Hurricane Double Whammy? Rita Looms In Gulf
If Tropical Storm Rita, the 17th named Atlantic storm of the 2005 season, makes the transition to hurricane and clips southeast Louisiana, allow me to share some advice to my fellow émigrés: buy lottery tickets!
They say “lightning does not strike twice in the same place.” Actually it does, but such an occurrence is rare.
I wonder if there is a similar axiom about houses floating into apartment complexes. “Homes don’t go a crashin’ into the same rental units more than once,” a leathery Cajun version of Gabby Hayes might muse aloud between spits of tobacco and swigs of Dixie beer. If they were such a saying, I might be willing to play the odds this week if Rita rumbles through what is left of St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans.
Had there been no Katrina, TS Rita would be dismissed as the typical looming threat that many ignored and simply “rode through,” an interesting phrase as most New Orleans residents endure these powerful storms on dry land (or what used to be dry land).
But since southeast Louisiana’s world has been turned upside down by the Category 5 Kat, people are understandably jittery.
Being Catholic (and therefore superstitious), the name of this new storm alone is a frightening omen as one of America’s biggest nursing home tragedies took place at St. Rita’s Nursing Home, where an estimated 34 elderly patients drowned when its owners unwisely decided to roll the dice with the lives of dozens of people’s grandmothers.
But there are serious reasons to be concerned about TS Rita.
The high pressure system moving east in the northwest Gulf of Mexico will likely force the storm, by then a hurricane, into an area spanning from the Mexico-Texas border through south-central Louisiana. As hurricanes are hard to accurately predict days away from actual landfall, the atmospheric conditions could change for the better from Louisiana’s perspective and shove Rita west. Or fickle Mother Nature could send the storm north to the Louisiana-Mississippi border, AKA Katrina Ground Zero.
While Rita is unlikely to become the same size of her gargantuan sister hurricane, the new storm in the gulf would not have to be a powerful hurricane to be comparably destructive. Many of the earthen walls that protected southeast Louisiana communities from storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico have been battered beyond use.
Ninety percent of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet levees were smashed by Katrina, so even a lesser category Rita could inundate St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans with water as the first line of defense that had mostly protected this region between 1965 and 2005 is now gone.
To use a football analogy, imagine the levees are a defensive line and Hurricane Katrina was a fullback that punched through the line. Now imagine a second play where TS-Hurricane Rita is a running back about to run through the same hole except four defensive linemen are still on the ground.
Lake Pontchatrain could also be a problem as the crude levee repairs at the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal, while sufficient enough to plug receding water, would easily burst open with the appearance of another hurricane, once again sending waters pouring into Lakeview and central New Orleans.
After engaging in a war of words with the new FEMA director on the ground, Mayor Ray Nagin has accepted that his “second line” back to the city has been rained on by Rita and has called off the proposed reopening of New Orleans.
The Navy is sending its relief ships up the Mississippi River and the St. Bernard Parish Government, now the governing authority of a sludge-covered ghost suburb, has nixed its tardy re-entry schedule and is weighing whether to evacuate to higher ground instead of just a taller building. Repopulated Jefferson Parish, which had just finished restoring utilities, might be the scene of yet another massive exodus as Baton Rouge property values continue to rocket.
Residents of the Bayou State are running out of patience with these once in a lifetime “super hurricanes” that have hit twice in the same vicinity within a 30 year period as the slate of names for 2005 Atlantic storms nears the end of the list (there are only four left) with over 70 days left in the official hurricane season.
They say “lightning does not strike twice in the same place.” Actually it does, but such an occurrence is rare.
I wonder if there is a similar axiom about houses floating into apartment complexes. “Homes don’t go a crashin’ into the same rental units more than once,” a leathery Cajun version of Gabby Hayes might muse aloud between spits of tobacco and swigs of Dixie beer. If they were such a saying, I might be willing to play the odds this week if Rita rumbles through what is left of St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans.
Had there been no Katrina, TS Rita would be dismissed as the typical looming threat that many ignored and simply “rode through,” an interesting phrase as most New Orleans residents endure these powerful storms on dry land (or what used to be dry land).
But since southeast Louisiana’s world has been turned upside down by the Category 5 Kat, people are understandably jittery.
Being Catholic (and therefore superstitious), the name of this new storm alone is a frightening omen as one of America’s biggest nursing home tragedies took place at St. Rita’s Nursing Home, where an estimated 34 elderly patients drowned when its owners unwisely decided to roll the dice with the lives of dozens of people’s grandmothers.
But there are serious reasons to be concerned about TS Rita.
The high pressure system moving east in the northwest Gulf of Mexico will likely force the storm, by then a hurricane, into an area spanning from the Mexico-Texas border through south-central Louisiana. As hurricanes are hard to accurately predict days away from actual landfall, the atmospheric conditions could change for the better from Louisiana’s perspective and shove Rita west. Or fickle Mother Nature could send the storm north to the Louisiana-Mississippi border, AKA Katrina Ground Zero.
While Rita is unlikely to become the same size of her gargantuan sister hurricane, the new storm in the gulf would not have to be a powerful hurricane to be comparably destructive. Many of the earthen walls that protected southeast Louisiana communities from storm surges in the Gulf of Mexico have been battered beyond use.
Ninety percent of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet levees were smashed by Katrina, so even a lesser category Rita could inundate St. Bernard and eastern New Orleans with water as the first line of defense that had mostly protected this region between 1965 and 2005 is now gone.
To use a football analogy, imagine the levees are a defensive line and Hurricane Katrina was a fullback that punched through the line. Now imagine a second play where TS-Hurricane Rita is a running back about to run through the same hole except four defensive linemen are still on the ground.
Lake Pontchatrain could also be a problem as the crude levee repairs at the 17th Street Canal and the London Avenue Canal, while sufficient enough to plug receding water, would easily burst open with the appearance of another hurricane, once again sending waters pouring into Lakeview and central New Orleans.
After engaging in a war of words with the new FEMA director on the ground, Mayor Ray Nagin has accepted that his “second line” back to the city has been rained on by Rita and has called off the proposed reopening of New Orleans.
The Navy is sending its relief ships up the Mississippi River and the St. Bernard Parish Government, now the governing authority of a sludge-covered ghost suburb, has nixed its tardy re-entry schedule and is weighing whether to evacuate to higher ground instead of just a taller building. Repopulated Jefferson Parish, which had just finished restoring utilities, might be the scene of yet another massive exodus as Baton Rouge property values continue to rocket.
Residents of the Bayou State are running out of patience with these once in a lifetime “super hurricanes” that have hit twice in the same vicinity within a 30 year period as the slate of names for 2005 Atlantic storms nears the end of the list (there are only four left) with over 70 days left in the official hurricane season.
posted by BourbonConservative at 8:32 PM
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