socalshakin wrote:Wow, check out these amazing photos of the skies before Katrina hit. Mountaingirl posted this on Earthboppin and I didn't see it here, so I'm reposting it since these are truly amazing photos.
In particular, the last photo, which is believed to be the initial tidal wave/storm surge that hit is terrifying. Hair stood up on my arms and my mouth dropped.
http://www.rense.com/general90/sky.htm
Good grief
I think Hurricane Katrina was probably one of the worst storms that I have ever seen. What was so horrifying for me is that I used to live in Biloxi, MS. I went through Hurricane Elena there and it was bad. Made a real believer out of me. Watching a Coke machine go straight across a parking lot, like it was a piece of paper was truly something I will never forget. I also will never forget being without utilities for almost a week and a half. You don't realize how much you use utilities until you don't have them. Then it is like "Oh shoot, I don't have electricity" or "Oh shoot, I can't use the toilets, I have to go in a bucket" (no kidding there). Also the trees that were on the street just flabbergasted me. There must have been tree branches almost 15-20 feet high on every street infront of houses. You couldn't even see the houses it was so high. Thankfully we didn't have the huge storm surge that they had with Hurricane Katrina after Elena. I do remember talking with people in Biloxi that had gone through Hurricane Camille. They told me if the sheriff department in Harrison Cty. tells you to evacuate, go. I also heard the story of a lady that survived Hurrican Camille who had gone to a motel along the coast for a hurricane party and contrary to reports she was not the only survivor of the Richelieu Apartments in Pass Christian, MS. Here is a link to the complete story:
http://camille.passchristian.net/camille_the_storm.htmAfter listening to people who went through Camille, I thought at the time it was wise to evacuate to Kessler AFB, in Biloxi. It is where the Hurricane Hunters fly out of and you could hear the flights taking off up until the storm was just about ready to make landfall. Needless to say there are things that you always remember. I remember the sound of the wind. It howled like I had never heard. You could hear the sound of the tornadoes but you couldn't see them. I also remember people saying that you could look almost everywhere after the storm and see a body after Hurricane Camille passed. There were over 150 dead on the Gulf Coast, which is about 27 miles long. It is a small community of towns that dot the Gulf Coast (Gautier, Ocean Springs, Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach, Pass Christian, Bay St. Louis, Waveland. It is a very pretty area. The beach area along there is also a protected habitat for the Least Tern which is a bird native to that area. The beach runs the length of the area, along with the towns, separated only by US Hwy 90. When I first heard that Hurricane Katrina was headed toward the area I thought that damage would be bad. I didn't expect it to be that bad. What people also fail to realize is that the Gulf Coast went through 4 landfalling hurricanes in 1985 (Danny, Elena, Juan and Kate). Each time we were evacuated to facilities on Kessler AFB.
I think what ticks me off most is that while New Orleans got flooded, it was the Gulf Coast in Mississippi that suffered the most damage. Buildings, homes, and everything in between was literally wiped off the map. In 1985 the local newspaper in the area, The Times Picayune, did a 5 part series on the levees and how lucrative it was to be a "levee president". In 1985 they knew that the levees would not hold up to a storm of Cat 3 or above. So 20 years later when they get hit, they start screaming about what the government did or didn't do. They KNEW!! This was no surprise. Yet the local government in New Orleans sat back, happy as a pig in shit and did nothing to repair the levees. They didn't even evacuate residents when they had parking lots of school buses and city buses sitting there. If they knew that this kind of flooding would occur in 1985, why didn't they do something to strengthen the levees before Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005? Twenty years is certainly time to formulate a plan to strengthen the levess. They probably did nothing because they were getting a boat load of money and didn't think about what could possibly happen. Then when it did and focus was turned back on the city and the local levee boards they blamed the federal goverment for not acting quick enough. There were Red Cross volunteers that were in Metarie, LA in the hours after Hurrican Katrina. The Red Cross PULLED all of their shelters out of the city of New Orleans years before Hurricane Katrina because they knew of the risk. Shouldn't that have tipped off somebody? Nope, just kept getting the money and spending it on projects that had nothing to do with the levees and protecting the people:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9342186/Hopefully people have learned the lessons of Hurricane Katrina, but unfortunately I think we will hear of another disaster in this area and again we will be asking ourselves "how did this happen again?"
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