This is from 'Chris' who, I guess, is one of the emergency workers. Finally some info is trickling down. I'm quoting it in entirity since it's pretty useful/interesting stuff.

Hi Brendan, I only have a moment must
get to a meeting, but wanted to post summary of Governor and Army Corps news conference from my perspective but dont have time to see if you have covered this yet.

They are planning to try to close the largest breach in the levee with whatever measures will be effective over the long run, Army Corps is thinking of using large shipping containers filled with sand, and or large sand bags, they will be brining in large cranes, barges, air asssets,
and manpower, and should be at it by tomorrow. The largest breach is 300 ft plus and there is a smaller one as well.

The water has been rising all day, early AM it ws knee deep at the KatrinaDome, by afternoon it was thigh deep. They are contemplating, planning to see about evacuating all the 25,000 to 30,000 (count according to a registered nurse in the Dome @ mid day)
somewhere else for now they are brining in all the people they rescue to the Dome.

They say that the entire city will have to be evauced, but the biggest challenge according to the FEMA Head of staff on scene is that there is little or no dry land to move them to in the city. They will see about building tent cities, temp housing, bringing in dormatory barges, and locateing them in the neightborhoods peopel are from as much as possible so that they can attend school, church etc. He said they will have to "recreate" New Orleans.
He , the Army Corp head said that they have the authorization or will get the authroization to do whatever needs to be done.

The double long bridge to Slidelle is totally broken in countless places, I counted over a hundred breaks or missing sections, the briges were built in sections and many of them are tilted, or just gone, missing, from both spans, though there are intact lengths, quite long, so neither is complete at this point. There is at least one car stuck out on the span.

There is NO power in the city, and no operating sewers, and growing looting and loss of order. Most of the city, up to 80% is under differeing depths of water, but according to some reports the flow is slowing. There are thousands who need rescuing, but the authorities will concentrate on the life threatening situations, and on brining in supplies to feed and water these people in the city before trying to organize evac.

The Dome is getting tough, at least one hospital is evacing its cases to the dome, Tulane is evacing as they will lose even their temp generators soon.
The dome cannot be cooled with the temp generators they have and they will lose them soon to water rising.

There are fires buring several commercial structures that I observed and a large fire in the distance possibly at the oil facilities. The police and presumably fire units cannot navigate the streets due to water, and the fire units planned to station their units on the elevated freeway sections in the event the water rose as it is.

The Governor sounds pretty stable considering the pressures and the stress, she is determined to rebuild and to save all that can be saved. The Army Corp staff and FEMA both sound excellent and well organized, The National Guard is still 50% in the USA, and they say they have the assets they need for now, some of the neighboring states are sending help from their guaards. There is general shock among the people I sense, including the news media and I appologize for being so hard on them in past posts, they are unprepared for such catastrophic conditions and are doing the best they can. Everyone involved should get traumtaic stress support asap, especially the Governor and the high staff. There are many airlifts underway, I saw Coast Guard and Army units, and this is working well it appears, but what will be done with many of these people? There will be a great many.

The rest of the coast I did not have time to get much imput on but I sense that it may be even worse, but unreachable, many parts of it were totally wiped out, I saw one fly over that showed total devastation, just foundations and rubble to the East.

In general I think finally the scope of the disaster is getting through to the top leaders and to some of the people, thoiugh many will still be in shock. Keep up the news sharing, you are doing great. I will check back soon.
Chris | 08.30.05 - 6:43 pm | #

Update: Mayor says efforts to repair levee has failed, will have to wait until water levels equalize to begin repair.

Mayor Ray Nagin has announced that the attempt to plug a breach in the
17th Street canal at the Hammond Highway bridge has failed and the
rising water is about to overwhelm the pumps on that canal.
The result is that water will begin rising rapidly again, and could
reach as high as 3 feet above sea level. In New Orleans and Jefferson
Parish, that means floodwaters could rise as high as 15 feet in the next
few hours.
Nagin urged residents to try to find higher ground as soon as possible.

From what I gather from the above, the authorities will completely evaculate NOLA as much as possible, repair the levees, repair the pumps, start draining the city. It will take weeks probably just to drain the city. I feel very bad for residents.

Update2: Michelle Malkin, a big name blogger, has lots of info...basically the same stuff that's here and elsewhere (Irish Trojan, Times-Picayune), but prettier. (The info or the blogger? I'll leave it to readers to decide).



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