Coulda been a lot worse ....

[unixronin]

Looks like Texas just dodged a bullet.  Small consolation for Louisiana, though, with Lake Charles getting pasted and the Ninth Ward under five to eight feet of water again.  It probably shouldn't have come as any surprise to anyone that the emergency patches to the levees didn't all hold when another hurricane came through; part of it, as has been reported elsewhere, was that storm surge from Rita simply overtopped the levees again -- and Rita's center never came within several hundred miles of NOLA.

This should be telling us something about the wisdom (or lack thereof) of rebuilding NOLA as it is, in the same spot.

GET OFF THE BELOW-SEA-LEVEL GROUND, people.

CNN's David Mattingly said he had seen little damage in Galveston following landfall.  The city's roads remained passable, although some places had minor flooding.  Its 17-foot seawall was high enough to keep the predicted 7-foot storm surge back, Mattingly said.

It's going to be bitterly ironic if it turns out the evacuation of Galveston and Houston ends up costing more lives than the hurricane would have.  But hindsight usually at least approaches 20/20, while foresight is almost always "as through a glass, darkly".

Comments

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

new orleans kinda has to be where it's at though.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Well, most of the old French Quarter is above sea level anyway. The historic parts and the central business district are msotly relatively safe. The areas that are below sea level are, for the most part, cheap tract housing -- and, for the sake of the people who have to live in them, they really need to be rebuilt on higher ground, and if that means extending NOLA twenty miles in a different direction, well, then extend it twenty miles in a different direction.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

yup, but that makes the commute to the docks that much longer.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That's a problem solvable with commuter rail.

[olafthunderfoot.livejournal.com]

that works! they put in a nice subway system in lost angels. i got to the point where i refused to drive ifi needed to go to downtown and took the bus and subway instead.

But...

[msa.livejournal.com]

The part they don't really point out is that the levees that were overtopped were 2 foot piles of gravel and sandbags, used to patch holes in the canal floodwall. They were NOT nearly full height levees.

And the floodwall in question wasn't overtopped initially -- they are now reporting that a massive chunk of it is gone because a drifting barge riding the storm surge hit the wall and destroyed it. It was also by far the biggest breech and the largest source of water.

Looking like bad luck mostly.

In any case they've already repaired what needed to be and have managed to pump out quite a bit of what came in. The areas that reflooded were already flooded so badly for so long I doubt this is going to have much financial impact -- most of those houses are losses by now anyway.

Re: But...

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

The part they don't really point out is that the levees that were overtopped were 2 foot piles of gravel and sandbags, used to patch holes in the canal floodwall.

Well, yeah. They were temporary repairs that weren't intended to stand up against a second hurricane on short notice, and, well, they didn't.

And the floodwall in question wasn't overtopped initially -- they are now reporting that a massive chunk of it is gone because a drifting barge riding the storm surge hit the wall and destroyed it. It was also by far the biggest breech and the largest source of water.

"Oops......"

In any case they've already repaired what needed to be and have managed to pump out quite a bit of what came in. The areas that reflooded were already flooded so badly for so long I doubt this is going to have much financial impact -- most of those houses are losses by now anyway.

Oh, sure. I wasn't thinking that it was doing additional damage; only that they just got done pumping it dry once, and now they're almost back at square one.