(no subject)

[rm]

There is this waivering for me between useful, or at least sensical response, and the sentimental, emotional response.

Everytime I see pictures of Metairie, I tear up. It's a place I first read about in a book, and somehow that makes it different in my head.

While it doesn't really matter where the president is in terms of getting things done, I'm disgusted by this flyover and disgusted that he's heading back to Washington afterwards. Say all you want about Bill Clinton, but he would have been on the ground in Houston at least, talking to people as they got off the buses and handing them water. He would have. You know it. He would.

The mayor of New Orleans is breaking my heart. If you haven't heard the audio file of his latest statement, it's all over my friends list, go check it out. Powerful stuff.

Eventually, having done not nearly enough in the first place, the powers that be will probably abandon New Orleans to its fate, and there will still be people alive in there wanting to get out when that happens. It's scaring the crap out of me.

Actually this whole thing is scaring the crap out of me. I think they way 9/11 freaked out people not in NYC. We're not really in a hurricaine zone here, and while low-lying NYC is not below sea-level nor does it face the numberous environmental and finanical and other challenges that have always plagued New Orleans. However there are 1-in-500 year events that are capable of creating this type of distruction in my city, and while I've never have faith in the government to keep us safe (I mean, hi, 9/11), I have had faith in systems to maintain order and get people out. Now I don't. The second I get paid this time I am putting together and evac kit, and if I get told to get out, I will, no matter how stupid it sounds. I am freaked out. I am _never_ freaked out about this sort of stuff.

Once again, I must like you to lori: http://www.livejournal.com/users/lori/478397.html

Steve Erickson doesn't write about New Orleans often or much. But he writes about cities in decay and race in ways that are really haunting to me, and I can't seem to get away from just rereading passages in all his books during this, both about fictious cities and the real. Maybe all cities are by their nature ficticious - a thought process for another day.

Comments

[tanuki-green.livejournal.com]

I'm curious - where did this "500-year" event thing come from. This is the thrid or fourth place I've seen reference to it and am confused as to its meaning and origin.

Oh - and if you haven't seen - the fight in my post from yesterday continues with a vengence.

BTW, thanks for linking to it.

[rm.livejournal.com]

I think it's come into common language from discussing flooding, as scientists often discuss floods in terms of 100 and 500 and so forth year events because they can see the frequency of events of scale in the sediment.

Katrina as a storm actually wasn't even remotely a 1-in-500 year event -- that would have taken a significant Cat 5 directly hitting New Orleans -- this was a Cat 4, 45 miles to the east.

New York sits on top of a not very active fault line, but we do have the occassional small tremor. Even a 6.0 earthquake would do unimaginable damage to the city (there was a great New York Magazine piece on this about 10 years ago).

[tanuki-green.livejournal.com]

Thank you for clearing that up for me. I had people referencing the hurricane as a 1 in 500-year event, and was very confused by that as this is the 4th in 100 years. And from what I understand about the temperature in the Gulf of Mexico, it's likely not to be the last one this year (I hope I'm wrong).

And I bet federal funding for making the buldings seismically sound in NYC has been cut in the last 4 years to help fund the war in Iraq. How close am I?

[rm.livejournal.com]

I don't know. I don't think it's something that's ever been overly worried about in NYC, because I think the city is so grown in upon itself it can't be. I think the newer buildings are relatively safe, but most people live in these former tenaments, many of them built on reclaimed land as opposed to bedrock and it's bad bad bad. I don't live on the bedrock, and I'm _very_ aware of it.