially rebuilt New Orleans and the flood-prone coasts of Louisiana and southeast Texas. The storm has already killed at least 94 people on its path through the Caribbean.

The storm could bring with it a storm surge of up to 14 feet and rainfall up to 20 inches wherever it hits. By comparison, Hurricane Katrina pushed about 25 feet of surge.

Mindful of the potential for disaster, the Republican Party scaled back its normally jubilant convention — set to kickoff as Gustav crashed ashore. President Bush said he would skip the convention all together, 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.

Surge models suggest larger areas of southeast Louisiana, including parts of the greater New Orleans area, could be flooded by several feet of water. 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.

In the West Bank community of Harvey, Paul and Judy Ross were the last ones left on their street at 8 a.m. as he put the final boards covering the windows of his home as she loaded up the car. Their home flooded during Katrina when a nearby drainage canal overflowed as pumps failed, and levee work remains incomplete around the nearby Harvey Canal.

"We've had it up to here with New Orleans," the 56-year-old Ross said. "If we flood again, we're goners. I don't think we're coming back."

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.

"I think for people who haven't left, they really are die-hards, because they're taking their lives in their hands," he said. "I can't see any reason why a person staring down the barrel of a Category 3 or Category 4 hurricane would want to see if they can try to outfox Mother Nature. That's taking an awful risk with yourself and your family."

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.'"

[FormerBondFan]

Gustav slams La. coastline west of New Orleans

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN and MARY FOSTER, Associated Press Writer 30 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - A weakened Hurricane Gustav slammed into the heart of Louisiana's fishing and oil industry with 110 mph winds Monday, delivering only a glancing blow to New Orleans that raised hopes the city would escape the kind of catastrophic flooding brought by Katrina three years ago.

Wind-driven water sloshed over the top of the Industrial Canal's floodwall, but city officials and the Army Corps of Engineers said they expected the levees, still only partially rebuilt after Katrina, would hold. The canal broke with disastrous effect during Katrina, submerging St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward.

"We are seeing some overtopping waves," said Col. Jeff Bedey, commander of the Corps' hurricane protection office. "We are cautiously optimistic and confident that we won't see catastrophic wall failure."

Of more immediate concern to authorities was a barge that broke loose from its moorings and crashed into two anchored, scrapped ships. There were no immediate reports of any damage to the canal.

The National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav hit around 11:30 a.m. near the Cocodrie (pronounced ko-ko-DREE), a low-lying community in Louisiana's Cajun country 72 miles southwest of New Orleans, as a Category 2 storm on a scale of 1 to 5. Forecasters had feared the storm would arrive as a devastating Category 4.

The extent of the damage in Cajun country was not immediately clear, and only one storm-related death, involving a woman killed in a car wreck, was reported in Louisiana.

Still, the storm could prove devastating to the region of fishing villages and oil-and-gas towns. For most of the past half century, the bayou communities have watched their land disappear at one of the highest rates of erosion in the world. A combination of factors — oil drilling, hurricanes, levees, dams — have destroyed the swamps and left the area with virtually no natural buffer against storms.

Also, damage to refineries and drilling platforms could cause gasoline prices at the pump to spike.

The nation was nervously watching to see how New Orleans would deal with Gustav almost exactly three years after Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city and killed roughly 1,600 people across the unprepared Gulf Coast.

This time, nearly 2 million people fled the coast, many of them under a mandatory evacuation order issed by the mayor of New Orleans. Federal, state and local officials took a never-again stance after Katrina and set to work planning and upgrading flood defenses in the below-sea-level city.

In New Orleans' Upper Ninth Ward, about half the streets closest to the Industrial Canal floodwall suffered minor flooding, with the water knee deep in places. Water poured over one spot of the floodwall; along the rest of the wall, it sloshed over, pushed by the wind.

"There's no indication of any walls in distress," said Robert Turner, regional levee director for the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East. "No trenches are being cut that will destabilize the walls. No indication of walls deflecting or anything being washed out. No evidence of major seepage."

For all their seeming similarities, Hurricanes Gustav and Katrina were different in one critical respect: Katrina smashed the Gulf Coast with an epic storm surge that topped 27 feet, a far higher wall of water than Gustav hauled ashore.

"We don't expect the loss of life, certainly, that we saw in Katrina," Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Harvey E. Johnson told The Associated Press. "But we are expecting a lot of homes to be damaged, a lot of infrastructure to be flooded, and damaged severely."

Katrina was a bigger storm when it came ashore in August 2005, and it made a direct hit on the Mississippi coast. Gustav skirted along Louisiana's shoreline at "a more gentle angle," said National Weather Service storm surge specialist Will Shaffer.

Initial reports indicated storm surge of about 8 feet above normal tides, but forecasts indicated up to 14 feet in surge was possible.

"Right now, we feel we're not going to have a true inundation," said Karen Durham-Aguilera, director of the $15 billion project to rebuild the Army Corps of Engineers' levee and floodwalls in the New Orleans-area.

Still, Mayor Ray Nagin urged everyone to "resist the temptation to say we're out of the woods." He said Gustav's heavy rainfall could still flood the saucer-shaped city over the next 24 hours as tropical storm-force winds blast through the city. Winds were 36 mph near City Hall on Monday morning, with higher gusts.

Nagin's emergency preparedness director, Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, said residents might be allowed to return 24 hours after tropical storm-force winds die down. The city would first need to assess damage and determine if any neighborhoods were unsafe.

The only storm-related death in Louisiana reported by state police involved a woman who drove off Interstate 10 and hit a tree between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Gustav was also blamed for at least 94 deaths in the Caribbean as it made its way toward the Gulf Coast.

Gusts snapped large branches from the majestic oak trees that form a canopy over New Orleans' St. Charles Avenue. Half the city was without power at midday, but officials said backup generators were keeping city drainage pumps in service.

On the high ground in the French Quarter, the wind whipped signs and the purple, green and gold Mardi Gras flags hanging from cast-iron balconies. Like the rest of the city, the Quarter's normally boisterous streets were deserted save for a police officer standing watch every few blocks and a few early morning drinkers in the city's world-famous bars.

"We wanted to be part of a historic event," said Benton Love, 30, stood outside Johnny White's Sports Bar with a whiskey and Diet Coke. "We knew Johnny White's would be the place to be. We'll probably switch to water about 10 o'clock, sober up, and see if we can help out."

Public officials warned in the days leading up to the storm that anyone leaving their homes after a dawn-to-dusk curfew was imposed would be thrown in jail.

Evacuees watched TV coverage from shelters and hotel rooms hundreds of miles away.

Harmonica player J.D. Hill said he was standing in line Monday morning to get into a public shelter in Bossier City in northwestern Louisiana after waiting on a state-provided evacuation bus that carried him to safety.

He described a frustrating scene outside the shelter, where elderly evacuees and young children had to wait to be searched and processed before going inside.

"There's the funky bus bathrooms, people can't sleep, we're not being told anything. We're at their mercy," he said.

Hill was the first resident of the Musicians' Village, a cluster of homes Harry Connick Jr. and fellow New Orleans musician Branford Marsalis built through Habitat for Humanity after Katrina. The village provides housing for musicians and others who lost their homes to Katrina.

In Mississippi, officials said a 15-foot storm surge flooded homes and inundated the only highways to coastal towns devastated by Katrina. Officials said at least three people near the Jordan River had to be rescued from the floodwaters. Elsewhere in the state, an abandoned building in Gulfport collapsed and a few homes in Biloxi were flooded.

Gustav was the seventh named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season. The eighth, Tropical Storm Hanna, was strengthening about 40 miles north of the Bahamas. Forecasters said it could come ashore in Georgia and South Carolina late in the week.

[Kristatos]

It looks like the storm is petering out, thank goodness.

[FormerBondFan]

Bush: cooperation for Gustav better than Katrina

By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer 8 minutes ago

AUSTIN, Texas - President Bush said Monday that coordination among states and the federal government in response to Hurricane Gustav has been better than during Katrina, which devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005 and tattered his administration's reputation for handling crises.

Bush visited an emergency operations center in Austin, about 400 miles west of Cocodrie, La., near where Gustav struck land. Gustav packed more than 100 mph winds, but delivered only a glancing blow to New Orleans, raising hopes that the city would escape the kind of catastrophic flooding wrought by Katrina, which killed nearly 1,600, obliterated 90,000 square miles of property and cost billions of dollars in response and repairs.

At an emergency operations center in Austin, Texas, Bush said the federal government's job was to assist states affected by the storm. He said he wanted to ensure that assets were in place to handle the storm, and that preparations are being made to help the Gulf Coast recover.

"The coordination on this storm is a lot better than on — than during Katrina," Bush said noting how the governors of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas had been working in concert. "It was clearly a spirit of sharing assets, of listening to somebody's problems and saying, `How can we best address them?'"

He lauded Gulf Coast residents who heeded warnings to evacuate.

"It's hard for a citizen to pull up stakes, and move out of their home, and face the uncertainty that comes when you're not at home, and I want to thank those citizens who listened carefully to their local authorities and evacuated," Bush said.

"This storm has yet to pass. It's, you know, it's a serious event."

David Paulison, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told reporters on Bush's plane en route that there has been "unprecedented cooperation" among federal agencies and the private sector. "What it allows us to do is share information of what's going on so we don't end up with what happened in Katrina, with different agencies doing things and others not knowing what's happening," he said.

Paulison said the help came ahead of the storm time, significantly easing evacuations. Everyone in New Orleans who wanted to evacuate could have, Paulison said. "There should not be any excuses," he said. "If people stayed in New Orleans, it was their choice."

The enduring memory of Katrina is not the ferocity of the storm, but the bungled reaction that led to preventable deaths and chaos. Disaster response has undoubtedly improved since then. But Katrina was a low chapter in American history, and it deeply eroded credibility in Bush's administration.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, greeted Bush as he got off the plane in shirt sleeves on a hot, sunny day in Texas.

Perry said state authorities had evacuated 10,000 special needs citizens from the Texas coast and about 280,000 other Texans have been evacuated from Orange, Jefferson and Chambers counties. In all, Texas anticipates 45,000 to 50,000 evacuees from Louisiana, Perry said. During the briefing, Perry turned to Bush and said, "Your home state did good."

By flying to Texas, Bush clearly wanted to show the nation, and particularly people of the Gulf Coast, that he is committed to answering their needs. He said he hopes to get to Louisiana, too, but will choose a time that does not interfere with emergency response efforts.

First lady Laura Bush also was involved in the administration's effort to stress that things would be different this time. "Mistakes were made by everyone" at all levels of government in the handling of Katrina, Mrs. Bush said Monday on CNN.

"Part of it was not being able to have the good communication that you would need between the three governments," said Mrs. Bush, who also was to speak Monday at the GOP convention. "And we have taken care of that, we know that's a lot better. And the lessons that were learned from Katrina can serve the United States very well in any kind of disaster."

Levees in and around New Orleans were expected to hold this time, but the storm's surge could overtop levees and at least partially flood the city, said Federal Emergency Management Agency Deputy Director Harvey E. Johnson.

Damage from Gustav "will be a catastrophe by the time you add it all up," Johnson said in an interview with The Associated Press a few hours before the hurricane struck the coast. "But we're certainly not expecting it to be as much as a Katrina."

[katied]

I have family in Baton Rouge(north of New Orleans) and they left for their vacation house(which will still get the rain and wind from Gustav)but it won't be as bad as being in Baton Rouge)