Today way back in 2005

Last year on this day I was working on a drilling project in Barbados
and spending my non-working time glued to CNN. It had been apparent
to me from the day before that there was a big risk of 'the big one'
hitting new orleans and I was glad to see that the local and state officials
were starting the evacuation, even if it was a day late.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

Katrina is coming

I'm watching CNN here in Barbados, and I'm amazed that
Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard is giving detailed
driving instructions to an international audience. He was
mayor of Kenner when I was growing up, now he's a bejowled
power broker telling an international audience not to take
the Huey P. Long bridge; but he didn't say which way to go.

Whew, I'm glad I'm not a resident of the west bank of Jefferson
Parish...they've got to take a drive on Highway 90 to lafayette,
which is a 2 1/2 hour drive over swampy causeways with no
traffic, add 200,000 people and it will be a 6 hour bataan death-
drive just to Lafayette. (or risk a one-lane merge from I-310 to
I-10...bleh) Once you're in lafayette I'd definitely keep going
to Houston.

[....digression to another hurricane story...]
posted by Joe at 10:27 AM


So two days before the storm I wasn't exactly in a panic, I was
inviting our parents and sisters who live in southern mississippi
to come west, and I suggested to my wife that she invite friends
in Lafayette too.

Then I went back to work for 12 hours or so and then back to
the hotel where instead of sleeping I surfed the net, because CNN
had little about the storm.

CNN Sucks

I'm watching CNN again and in the last 12 hours they've shown
the anti-bush screed about bad intelligence 3 times! The approaching
disaster in New Orleans could be just about as bad as the Tsunami was,
but they've had 36 hours of warning about the story.

Hopefully Governor Blanco's prayers are just as effective as Governor
Foster's were for Hurricane Lily, because it looks like it's gonna be bad.
It would be nice to see some urgency from the 24 hour news channel.
posted by Joe at 3:54 AM

One of the most interesting things about blogging is it puts a time stamp
on memories, I just remember a frustrating night with little information
from the TV , but these notes at least put the memories into a framework.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Your frustration reminds me of the few hours I was away from home watching the news and looking for information after hurricane Rita. There were tons of snips, which by Saturday evening after the storm, were reruns from the morning it hit.

While driving the hundreds of miles towards home, I found only one AM station out of New Orleans that had any information. It was limited, but at least it was some information. Even Houston, which had dodged the bullet, was back to the day to day garbage.
3:15 PM
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