What's more interesting about this hurricane season is not necessarily Katrina, not to downplay its significance. It's the fact that we're up to hurricane Maria already (out in the Atlantic, not coming here). Tropical Storm Nate is on its heels. Fortunately, current conditions will keep those out to sea. For the last two years, the Annapolis to Oxford race was ruined by Isabel and Ivan, occuring in mid-September. "I" was awhile ago.

What is the farthest letter in the alphabet that hurricane names have gotten to in any season?

Mary,

Right off Hurricane Opal comes to mind. But they don't only name hurricanes so there are probably other T.S. systems that have been named after that.

Clayton

Yes, both tropical storms and hurricanes get named. See the links below for the NOAA forecast update for 2005 - first is the NOAA site, second is the update.

NOAA hurricane center
Storm Outlook for '05

Right. I should l have should have said, "named storms in the United States." Just wondered what is the farthest we have gotten in the alphabet.

This year's list ends with Wilma. I wonder what they will do if it goes beyond that. Maybe add Xavier, Yvonne and Zach? And then what do they do?

Well you fella's from somewhere else can speculate all you want about what happens here, but if you sit at home waiting for someone else to come take care of you then you're in the wrong place! Emergency disaster plans start at home and goes up from there. When the storm is comming you plan for your situation, whether you leave or stay you still need a plan. People say they should have taken those people out before, well look at how long it took when most were in one location. How about this situation, lets say all those people could have been evacuated before and lets say the storm took a hard turn to the east (Sorry Florida), then all those same people would be pissed that you made them leave for nothing. Its a no-win situation.

Compared to the last time they tried to evacuate most of the area, this one went off really good. Much improvement, but not enough planning overall. The one breakdown in the plan which the people themselves did not have any control over is the disaster plan on the city and state level. As a tiered system it should go like this: 1.) You take care of #1 first thats you, 2.) Help your neighbor if you can (thats community), 3.) Then it starts to go up the public ladder, Emergency prepardness plans for your area, 4.) The citywide Emergency Plan should plan for the infrastructure, 5.) The Parish (County for you guys outside of Louisiana) then takes care of things outside of the city, 6.) Then the State fills in from there, 7.) Finally the Feds come in when all else fails.

If you can't follow that idea, then you shouldn't be down here.

Hurricane Lilly came right over us 2 years ago and we sure didn't wait for someone to come over to help us!! We had no electricity or water for anywhere from a couple of days to a month. The relief efforts started at home and with help from others that volunteered (Thank God!) we got back on our feet. It just took time.

Now I'll get off that box and get back to work.

Peace,
Clayton

Mary,
Maybe they will have to start stuttering after AARON and BB (as in King). Next could be CCATHERINE

David
H20

Utah,
Maybe we should have had the cojones to ask Teddy Kennedy to give up some of his federal budget money for his Boston "Big Dig" the most expensive 7.5 miles of highway in the world. Some of that could have been allocated to New Orleans. There is always a finger to point somewhere. Did I just hear The Rev. Jesse say that Katrina was a racist plot of Repulicans to rid New Orleans of poor black people who so reliably vote democratic?

Would that liberals especially take a deep breath (you should read the sound bites coming out of DC by liberals already. Stuff happens and people screw up. One could examine the activities of the mayor and govenor in the crisis, for example. I would never want to trust the Feds to do everything right in order to save me, but maybe that's just the way I was raised. Ultimately we are better our own keepers and our brother's than the Feds (or state/local governments) are.

Just my humble $.02
Peace,
David
H20

Here's a bit of moderate discussion. I like National Geographic because they do a good job of focusing on the science without regard to politics. Just facts. This was written last year...

Interesting read...

Of course, a little financial responsibility and the money would have been there anyway. You can have my tax cut.

Sound bites are coming from all angles - so far we've heard gays and gay marriage and abortion as the reasons we've been so punished. And all those people should have had cars so they could get out. Now that the federal response has seen to be lacking, the fingers are pointed at the victims themselves. Whatever.

Looking back over pictures of damage done by Isabel (just a tropical storm then) to the Chesapeake Bay area, I can't fathom the destruction from this storm. I suspect that the pictures don't tell the whole story. It's easy for the rest of us to look at it from afar and armchair quarterback it and put our own political spin on it. To say you just need to rely on yourself in these circumstances... Say that to the local gov't whose entire infrastructure has been destroyed. Even at the state level, the ability to handle these sorts of disasters, when your own state is the one devastated, is limited. I pride ourselves on being a nation that can do just about anything, and that is due to our resourcefulness and teamwork. And teamwork means we should be able to rely on each other when the shi* hits the fan.

To hear some people, you'd think that what happened was a complete surprise. Who expected a levee to fail? Only anybody who had paid attention, those predictions were not exactly secret. The hospital ship is leaving Baltimore for there. I'm proud we have that resource as a nation, it's not something Biloxi could do for themselves. It will take awhile to get there. It should have already been underway.

Hey, I never said I expect big government to save our butts. But building basic infrastructure required to protect a major city should come even before military upkeep. And yes, before the Big Dig, too (no argument there). Shafting the Army Corps of Engineers in this case was the wrong thing to do. I'm more of a libertarian than a liberal, and don't like to see my tax money spent period. But since I already paid my taxes, I'd like to see our government do work rather than make excuses. Building appropriate levees to save a major metropolis is hardly a socialist handout.

I don't think anyone has mentioned yet that FEMA (the FEDERAL disaster department) is NOT a "first responder" rescue type of organization. It is their responsibility to hand out checks, coordinate shelter resources and most of the "after the fact" work of disasters.

The governor in LA is completely to blame for the lack of Nat. Guard presence in the area. Had she pre-emptively declared the area as disasterous, the guard could have mobilized much sooner in the area. She only declared a disaster area in response from the plea of the federal gov.

Oh and this is hilarious:
http://www.dailyhaha.com/media/default.asp?Genre=1&content=looting

First here's something else to read,note the date! http://www.hurricane.lsu.edu/_in_the_news/houston.htm

Jeff,
I love it when someone bashes Rush. But I guess you have a valid complaint, after all since he came on nationally in "88" the Dem's have been on somewhat of a losing streak. Is it the message or the messenger? It is entertaining to hear some of the things that are said and go on unfiltered by the main media.

Global warming? Duh. Lets see do I have this right? Most of the topography of the northeast was formed by glaciers. Where are they now? How long have they been gone? That's right long before the pilgrims arrived. It's a cycle. Don't worry though at some point the sun will burn out(so I've read) and the ice will come back..... Can't wait!

This post makes it sound as though New Orleans is like any other major US city when we all know that is simply not the case. New Orleans could be made more safe in the same way the Netherlands has been reclaimed from the sea. The project to strengthen the levies was expected to take several years to complete so funding it or not in fiscal '03-'04 would have made no difference for this storm so it's a moot point. More than 9000 guardsmen were available in states bordering the storm areas so the number of available guardsmen was NOT the problem; piss poor planning and communication on the part of the governor of LA was the culprit. Compare her respose with the response to hurricane Andrew (Gov Lawton Chiles-D.) and the '04 storms (Gove Jeb Bush-R.) to see what good planning and disaster response looks like.Here's a quote from the St.Pete Times article on Andrew-10 years after So neither Florida Gov Lawton Chiles nor President Bill Clinton had any experience with a storm of this magnitude or coordinating such a massive relief effort. Neither had FEMA up to that point. But the relief effort was STILL better than what we have seen with Katrina. And Andew came along with very little warning; unlike Katrina which chugged along for nearly a week before going ashore right where they said it would.

By the time the '04 storms hit, both George and Jeb Bush had taken heed of the past mistakes of both state and federal gov'ts disaster responses WRT Andrew, and as a result the relief effort for the '04 storms was well coordinated and efficient.

So now comes the '05 storm season with Katrina and some people are now saying that W just forgot how to get a disaster relief up and running, or that maybe he bungled it on purpose to punish the folks of New Orleans??!! Hog Fu--ing wash! The governor of LA is to blame for not requesting federal aid in time, not requesting guardsmen on time and not having acquired the
means to stay in communication (we HAVE the technology!) with the federal and (neighboring) state agencies. This is a simple lack of planning. These are all lessons a COMPETENT governor would have learned by example from the experience of FL governors past, had she been paying attention.

It is good to remember that wherever you live in the USA, generally speaking, you are NOT under the everyday control of the US (federal) government. Neither is the US government responsible for you health and safety; these are the purview of the government of the state in which you reside. Furthermore, the federal govenment may not casually take control of, meddle or interfere with the affairs of the state governments unless requested by the state's governor to do so. The governor of LA failed to do so in a timely manner WRT Katrina. The president cannot simply call in federal army troops to straighten things out; that is ILLEGAL. The governor of any state OTOH, can call up state guard troops, can request guard troops from another state or even federal troops. The governors have that authority; The president does not.



Jimbo

Though in my memeory the H. Andrew releif was a Bill Clinton affair (it went on for a few years), he actually inherited that situation from the lame duck presidency of George H W Bush. Either way, STILL better than the present!

Jimbo

Ok, Jimbo, all that may explain LA. What about Mississippi? Does the ex-chair of the RNC and Bush's '00 campaign not know who to call for help? And if the Feds really are powerless to help in an emergency, then they should be equally powerless to hinder. But I'll let the president of Jefferson Parish speak to that.

Watching this thing unfold reminded me a lot of the place I work at. We used to be a small family owned business with about 200 employees when I started there 8 years ago. We are known in our industry as being, by far, the most responsive to problems (which we pretty much created - but still). To get things done in our plant, you pretty much took a project and had cart blanche to cross department lines to talk to whoever and get it done. As a Field Service Manager, I could collaborate with my field techniciangs, draw up a part in the computer myself, take it to a CNC or Laser programmer and have the finished stainless steel or aluminum part in my hand within about two hours and on a flight to that location in another hour. We've since grown to nearly 500 employees over those eight years and our department lines are becoming harder to traverse. Our documentation of things still looks like it does when we were 20 people sitting in the same room working together - so we sometimes don't document enough. In other ways, getting things done takes more and more time, involves more people, and gets screwed up a lot more. This is a hard transition but we're working through it.

Obviously, our government hasn't recently doubled in employees - but what I saw in response to Katrina reminded me a lot of what I have to deal with daily. WHY in the WORLD does the state governor have to ask for troops before they will mobilize? EVERYBODY saw this hurricane coming. WHY would these people in charge sit there and ignore a serious situation because they haven't received a phone call from the right person (now THIS is like what I work with). Why wasn't that Navy hospital ship mobilized out of Norfolk as soon as we saw Katrina building like crazy in the gulf?

How long did it take us to get a Hospital ship to the Tsunami vicitims in the Pacific? I would say that our response to an international disaster is probably better than one on our own shores.

All good questions, Jake, and I'm sure someone in one of the many hearings on what went wrong will ask those very same ones. I think it's too soon to tell what went wrong and what went right. One of the questions I want answered is, "If you are governor of a state that has a major hurricane bearing down on it and you have been told as long ago as 2001 that your state is in the top 3 of potential disasters in the country if a major hurricane hits WHY DON'T YOU SCREAM FOR FEDERAL ASSISTANCE THE SECOND JIM CANTORO BOOKS HIS AIRPLANE TICKET? That means declaring state of emergency, calling out the National Guards (they should be called Louisiana State Guards by the way), pulling out of storage all the water and food kits you should have stockpiled and shipping them to the Superdome if that was in your survival plan etc. etc. etc.
It is in The Governor's Handbook 101, page 1 that the governor of a state controls everything in an emergency. We have that all the time up here in the frozen north when a blizzard or ice storm is coming. They have plans in place to handle everything. I see no evidence they had a plan for anything related to the potential disaster they have been lving with. Wait until the lawyers get a hold of this one!!!!! "Have you been injured in the Hurricane? Call the law offices of ......"
Also where was the media on this one? Why weren't they screaming from 2001 on that this was a disaster waiting to happen? Maybe they were there and we just didn't hear them? Plenty of questions but it won't be for quite some time before we get answers...

From my understanding, the cities, states, and disaster planners all had been saying for a long time that this was a disaster waiting to happen, and the predictions of magnitude were along the lines of what has been seen. Anybody paying any attention to this from last year's season would know the info was there, in the media and otherwise. The same thing is known about the Tampa/St. Pete area, and they also dodged a major bullet last year. After the close calls last year, they did start revising the plans, and the fact that things (evacuations and such) have gone as well as they have is testament to that, in other words it could have been much worse. Certainly not perfect, but consider the magnitude of the problem. One problem with the evacuations is that not everybody had the means to get out.

As for deploying their Guard units - it would be interesting to know just how much they had to deploy, given that a lot of guard units are fighting full time in Iraq. Not a political statement, just one of truth.

I also think that at the federal level, watching the storm come in and saying "gosh, nobody has asked for help in the correct fashion so they must not need it" as a ways to justify response is wrong. People at that level needed to be thinking a couple of moves ahead as well.

Jimbo is right on the money here. The Fed has no right to do anything unless asked by the state. Remember that we are the United STATES. That is 50 states that united together independent of eachother.

Here is a good web blog from inside NO during the disaster. http://mgno.com/

There is one person to blame and that is the Governor of LA. She needed to take quick and decisive action to ask for help quickly and direct rescue operations.

Here is a good read on the disaster written prior to Katrina posted by John W.
http://www3.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0410/feature5/

There were a few disasters waiting to happen in the US. This was one of them. Another is a San. Fran. Earthquake and yet another is a Hurracane in NY City.

The Mayor didn't exactly help the situation either. He could have done more but I blame his inexperience in the job.

Mike Hill
www.stlouiscats.com