Category Archives: Katrina

Katrina

I gave up on the “street-bus”

That’s what I was calling the bus that runs on the streetcar route here in Uptown, since the streetcar line is still not fixed post-Katrina. I’ve been taking this bus to work, which could take anywhere from 15 minutes to 1.5 hours, depending on the whims of the RTA.

This was just not working. I live a mere 3.54 miles from my lab, a distance that I could often speedwalk faster than taking the bus.

I used to ride my old mountain bike, but it was stolen during Katrina, so I finally bought a new one:

Now it only takes me 15 minutes each way.

Protecting wetlands that protect oil revenues

The Washington crowd cannot even get this right.

“in the last two years [2004-2005], we have spent more to rebuild Iraq’s wetlands than Louisiana’s” (for those who aren’t sure, a large amount of oil is regularly pulled out of the gulf of Louisiana’s shoreline, shipped through New Orleans’ port system, and processed locally along Mississippi between the sea and Baton Rouge).

Quote is from John Barry and Newt Gingrich, Time magazine, 6 March 2006, reproduced here

Happy Mardi Gras

This is a synthesis of two recent Mardi-Gras-related posts from my LiveJournal (my personal journal). The first was relatively popular as my LJ posts go.

Happy Mardi Gras
Ahh, even with everything all messed up post-katrina, sometimes I really love this city. Yesterday evening when I was out for my run, I passed some guys in the Neutral Ground on St.Charles, near Louisiana I think, wearing clown outfits with a cooler on wheels and a portable radio. On the way back toward home, I heard the distinct sound of Mardi Gras music as I approached, and one of them held out a strand of beads for me.

“Happy Mardi Gras!,” he yelled happily as I snagged the beads. “Hey, Happy Mardi Gras,” I replied, and went on my merry way, the beads bouncing with each step as I ran.

Some things have changed forever, but it’s good to know that some things haven’t changed a bit.

No bus? I’ll run.
I realized a bit too late this afternoon that I wouldn’t make it to the bus before they shut down most of the route for parades. I took the bus to Napoleon and then got off (as I had to).

Then I started walking on the neutral ground.

Then I saw some people running, and I thought, “you could just run, Brock.”

So I cinched down the straps on my backpack, took my umbrella in one hand and my 20oz diet coke in the other, and I started running. In my 10-year-old $7 sandals from K-Mart. I ran past Fat Harry’s, and I ran past Louisiana, and then I passed Washington and Jackson, and now I’m home. I got a lot of strange looks, and I worry that my calves might hurt tomorrow, but you know what? It actually felt pretty good, sandals or no. It was probably just over a mile and a half, maybe 1.75 or something.

I feel better about not running earlier in the week, like somehow running in normal clothes and sandals with my backpack for 1.75 miles makes up for not running 3 miles in proper attire. I might wander back out there later to catch Muses…

ADDENDUM: By the way, it’s only 5 hours later and my calves are already quite tight from the run in sandals.

C’est levee

Who should pay for recovering from Katrina?

Many think the
US government should not go too far in subsidising private choices to
live below the height of the sea.

My own view is that the
federal government is responsible for the enormous damage sustained by
the New Orleans area. The Army Corps of Engineers was grossly
negligent in designing levees it was required to build and warranted
would protect New Orleans from a storm just like Katrina.[1] As a result of that
negligence, several hundred thousand people suffered very substantial
harm.[2]
(Disclosure: This is my 12th year in New Orleans. While our property
is not in the flood plain, it was flooded, though being raised, our
home was not.)

Unfortunately, the Federal government will not
compensate residents of New Orleans beyond a fraction of the costs
caused by the levee breaches.[3]

For decades, over half a million people[4]
have invested their lives and livelihoods in the New Orleans
area. They did so in no small part based on the assurance provided by
the levee system mandated by Congress and designed, built and overseen
by the Army Corps of Engineers.[5]

The levees of New Orleans were breached[6]
by waters the Congressional standard, and the Army Corps of Engineers’
own standards, should have contained. In the case of the 17th Street
and London Street canals, Katrina generated a storm surge well within
their design specifications.[7]
However, both these canals suffered catastrophic breaks, flooding the
bulk of the “crescent” of the Orleans Parish (the land between its
western boundary and the Industrial Canal)[8]
and a large swathe of neighboring Metairie (flood
map from the Times-Picayune, 9 December 2005). The breaches were
not caused by water over-topping the levees, but by egregious design
flaws.[9]
The foundation soils of the levees were not properly accounted for,[10]
a conclusion supported by a study from the Army Corps of Engineers.[11]

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New WTUL recording script

Last year I posted about a script I wrote for recording WTUL (Tulane University’s radio station). Since Katrina, they’ve been running a different stream, rebroadcast by Stanford. It’s in the open-source OGG format, and it only took a small modification of the script to adapt to it. I’ve posted the new script. All of the directions are otherwise the same (and are on the script page). You still need mplayer and so on.