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.

i am new to this forum and i am happy to see such educated
people being nice to eachother.

thanks for all the high quality info on
the hurricane event.

as we all know people die and get born every
day and we can all be sad about preventable deaths.

i am glad this event got the oil prices to the
mainstram news but i think we all know that this
not a 'peak oil' event because this is an economic demand issue.

all the fed. reserve has to do is raise interest rates or
the fed. goverment could show some leadership and get more
renewable energy subsidies.  

the real peak oil events are political events that
scare ignorant consumers to hording like 1973 and 1979

TOD is doing a great job on Katrina.  I am grateful to
be able to get such timely information.  The New York
Times has been disappointing, the Washington Post
somewhat better. Also, WWLTV.COM just posted that efforts
to stop the levee repair have been abandoned and 12-15
feet of water is expected.

I started this post a few posts ago and I'll post it again. Parts of New Orleans are lost forever. It's a grim reality that will be absorbed over the next few days.

the latest from wwltv, scary stuff

ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS**

Jeff Parish President. Residents will probably be allowed back in town in a week, with identification only, but only to get essentials and clothing. You will then be asked to leave and not come back for one month.

How about some of you anonymous posters create a TOD account, identify yourselves by some name and -- perhaps -- associate an e-mail or additional information with that account? Just so we know who is saying what on this weblog.

    Too often were insulated from human tragedy by distance or indifference or life. But now its closer to home again. And again we have an opportunity to practice what we know in our heart is the thing to do. Help in any way we can. Whether its money or time or materials or yourself or prayer its time to do something. Please consider and give as much as you can in any way you can. Namaste

Whoa.  Forgive me if this has already been posted, but look at this article from November 2004 titled "What if Hurricane Ivan Had Not
Missed New Orleans?":

http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html

9 Weeks to pump the water out of New Orleans!
I know it doesn't relate to oil much, but the article gives some insite on what the author predicted might happen during the storm and after the cleanup.  Also worth note is the following comment, "New Orleans would be dramatically different, and likely extremely diminished, from what it is today".

Gee, George cut his vacation two days short. What a guy!
But I think he figures Washington, DC is farther away
from the mess than his ranch in Texas. Plus if any dis-
gruntled New Orleaneans want to camp out at his doorstep
they probably won't be able to find any gas to drive to
DC.

PG, HO, Ianqui -- noticing a problem here and in other threads with anonymous posts?

What a rotten day for a lot of people on the Gulf.  Lets not gloss over the number of dead.  Many of which will not be known for days or weeks.

I'll stick by what I posted this morning that the people of TOD very accurately predicted the effects of a direct hit by Katrina and the mass media and U.S. in general are just taking longer to realize it.

I suspect there was a lot of undersea earth movement associated with the storm surge brought by Katrina.  Ivan cause a lot of undersea mudslides and I predict Katrina has done worse damage.  Clearly the more remote parts of the coast are totally destroyed.  Conventional news coverage started out assuming no knowledge meant things must be OK.  I see that has changed throughout the day.  Having been through major flood events in the midwest in the 90's I can tell you the damage can't be known until the water goes away.

One last comment which I will be blasted for, I'm sure.
Many of the residents of NO were/are quite poor as in most cities.  They didn't have the resources to move some place on short notice.  I don't remember the authorities rounding everyone up and providing transportation out of the city.  
While I don't condone it I am not as upset (as some posters here) that some of these survors are apparantly looting stores.  I see this more as a salvage operation, especially with respect to food.  Many one story buildings will be completely covered by tomorrow with all inventory destroyed by flood waters.  
Does it not make sense to salvage all the food and durable goods you can before the waters rise?  I understand someone's business and money is represented by those goods but is it better to be lost by theft or by water damage?
People are already hungry and wet.  They need food, clothing, shelter, and barter goods.  I don't think money has a whole lot of value in New Orleans tonight.
Without leadership people's most basic survival traits tend to take over and we are a pretty ruthless and successfull species when our backs are against the wall.

Please think about this carefully before condemming people who have just survived a natural disaster.  What would you do if the water was rising around your knees with no end in sight?

As a resident of the Miami area, which underwent a much lesser degree of trauma when Katrina hit us (my house just got power back today at 4 PM and over 100,000  other South Floridians are still without), I am in sympathy with the people of New Orleans. We were hit, too, with what up till now was the most damaging hurricane in U.S. history, Andrew. Up till now. Because what is taking place in New Orleans now is an on-going horror, a kind of slow motion disaster, the final chapter of which is still being written. With it I think I speak for others in saying that there is a growing sense of dismay and helplessness. This tragedy may be the greatest single natural disaster in US history That this tragedy was forseeable is amply demonstrated in the article at  http://www.colorado.edu/hazards/o/nov04/nov04c.html, which a previous poster referred to. To what extent this disaster's effects were preventable will surely occupy the minds of many in the days to come. Just the other day the highest ranking safety official from New Orleans was on television discussing his nightmare about what could happen with a major hurricane. His expressions were vivid and heartfelt. Now his nightmare has come true.

To know that a thing could well happen but to feel powerless to stop it, well, I think that sometimes people who believe that we are fast approaching peak oil get this feeling too. But the consequences of inaction are too terrible for us simply to give up. The same as in New Orleans.

Via Drudge:

GAS SCARE HITS ATLANTA
Tue Aug 2005 30 22:23:23 ET

Metro Atlanta drivers are facing the possibility of paying considerably more than $3 a gallon for gas by Labor Day -- if they can get it at all, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting Wednesday.

The two pipelines that bring gasoline and jet fuel to the region are down -- powerless to pump as Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc on electrical infrastructure.

The metro Atlanta region generally has about a 10-day supply of gasoline in inventory, said BP spokesman Michael Kumpf. The pipelines have been down for two days.

Alpharetta, Ga.-based Colonial Pipeline Co., cut off from its suppliers on the Gulf Coast, is now pumping gas from huge storage tanks, many in Powder Springs, Ga. Whether electric power can be restored to the pipeline pumps before supplies run out is "the great uncertainty ... that hangs over all of us," said Daniel Moenter, a spokesman for Marathon Ashland Petroleum, a major supplier of metro Atlanta's fuel.

Developing...

emphasis mine.

 
when you are poor, reality is very different,
 the options are very different
A nations greatness is measured by how it treats
the least of its people.
The whole world is watching

Art imitates life, or life imitates art?

Well, it wasn't exactly art, but we're freaking out as to how close this is getting to what was predicted in 'Oil Storm', the fictional docudrama that aired on the FX Network several months ago. After having an unwatched copy of it kicking around next to our TV for the past month or so, we decided to watch it as Katrina hit land. Besides the uncanny timing of the disaster, the writers may be pretty much on target in terms of the damage that such a hurricane could have on the oil-rich Gulf Coast and our economy as a whole. It will only be a matter of months to see if the worst visions of the drama play out in real life.

Spooky.

This event will definitely start making some Peak Oil skeptics into believers. Governments had better start planning NOW. This is only the start.

Watching the TV now, I think that New Orleans is no longer recoverable as a city and perhaps should not be rebuilt... and that the Gulf Coast over to Mobile is just gone ... This is an enormous tragedy... I have never seen anything like this...

Are they only black people in New Orleans?

The images of the victims remind me of apartheid...

In view of the coming onset of decline, it's very instructive to see just how tight petro-markets are and the sudden "unveiling" by the business media of the very intricate network of interdependencies that exist within the matrix of the US and Global economies. For example, the interaction of trade flows down the Mississippi, through New Orleans and on to Europe that help to ease our precarious current account deficit.

On another board I predicted that Katrina would be the first Trillion Dollar Storm once all costs are accounted. (I don't know how a fatality from the storm would value it.) Rising energy costs are a part of that cost. Yet, there might be some good.

Based on figures presented here at TOD, almost 2MBD of crude extraction are shut-in, along with a correspondingly large amount of NG, which will now be saved for sometime later instead of being used now. And as mentioned above, there will be dislocations throughout much of the South and the old Midwest with New Orleans essentially out-of-commission for the next 6-8 weeks at a minimum.

I was wondering when someone was going to talk about the panic buying that is going on across this country in anticipation of higher gas  prices due to Katrina. I am in southern NJ at a Flying J truck stop and the lines outside for gas are unusual I am told.. Are people  topping off more as this cannot be routine.. Have you noticed any panic buying  in your area of the country??

Evacuating the entire city is a major decision. The poor (I mean that in both its senses) in the "Super" dome are going to be moved again, this time to the Astrodome in Houston. They are talking about a convoy of buses.

As  for as the so-called looting/salvaging, I pray the powers that be will have the sense NOT to shoot anyone for stealing food, toilet paper, and diapers, or anything else for that matter.

Ciao.
Tom
http://piqueoil.blogspot.com/

Having spent quite a bit of time there (New Orleans), I would say that things have been remarkably calm considering the situation. While I think that the looting may have begun as a hunt for fresh water and food by a few concerned or thirsty people, when others saw the glass breaking, it became a free-for-all.

If you watch enough of the news footage, you can see those going after food are NOT hiding their faces from the cameras, or else they are kids who are just too ignorant to care. But women taking shoes and clothes and young men grabbing stereos, TVs and PS2s are not doing that because they are hungry. Why? Well, FNC had one kid that basically believed that if it was left in the city, he had a right to take it if he wanted to.

I heard on the radio (ham) that some drug stores were looted the first night by the drug crazies, along with a few liquor stores. The second night, there were reports coming to my friend that every drug and liquor store in town was emptied for the most part. And there is a lot more gunfire heard than is being reported by the media.

What encourages me is seeing people smart enough to just hoof it and do the 20 mile walk out of town up Interstate 10. People survive, but those waiting on government to help them may wait quite a while. FEMA saw all of this coming, but did not deign to step in until it was all over - THAT is our federal government at work. The CAT 3 levees "considered adequate for most hurricanes" sat quietly insufficient while the city beseeched the feds for money to upgrade to CAT 5 - that is so very typical. Cow's out - better fix the barn door...