Posts from — September 2005

What a wimp!

Update: The People’s Republic of Seabrook is also in good shape.

Wear heavy boots, sturdy pants, a long sleeved shirt, and work gloves. If you have access to a hard hat, wear it. You should use a mosquito repellant before going outside and take a stout stick with you.

Proceed cautiously and scan your surroundings, including what’s overhead. Stuff gets blown around, ends up in trees or on roofs, and may drop. Large limbs may have broken, but are caught in lower limbs. There are a lot of things that might fall on you after the storm, so you need to look for them.

There are a lot of creatures that don’t like getting wet, so they will climb up on to things to avoid the water, or warm up. That’s the reason for the stout stick. There’s not much point in just killing them, but with a six-foot closet rod you could encourage them to seek other accommodations at minimal risk.

A dry wooden stick may be necessary if you notice that the electric lines are no longer connected to your house. Don’t assume that the power is off. If you can locate the ends mark the area in some way and put a sign up on the power pole on the street indicating that there are down lines. The power company will have crews checking on damage, and while they probably won’t reattach them to your house immediately, they can handle the lines safely and get them out of your yard. Treat any broken wire as high voltage electrical unless you know that it isn’t.

You are surveying damage, but should concentrate on things that might cause further damage or injury if not dealt with immediately. If something is damaged to the point of instability you might want to push over in a convenient direction, as in not on your car or house. If you have roof damage you need to think about getting a tarp or plastic sheeting to cover the damage to prevent further leaking until permanent repairs.

Take a realistic look at your experience and capability before deciding to do something yourself, and hold off on anything dangerous until medical assistance is available.

Pace yourself until the power is back on and you have access to air conditioning. Drink water and rest frequently. If you have finished your yard, help your neighbors. If you have older people in your area, check on them.

When we need to evacuate officials announce the evacuation and announce the time at which they are going to turn roads one-way to facilitate evacuation. The Department of Transportation takes care of the signage and it is done by starting inland and working towards the coast to flush out the traffic already on the road.

It’s really simple to do and it doesn’t require specialized training. You also do it early in the evacuation to get people out of the way. The longer you wait, the greater the risk of creating parking lots on Interstates.

After listening to what’s being done, and what isn’t, they talk to Carl Griffith, County Judge and a member of the Jefferson County Office of Emergency Management.

The county made a decision five years ago that they didn’t have the resources to deal with an evacuation on their own, so they contracted with a company to provide 200 buses and 700 ambulances if it became necessary to evacuate.

Faced with Rita, they called, the company responded, and then the state of Texas commandeered the buses and ambulances for Houston. Jefferson County ended up with a few buses and 15 extra ambulances.

A lot of people who wanted to leave or needed to leave are stuck, left behind by the state of Texas.

Hopefully there will be few injuries or deaths from Rita, but what good does it do for local governments to plan, and pay for their plans for years, when the state steps in and seizes their emergency assets when they are most needed? Where was the state and Federal help for Jefferson County?

It looks like Beaumont is the new landfall target, and like the New Orleans Times-Picayune, The Beaumont Enterprise is going to be publishing on the Internet until regular printing can resume after the storm.

As Rita has moderated, we can hope that we are not looking at a large death toll again.

A broad area of low pressure has formed about 500 miles south of Bermuda…and a few hundred miles southwest of Tropical Storm Philippe. Thunderstorm activity is somewhat limited…but this system has the potential for some gradual development during the next couple of days.

No one wants to hear this. We all need a break. Everyone needs to decompress and process all of the information we have received.

[Editor: That link automatically updates. There are now two areas of interest.]

[™ Kevin Drum]

Right Foot Conspiracy

Oh, no! Busted!

[Editor: Why only right shoes?]

Friday Ark

Some are of the opinion that the real reason for the bridge is to promote residential development on the island with the airport, which currently has 50 residents who work at the airport.

Don is Alaska’s only Congressman so he is always hustling for projects to bring Federal dollars to Alaska, as exemplified by this press release: Delegation Announces Grants And Loans To Alaska Programs. As this table shows, he manages to get Alaska about $6.50 for every dollar Alaska sends to the Federal government in transportation taxes.

The thing is Alaskans don’t pay state taxes. State government is funded by the $31.5 billion permanent fund created from the North Slope oil field and pipeline. With the rising price of oil they are becoming more comfortable than ever. You would probably wonder why he thinks he needs all of this money from other states when the state of Alaska makes an annual payment to every person who has been a legal resident of Alaska for a year.

While the San Diego Union-Tribune reports that the Alaska dividend payout drops for fifth straight year, every “eligible man, woman and child will receive $845.76 just for living in Alaska”

If Alaskans really want that bridge they can afford to build it without adding to the Federal deficit.

I think that most people have seen that there is a major lack of transportation resources along the Gulf coast, and that lack makes hurricane evacuations rather problematical. It would be nice if there were at least one four-lane road North out of every county on the Florida Panhandle, and if the main East-West road, Interstate 10 wasn’t so readily damaged in a hurricane. But that can’t be important or the states along the Gulf coast would get more than 85¢ back for every dollar they pay in Federal transportation taxes.

South of Pensacola there is a barrier island named Perdido Key. The island keeps getting sliced and diced by storms, and not just major hurricanes. Unlike other barrier islands where you lease land and there is an authority to limit what you can do, Perdido Key is owned by private individuals and the most the government can do is strictly enforce building codes and then send in the front loaders to scrape up the debris that started as houses from the public right-of-way.

As CBS reports nothing stops development. Every time someone’s house is deposited in a landfill, developers rush in to build another high-rise luxury building.

With penthouses selling for $1 million+, it is obvious that some people have too much money and need to be separated from it for their own good. Escambia County can’t make enough in taxes to pay the costs associated with having to provide services to the island. With more and more people living on it, evacuating it is a major problem.

Under the Houston plan, after you get on one of the evacuation routes you have to go where they direct you. This only makes sense if you are aware that Houston is the fourth most populous city in the US with over 2 million people and there are almost 5 million people living in and around the city. There aren’t that many major roads in the area, and they will have been converted to one way to effect the evacuation.

With more than 1.3 million people in the mandatory evacuation zone it is going to take a while to get out and there are not apt to be any motel rooms available within a couple of hundred miles of Houston.

Steve is staying at Stella’s place and doesn’t have access to his blog except for comments. He has been watching comments on his More Rita Blogging post.

His regular blog is hosted locally and is apt to be down when the power is lost, so he will have to use his YDD Annex on Blogspot if he can get on-line.

The people along the Texas coast need to be held in your thoughts and prayers. They also need your voices after the storm passes to be sure that they get the aid that wasn’t provided in Louisiana.

UPDATE:[09/22 – 0830 CDT] The main site is down, so Steve is at YDD Annex until further notice.

UPDATE:[09/22 – 1130 CDT] Steve’s host has come back on line with a back-up, but it is not the current page and Steve can’t access it. So stay with the YDD Annex.

Just to help us out the Shrubbery is sending the 842nd Signal Company of the Reserves to Iraq for a year. Well, Santa Rosa county [to my west] didn’t really need the 90 men and their mobile communications equipment. Fortunately those who were in Mississippi repairing telephone lines got back, or they would have been AWOL. I’m sure Bell South and Sprint don’t mind losing repair people, nor do the communities mind losing cops and firemen, right?

It would be nice if Rita would stall and spin down to a tropical storm from her current Cat 5 status, but that’s not likely to happen. The best vibes from the Panhandle go to those in the path.

PEARLINGTON, Mississippi (AP) — For more than a week, Pearlington survived largely on its own.

Then, 10 days after Hurricane Katrina annihilated this tiny hamlet on the Louisiana state line, Jeff McVay and five other members of a state emergency response team from Walton County, Florida, arrived at the request of Hancock County.

McVay, who’s been through many hurricanes, was stunned by what he found — a town that had nothing but a place to get water, ice and military-issued meals. There was no Red Cross. There was no shelter. He called home and asked for six more men.

Walton County is the next county to the east of me, so they’ve experienced the same storms I have and know the drill on recovery.

Notice he called back to Walton County for more people, knowing that he wasn’t going to get support from FEMA, and Hancock County called because they weren’t getting any help from the state.

This is why we are working with local officials and organization in the affected areas: the people in charge of the effort don’t know what they are doing and we are well aware of that after Ivan. The Red Cross is trying to coordinate its efforts with a group that doesn’t actually understand the concept of coordination, even though that is their main function.

Keep this story in mind when you hear the governor of Mississippi, Haley Barbour, talk about how great things are going.