If you're in New Orleans, I recommend considering an evacuation if you have somewhere to go.
Honestly, I think it's a little incredible that someone might think they would be prepared. The city was woefully unprepared for Katrina, and the only cities I can think of that might have a more robust history of political corruption and wasted tax dollars are Chicago and Washington, D.C.. Of course nothing has changed and they're entirely unprepared for a hurricane.
https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures...
"Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized and funded to design and construct the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System for southeast Louisiana. The Corps strengthened and improved virtually all of the levees, floodwalls, pump stations and surge barriers that form the 133-mile Greater New Orleans perimeter system. The system that is in place now is stronger and more resilient than it has ever been in the area’s history. The new system is capable of defending against a 100-year level storm."
"The Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) is fully funded at $14.45 B."
"Risk cannot totally be eliminated; everyone shares responsibility for buying down risk through insurance, zoning and building codes, coastal protection and restoration, and complying with mandatory evacuations." My emphasis on this last statement from the pamphlet I reference. Everyone is responsible for working together to derisk.
Lets see what that money bought.
Also glad to see central NJ represented on HN!
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-30/new-orlea...
Not to downplay the corruption problem, but if the gulf states prepared for every incoming storm, they'd be in a constant state of evacuation, and nobody would get anything done during hurricane season.
Oh, and evacuations kill people in themselves (Car accidents, the sick and infirm, etc, etc). Do too many false alarm evacuations, and you'll kill more people than the storms would have.
I can vouch for this. Deadlocked roads with cars with nowhere to go in the middle of summer heat for hours or even days on end. Limited gas, limited food and water, no proper medical care. Not a safe environment. Evacuations aren't in any way risk free.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270472303_Deaths_re...
There were 111 deaths related to Hurricane Rita in the state of Texas. The three direct deaths were from wind blown trees. A majority of the deaths (90/108 or 83.3%) were related to the mass evacuation process.
Private insurance rates should increase and drive out residents. Business losses should drive out both business and residents.
Without subsidies, I suspect the market would increase the COL such that it would lower the population.
They definitely have corrupt politicians though, no doubt about that.
And no amount of drainage can do much when you are on the east side of a powerful storm. You can have pipes from here to the moon but there's nowhere for that water to go. Storm surge is concerning to the people in the know for a reason.
All of that flows out through the Mississippi.
I'm not saying it's worse than the storm surge. But it's going to be affecting the city for much longer. (As well as multiple locatons upstream.)
General corruption/waste is another matter. Recycling in Chicago right now is notably inefficient, for example (something like a 9% clearance rate).
That's not really the question, though. The question is if you'd be surprised if they didn't.
I wouldn't be that surprised to hear that Chicago was unable to clear snow from a 100-year snow event because the funds were mismanaged or something similar. That sounds entirely within character.
I wasn't surprised when I heard about the ongoing problems with the Texas power grid, either. I was horrified by the deaths, of course, but did it surprise me that an for-profit utility market didn't result in a robust infrastructure? No. Infrastructure and utilities don't work well under those sort of economic pressures. I wasn't surprised it was fragile.
Former Mayor Michael Bilandic famously lost reelection in 1979 after botching snow removal following the large blizzard of that same year. Ever since, snow removal has been one of the city government's core competencies; even the quite intense Groundhog Day blizzard of 2011 was well-handled, though it managed to shut down LSD for a bit. There's plenty of mismanagement and corruption in city government to go around (the police department is famously corrupt and incompetent and shows no signs of turning that around), but snow removal is one thing that can generally be counted on here.
I guess if you’ve never lived near Chicago or visited in the winter, that might be reasonable. But they take snow extremely seriously. Like so seriously it’s funny. It truly is. The “mismanagement of funds” is true - they spend a lot of money on snow management.
They have over 200 snowplows, and every single garbage truck has a plow attachment so it can be put into plowing service, most of the city pickup truck fleet as well, etc.
[1] > Department of Streets & Sanitation (DSS) coordinates Chicago's snow and ice control efforts from Snow Command. This high tech command center allows us to access and view a network of cameras and pavement sensors to get a quick and accurate assessment of our pavement conditions citywide. We track incoming weather systems via Doppler radar and through constant communication with our meteorological consultants and the National Weather Service. And we combine all of these technologies along with the Global Positioning Systems (GPS) on all of our trucks to strategically deploy our snow personnel to up to over 280 snow routes.
People used to claim that the streets that alderman lived on got plowed first whenever it snowed, so the city put GPS on everything and built a plow tracking website, so you can see where everything is in realtime, any time it snows. [2]
[1] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/provdrs/street...
[2] https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/streets/supp_info/plow...
The reality is that, from the article...
>Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack
At the individual pump level...
> 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.
The reality is there will always be rain/winds/damage from hurricanes, but how is a place supposed to be ready for another Katrina every couple years now?
It sounds like a constant state of disaster-rebuilding-disaster-rebuilding…
They are usually not working, so maintenance should be easy.
...which it is because 96 of the 99 pumps are currently operational.
Late August / early September, by marked contrast, is peak hurricane season.
Which most people don't realize, because it also rains so much in the summer. But it's so hot in the summer, that evaporation out paces the rain.
The driest months are Sept-Oct, which is peak hurricane season.
(One of our major industries is tourism, though a lot of that money gets siphoned off to the pockets of the tourist board. Mardi Gras 2020 was the last gasp of that before covid. We normally have a shit-ton of festivals all year round that draw people in to spend money. They've all been cancelled.)
And the roads are always sinking, the city's built on swamp. There will never be a time where the roads (or something under them) do not need maintenance. I'm sure the money crunch ain't helping that get done in a sane timeframe either. Also "hurricane season" is like half the year normally, and the past several years have had it well underway in the preceding month.
No- voltage would be easy to change with a transformer.
It's that many pumps run on 25hz, not the 60hz of the power grid.
They have to change frequencies via mechanical methods (motor-gearing-generator) or generate their own power via on-site turbines.
It's because many of these pumps are literally older than the electricity grid.
Why?
Sounds like turbine failures?
This post seems like fearmongering. Out of 24 pumping station, one is out, two are at partial capacity, and the other 21 are working at full capacity.
At the individual pump level...
> 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.
The best way to describe rainfall is by... giving the rates and cumulative amount of rainfall. Flash flood warnings exist when excessive rain causes... flash flooding.
As for direction: hurricanes are circles. Everyone knows the east eyewall is the worst part.
Idk what else you'd want to incorporate/describe that's useful. Except that people that haven't been through bad hurricanes always think what they experience must be worse than the category of the storm.
Eg: Sandy not being hurricane strength when it came ashore, so they made up the term "Superstorm Sandy" because "just" tropical storm somehow lessons their experience.
I wasn't necessarily saying there was a problem with the system. However, when these terms/systems are used in the primary means of communicating dangers to the public (mass media: tv, radio, web) then they are doing a disservice. For a layman, the only difference between a cat 4 and a cat 5 hurricane is that the cat 5 is worse. Yet, for different areas, the category doesn't actually speak of the dangers. And, you risk people thinking "oh, I was in a category 4 before" and not realizing the potential of a 'lower' storm depending on the conditions.
I think the recent flooding in NY from the remnants of Hurricane Ida speak to that.
Recall the student that built a detailed map of critical telco infra and was censured by the Gov because it contained "secret" infa info even though it was all from public record.
Infra is a joke in the US. Pay attention to whom the funds go from the infra bill...
Especially on the micro level: recall that MANY Congress officials wives created LLCs during the TARP 2008 "bailout" to receive funds with no consequence.
We are seeing the same.
We need a live update on budget appropriations
Senators wives were caught creating LLC "foundations" to funnel money from the bailouts to their fake orgs.
It happens, does happen and will continue to happen.