The Oil Drum

Its heart wrenching. My wife and I have already donated, as we did for 9-11 and for the Tsunami and for local disasters big and small.

I'm a frequent Red Cross volunteer supervisor here in Canada and would like to add, aside from a plea to donate blood:

Even if you can't contribute financially, please consider giving up some of your time. Now, right now, contact your local Red Cross.

They will need and want your help. Their call centers will be swamped; they will want to send trained experienced people out into the field. And even if your local center does not need you, its a good thing to let them know you are available for training and volunteering in your locale -- some future emergency they will call upon you. Red Cross call centers will be needed shift volunteers around the clock for some time to help in reunification work among other tasks.

Commmunity volunteerism in emergencies will give you a ton of good karma... its a good, no, tremendous feeling to be able to help in any small way.

I'm not posting much today. This is just all way too much. I will say that yesterday's coverage mostly flew in the face of reality. Consider this NY Times article from yesterday Escaping Feared Knockout Punch, Barely, New Orleans Is One Lucky Big Mess

Intelligent and aware observers knew that we'd know today what was happening. And it's just as bad as we feared, just tragic. New Orleans is being evacuated as we speak. People are dying there and in Mississippi. Not "One Lucky Big Mess", that's for sure. The infinite capacity of Americans to fool themselves is not called for as we look at one of the biggest disasters in US history.

i see at as rather hypocritical that we want help those who are suffering from Katrina, but are ignorant and careless about the suffering of the over 2.5 MILLION refugees in Darfur (who are equally without food/water/sanitation), not to mention the over 400,000 that have been genocidally slaughtered there over the past 2 years.  or perhaps the 100,000+ iraqi civilians that have been exterminated with our own troops and the ensuing war, not including countless more enduring cancer, deformaties and systemic poisioning from DU weaponry, both in Iraq and Afghanistan.  whose lives are more valuable?  obviously, if you are an american, only the ones you are willing to be aware of.  

Crisis in Louisiana
August 30, 2005 20 32  GMT

Although search-and-rescue operations remained the top priority of U.S. federal and Louisiana state authorities in the New Orleans area Aug. 30, the general consensus is that the region's main infrastructure network took a major hit from Hurricane Katrina -- and that it will be weeks at best before the crisis subsides. The eyewall -- the most deadly part of a hurricane -- swept directly across the lower Mississippi delta.

Shipping industry sources report that the situation on the Mississippi River is extremely bleak. The river is closed to navigation and restoration to "normal" traffic flows is likely to take at least a month.

As water rises in New Orleans, and spreads into the historic French Quarter, the city has become more of a hindrance than a help in efforts to assess regional infrastructure damage -- and get the region's economy back on track as soon as possible. Furthermore, if all pumps in below-sea-level New Orleans were working -- which they are not -- the bowl in which New Orleans sits would still take three weeks to empty.

Following is an initial assessment of the damage to the southern Louisiana energy and import-export infrastructure:

-Most roads either are cut off or blocked by debris. New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says that Louisiana State Highway 1 -- the backbone highway that crosses the state diagonally from the extreme northwest corner to Grand Isle on the Gulf of Mexico near the extreme southeast corner of the state -- is closed in the affected area. State Highway 39 also is closed because of debris and other problems.

-The executive director of the Grand Isle Port says the port essentially is wiped out and the industrial region surrounding it is in ruins.

-Damage assessments at Port Fourchon are being hampered because several large ships are beached on the highway leading to the port. The port is home to three-fourths of the support services to the Gulf's deepwater oil and gas facilities and the land base for the oil off-loading facility known as the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP). At the very least the channels that allow ship access will need to be cleared.

-Oil-services facilities in the city of Venice, the closest such facility to Port Fourchon, have been completely destroyed.

-The city of Cutoff also is reporting massive damage via extremely sporadic communications.

-Shipping sources report that the Port of New Orleans, for all practical purposes, is gone. Damage along the Port of South Louisiana, a series of dozens of interlinked docks and trade service infrastructure, appears to be heavily damaged.

-Cellular and landline communications are down throughout the region.

-The situation on the Mississippi River is dire. The U.S. Coast Guard only recently began surveying the channel to look for wrecks -- and already has found many. Shipping industry sources say most barges are intact and their crews are well, but the one remaining open road to and from New Orleans will make re-supply and rotation difficult. In essence, the crews have become refugees in their barges. All electronic aids to navigation have been disrupted and are either nonfunctioning or destroyed. Although navigation is possible using GPS systems, massive quantities of debris will keep barges where they are. The river is closed to all civilian navigation to mile marker 507 in Natchez, Mississippi -- about halfway to Arkansas.

-The Coast Guard has been forced to relocate its staff upstream to Alexandria, about 200 miles from New Orleans.

-The U.S. Agriculture Department has begun debate on transporting grains -- especially soybeans and corn -- to Louisiana and Mississippi by rail, but no decisions have been confirmed. The rail industry already is expecting a shortage of rolling stock because the drought in the Ohio River valley is forcing some shipments to travel by rail instead of river. Because barges on the lower Mississippi are at a standstill, there are doubts agricultural producers will be able to ship grain into the region by the end of September. Soybean harvest begins in two weeks, and national soybean storage facilities already are filled to capacity.

At present, there is only one piece of good news. Initial reports indicate that the LOOP itself has passed its initial damage assessment and appears ready to resume operations as soon as power is restored. That does not, however, mean that it will. Operators must first ensure that the pipeline connecting the LOOP to Port Fourchon remains intact.

Something I'm wondering about a lot is the possibility for looting to spread beyond retail stores. It's surprised me that in only one day after the storm there's broad looting of stores. We know in Iraq, looting quickly moved on to anything of value, and a lot of the country's criticical infrastructure was quickly stripped of valuable stuff. That incredibly hampered the task of recovering the situation.

I wonder if there's any risk of that happening to critical infrastructures (ports, refineries, production facilities, power stations) in Louisiana?

I think they need to get troops in there fast to maintain law and order.

Lets also hope that such a tragedy in the US will make pro-war people more sensitive to the kind of havoc that war brings, and that they will rethink their war-lust.

There's a great article on tomdispatch.com posted Aug.
18 called War of the Future by David Morse regarding the
tragedy in Darfur which is really about the oil.

Sadly, this is still worsening. But at the risk of looking beyond as Prof. Goose noted: there will be more storms to come, possibly soon, and there must be better strategies and infrastructure in place to cope.

Hurricane season continues until 30 November. According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, this is the 9th year out of the past 11 to show above-normal hurricane activity. They see a 20-30 year climate cycle that affects hurricanes (with little effect from climate change so far, in their opinion).

Their grim conclusion: "NOAA expects a continuation of above-normal seasons for another decade or perhaps longer." There are huge implications to this.

Pray for those in need, and ask for a bit of respite from future storms.