A Long Hot September In Louisiana
CNN reports that 10 Louisiana parishes declared federal disaster areas
President Bush on Saturday declared major disasters in parts of Texas and the Louisiana parishes of Acadia, Beauregard, Calcasieu, Cameron, Iberia, Jefferson Davis, Sabine, St. Mary, Vermilion, and Vernon, making federal funds available for recovery from the devastation of Ike.
…In Plaquemines Parish near New Orleans, sheriff’s spokesman Maj. John Marie told AP that floodwaters are higher than they were during hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
A lot of these areas were without power because of hurricane Gustav, and the repairs have been set even further back. Power companies from all over the US send crews, e.g. after Ivan my power was restored by a crew from New Jersey, but getting together all of the poles and towers that need to be replaced, as well as the wire, is a major undertaking. You have to let the ground dry out, because you can’t set a pole in mud.
The misery continues.
6 comments
One of the things that baffled me in the run-up to Ike hitting the coast was that nobody mentioned that South Louisiana would be getting hit by a wall of water just like Galveston, albeit probably only eight or ten feet of water rather than fifteen feet of water. But when most of South Louisiana is less than ten feet above sea level, that’s a whole lot of water. I guess the national press just doesn’t care about Louisiana anymore, they’re done compassioned out or something.
Note that once the flood waters go down, most cities will have power within 24 hours. It’s the remote small towns that end up going without power for a week or more. With Gustav, my brother’s power was off for 20 hours. My mother’s power was off for four days, and she was further from the coast and got less wind and rain — but she was in a smaller town than my brother’s, and one that was nestled amongst pine trees that fell over and toppled many wires. So the “no power for a week or more” is a bit misleading. Yes, there are places that won’t have power back for a week or more — but I bet you that all of metropolitan Houston outside the coastal flood zones will have power back within 48 hours.
The power restoration plan is tiered based on the transmission line size. The major lines are replaced before the secondaries, and the single houses are last on the list.
My Mother’s house is actually on the same block as mine but her power comes from a main feed line, so she gets power back almost immediately. I’m on a spur on the side street, and I’m lucky if I get it back in less than a week.
The people in the little towns are usually on a low priority secondary line, and it only feeds that town, so they are screwed. Even after they get the secondary up, they generally work from a central location. It gets really annoying when they get power to the “priority” locations, like schools, before residences, and the schools are out of session.
We’ll see how soon Steve gets it back, but I agree, no one was talking about the obvious, that it wasn’t just Houston – the whole coast from Houston around to at least Cameron was going to get pounded. Hell, they were very nervous in New Orleans and shut some of the flood gates.
I think the media can only handle one little section of disaster area to mention at time. Looking at the “big picture” of the devisation is too much trouble and would cost too much money for them, so they just don’t cover it…therefore it didn’t happen. (Just like those oil spills during Katrina)
On oil spills, there was a major diesel spill at one of the bayous in Houston. I saw it watching the live feed from KHOU, the on scene reporter mentioned the fumes, and the picture he showed made it obvious, i.e. oil on troubled waters effect highlighting the huge area along the shoreline that was contaminated.
The infrastructure was better in Houston and apparently none of the networks own a boat.
My brother’s house is basically in a suburb of Lafayette, the major city in the area, he’s close to the I-10 corridor that all the lines run down, and he lives on the Cajun prairie (few trees to fall over and take down wires), so he’s lucky thataway. Regarding reporting on what’s happening in South Louisiana, the Times-Picayune did a good job on that, but nobody outside of South Louisiana appears to have cared to pick up on any of those stories. Similarly, the Lake Charles paper did a reasonable job of coverage, but again, nobody outside of South Louisiana appears to have cared to pick up on any of those stories. It’s all about Galveston and Houston…
I have the T-P on the blogroll because no one else cares.
The maximum surge was at the Sabine Pass again, just like Rita, so you know it was bad to the east, but the media goes for the big cities and ignores the rest. They picked up on the flooding in Chicago, but have been ignoring everything outside of Houston related to this hurricane.
You won’t see my county ever appear on the MSM, because the local officials were so angry about what they did back in 1995, that deputies turn media trucks away. Nobody has time for these fools. Deputies had to intervene to keep the Air Force from shooting them when they tried to just drive into clearly marked US Government property to “get better shots of the damage”. They do a lot of classified things around here, and the guards really will shoot you. In this particular incident, the area is definitely off limits because every time there’s a hurricane unexploded munitions are uncovered.