Wild Weather

[Shammu]

New Orleans Repeating Deadly Levee Mistakes

Saturday , August 23, 2008

NEW ORLEANS —
Signs are emerging that history is repeating itself in the Big Easy, still healing from Katrina: People have forgotten a lesson from four decades ago and believe once again that the federal government is constructing a levee system they can prosper behind.

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.

"People forget, but they cannot afford to forget," said Windell Curole, a Louisiana hurricane and levee expert. "If you believe you can't flood, that's when you increase the risk of flooding. In New Orleans, I don't think they talk about the risk."

Tyrone Marshall, a 48-year-old bread vendor, is one person who doesn't believe he's going to flood again.

"They've heightened the levees. They're raised up. It makes me feel safe," he said as he toiled outside his home in hard-hit Gentilly, a formerly flooded property refashioned into a California-style bungalow.

Geneva Stanford, a 76-year-old health care worker, is a believer, too. She lives in a trim and tidy prefabricated house in the Lower 9th Ward, 200 feet from a rebuilt floodwall that Katrina broke.

"This wall here wasn't there when we had the flood," Stanford said, radiant in a bright kanga-style dress. "When I look at it now, I say maybe if we had had it up it there then, maybe we wouldn't have flooded."

They're not alone. A recent University of New Orleans survey of residents found concern about levee safety was dropping off the list of top worries, replaced by crime, incompetent leadership and corruption.

This sense of security, though, may be dangerously naive.

For the foreseeable future, New Orleans will be protected by levees unable to protect against another storm like Katrina.

When and if the Army Corps of Engineers finishes $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work, the city will have limited protection — what are defined as 100-year levees.

This does not mean they'd stand up to storms for a century. Under the 100-year standard, in fact, experts say that every house being rebuilt in New Orleans has a 26 percent chance of being flooded again over a 30-year mortgage; and every child born in New Orleans would have nearly a 60 percent chance of seeing a major flood in his or her life.

"It's not exactly great protection," said John Barry, the author of "Rising Tide," a book New Orleans college students read to learn about the corps' efforts to tame the Mississippi.

As a rule, any levee building makes people feel good in this unsettling landscape where the Gulf of Mexico can be seen gleaming from the top floors of skyscrapers and where the ubiquitous dynamics of a sinking and eroding river delta ripple through every aspect of life.

Levees tend to get built after devastating hurricanes: It's happening now and it happened after Betsy struck and flooded much of the same low ground that Katrina invaded.

"We did go in and did a whole bunch of levee work right after Betsy," said Philip Ciaccio, a New Orleans appellate judge and longtime former politician from eastern New Orleans, a reclaimed swamp transformed into the Big Easy's version of the American suburban dream.

Between Betsy and Katrina, about 22,000 homes were constructed in eastern New Orleans out of an abundance of confidence.

"We were under the illusion that what we had done would prevent another Betsy from flooding the area," Ciaccio said. "Hopefully the experts know what they're doing this time."

The corps says its work is making the city safer, but there are serious doubts.

At every step in the scramble to correct the engineering breakdowns of Katrina, independent experts have questioned the ability of the corps, an agency that has accumulated ever more power over the fate of New Orleans, to do the right job.

On the road to recovery, the agency has installed faulty drainage pumps, used outdated measurements, issued incorrect data, unearthed critical flaws, made conflicting statements about flood risk and flunked reviews by the National Research Council.

At the same time, the corps has run into funding problems, lawsuits, a tangle of local interests and engineering difficulties — all of which has led to delays in getting the promised work done.

An initial September 2010 target to complete the $14.8 billion in post-Katrina work has slipped to mid-2011. Then last September, an Army audit found 84 percent of work behind schedule because of engineering complexities, environmental provisos and real estate transactions. The report added that costs would likely soar.

A more recent analysis shows the start of 84 of 156 projects was delayed — 15 of them by six months or more. Meanwhile, a critical analysis of what it would take to build even stronger protection — 500-year-type levees — was supposed to be done last December but remains unfinished.

Another opportunity for setbacks: The corps says it will need more than 100 million cubic yards of clay and dirt to build up levees — enough to fill the Louisiana Superdome 20 times.

Also on the corps' drawing board are gigantic pumps capable of pushing more than 20,000 cubic feet of water per second. For comparison, the biggest pumps in New Orleans move about 6,000 cfs every second and they're among the most impressive in the nation.

That's not all: The corps has awarded The Shaw Group a $695 million contract to build a massive barrier against storm surge in the Industrial Canal. It's touted as one of the biggest public works projects ever performed by the agency.

Publicly, the corps says the work is on budget and will be done by 2011.

"The progress I see each time I visit is really remarkable. The region has a better hurricane and storm damage reduction system in place than ever before in its history — and it will continue to get better," Lt. Gen. Robert Van Antwerp, the corps chief, wrote on his blog in April.

Al Naomi, a corps branch chief who's worked for the past 37 years in New Orleans, said he was upbeat because Congress has shown a willingness to fund the work. In addition, he said, enough elements are coming together to make him "cautiously optimistic" the work will stay on track.

"We are in pretty good shape financially to do quite a bit of work in this area," he said.

cont'd next post

[Shammu]

Doubts, though, weigh on those familiar with the game plan.

"It's almost one of those proverbial `you can't get there from where we are' situations," said Gerald Spohrer, executive director of the West Jefferson levee district. The deadline, he said, is "overly optimistic."

The trouble so far stirs up bad memories: Of the four decades of excruciatingly slow levee building after Betsy.

Betsy was eerily similar to Katrina. The levees broke. Water reached roof tops and people clung to trees for survival. A flotilla of rescuers worked for days in lingering floodwaters.

In Betsy's aftermath, President Lyndon B. Johnson — like President Bush — pledged to rebuild New Orleans and make it safe from hurricanes. Little more than a month after the storm, Congress gave the corps $85 million to build a Category 3 hurricane levee system.

By 1976, though, the Government Accountability Office found the completion date for the work had slipped 13 years, from 1978 to 1991. Costs had soared to $352 million. By 1982, the GAO found that the project's cost had increased to $757 million and the agency said the work would not get done by 2008.

Katrina's storm surge laid bare the incomplete and inadequate work.

What happened? By 1968, a Congress worn down by the Vietnam war and economic turmoil began reining in spending; at the same time, the work met resistance from Louisiana politicians, communities, environmentalists and businesses fighting for individual interests.

For example, the corps scrapped a plan in the 1970s to build a floodgate at the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain out of concern that it would impede boats and marine life. Next, the alternate plan to build gates at the mouths of city drainage canals was rejected. Finally, the corps built floodwalls on the canals — and they broke during Katrina.

Can this sort of history repeat itself?

"All the human instincts post-Katrina are the same (as) post-Betsy," said Oliver Houck, a natural resources law professor at Tulane University and longtime New Orleans resident who participated in many of the fights since Betsy.

Some present-day examples of those instincts:

• Politicians have pushed for development in wetlands, undercut flood protection efforts with legislation and balked at paying for levee work.

• Environmentalists have pushed for wetlands-sensitive policies that arguably could add millions of dollars in costs.

• Residents have filed lawsuits to stop the corps from removing trees the agency says pose a risk to levees and sued the corps over the Katrina levee breaches.

• Policymakers are encouraging development in risky areas.

Ameliorating that last instinct is the business of Joe Sullivan, the 82-year-old city engineer who's overseen the New Orleans drainage and water department for nearly a half century.

"We keep building in holes, and contractors keep trying to move in and take advantage of a situation: They come in with a bunch of contractors, sell off property in low places, take their money and run," Sullivan said.

He runs his finger across a city drainage map. On it, green indicates low-lying terrain, and green is everywhere.

"You see that green spot up there? That's below sea level, well below sea level," he said. "There's some people going to have dinner tonight out there in New Orleans east, they're walking on the floor inside their house at 13 feet below sea level."

Naomi, the Corps of Engineers veteran, said his agency was candid about telling people the risk they face.

"We're in the job of risk reduction, not risk elimination," he said. "Strictly relying on levees alone should not give anyone the impression they are risk free. I think that would be a horrible mistake to make."

Three years since Katrina killed more than 1,600 people and destroyed a way of life here, New Orleans is trying to reclaim a past taken away from it.

And there are some promising signs.

Streetcars are swaying on St. Charles Avenue again. Coteries of old men have reappeared, swapping stories in the shade. There are plans for new parks, schools and theaters.

But the past remains prologue in another sense, too: This majestic city is still perilously at the mercy of the next hurricane.

"What we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history," said Tim Doody, the president of the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, a consolidated regional levee board created after Katrina to improve levee protection.

"What happened after Betsy? Katrina," Doody said. "And what's going to happen after Katrina? Pick a name and put it on it and it's going to happen again unless we pull together to make sure."

New Orleans Repeating Deadly Levee Mistakes

[Shammu]

People amaze me in their clueless behavior. It's good to know that some things didn't change. Wait till they get a load of the Tribulation and Great Tribulation.

[Shammu]

1,000,000 cut off by monsoon floods in northern India
Aug. 25, 2008
Associated Press , THE JERUSALEM POST

Authorities struggled Monday to get aid to more than one million people stranded by floods in a north Indian state.

A local government leader described the situation as a catastrophe, adding the floods had washed away roads and made railway lines impassable.

Air force helicopters and troops were trying to get food to people in the stricken areas of Bihar state that were inundated by flood waters last week after torrential rains caused the Kosi river in neighboring Nepal to burst its banks.

The Bihar state government issued a plea to relief agencies to step in and help get food and shelter to the residents.

"It is not a normal flood, but a catastrophe," said Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar after making an aerial survey of the ravaged districts.

1,000,000 cut off by monsoon floods in northern India

[Shammu]

Tornados touch down in outside Denver
By Joey Bunch
The Denver Post
08/25/2008

Several tornados touched down briefly in the southern metro area late this afternoon, creating a riveting spectacle for area residents but doing little damage.

Three and possibly four twisters touched down in an area roughly from Castle Pines to Parker. The only damage was to a grove of scrub oak south of Parker in an area known as Lemming Gulch, said Douglas County Sheriff's spokesman Cocha Hayden.

Hayden herself was a witness to the violent weather that dropped out of darkened skies.

"I'm so surprised it didn't hit something else," she said. "It went through so many populated areas."

Before the twisters hit, the National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for a swath of the south metro region that included Castle Rock, Castle Pines, the Denver Technology Center, eastern Arapahoe County and northwest Elbert County until 6 p.m.

Todd Dankers of the service's Boulder office said the tornados were caused by flows of air coming from the north and south. When these air massed collided, they started a spinning rotation that spawned the twisters.

Added to this was a thunderstorm that dropped dime-sized hail in Parker and golfball-size hail in Elbert County.

Tornados touch down in outside Denver
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I called my mom, and brother, (they live in Denver) and this was the very conversation that came up. Is this a warning to the Demo-cats yesterday?? God does use weather to send messages.

[Shammu]

Thousands displaced by floods in Ethiopia
Mon Aug 25, 2008 7:09am EDT

ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) - Flooding in Ethiopia's western Gambella region has killed three people, displaced thousands and destroyed crops, an official said on Monday.

"Flash floods following heavy rains for nearly a week have caused major rivers in Gambella to burst their banks, submerging residential areas and farmlands and forcing 18,000 people to be displaced", said Akway Ojulu, head of emergency assistance in Gambella.

"So far we have reports of the deaths of three people including one child," he told Reuters by telephone.

Ethiopia faces seasonal flooding between June and September. Flash floods typically happen in lowland areas of the country after heavy rains drench the highlands during the rainy season.

According to the United Nations, more then 100,000 people were affected by floods in Ethiopia last year and 17 died of waterborne diseases.

Akway said crocodiles had hampered rescue efforts.

"We are taking precautions, but the vast number of crocodiles swarming the Gilo river may harm unsuspecting people," he said.

About 3,000 hectares of farm land with maize, sorghum and cotton have been destroyed by the flood water, he added.

"Indications are there will be continued heavy rains in the coming weeks to hit Gambella," he said.

Akway said the federal and the regional governments had offered food assistance to the displaced.

"But there is great need for shelter, blankets and cooking utensils for the displaced people who are living in open air and under trees," he said.

Thousands displaced by floods in Ethiopia

[Shammu]

New Orleans considers evacuation as Gustav looms
Wed Aug 27, 2008 7:44pm EDT

By Kathy Finn

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Three years after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coast, New Orleans residents on Wednesday again faced the prospect of an evacuation as Tropical Storm Gustav loomed.

Not since Katrina and Hurricane Rita, which followed in its wake, have residents faced government orders to evacuate their homes and businesses. Many are still struggling to rebuild their lives in a city famed for its jazz clubs and Mardi Gras festival.

On Wednesday, two days before the third anniversary of Katrina's August 29, 2005, landfall, Gustav drifted away from Haiti and the Dominican Republic after killing 22 people. It could hit the U.S. Gulf Coast around Monday.

The storm was expected to strengthen to a hurricane over the Gulf's warm waters, and U.S. landfall could be anywhere from the Florida panhandle to Texas.

But Gustav's most likely track is directly toward New Orleans.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal put New Orleans residents on alert, saying evacuations could begin as early as Friday.

City officials said New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin would order an evacuation if Gustav looked likely to come ashore with wind speeds over 111 miles per hour (178 kph) -- a Category 3 hurricane or higher on the 5-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

"It's still too early to tell exactly what it's going to do," city emergency preparedness director Jerry Sneed said.

Nagin, the city's public face during Katrina and Rita, cut short his trip to the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home.

THEY ASSUME RESPONSIBILITY

During Katrina and Rita, many city residents ignored mandatory evacuation orders and remained to guard their homes and businesses from looters.

Sneed said residents would not be physically forced to leave their homes during an evacuation order -- which would be given about 30 hours before the storm comes ashore.

But they assume responsibility if they stay, Sneed said.

"If a tree comes through the roof and buries them underneath there, they're going to be on their own," Sneed said.

Sneed said he was confident that floodgates and pumping stations that failed during the 2005 storms would bear up.

"The citizens should not be worried about the flooding again," he said.

Storm levees broke under the onslaught of Katrina in 2005, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans and killing almost 1,500 people in the city and along the Gulf coast. The hurricane caused at least $80 billion in wind and flood damage. Some estimates put damages as high as $125 billion.

Jindal said he had activated the state's catastrophic action team and could declare a state of emergency as early as Thursday. He also has put the Louisiana National Guard on alert.

Jindal, elected in October 2007, is hoping to avoid heavy criticism that fell on his predecessor, Kathleen Blanco, for not reacting swiftly after Katrina.

Federal agencies and the New Orleans city government also faced the wrath of residents over their response to the disaster. President George W. Bush himself was severely criticized for his role, including his initial decision to view the devastated city only from the air.

After Katrina, chaos broke out in New Orleans as stranded flood victims waited days for help. Many residents who fled the hurricane have not returned.

Jindal said that if the threat continues, the state could make 700 buses available for assisted evacuations, which could begin on Friday for people who need help due to medical or other conditions.

Amtrak trains were standing by to move 7,000 elderly residents to safety, Sneed said.

New Orleans considers evacuation as Gustav looms
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Please see my post New Orleans Repeating Deadly Levee Mistakes <<<< link

[Shammu]

Thousands evacuated from floods in eastern India

Thu Aug 28, 5:35 AM ET

PATNA, India (Reuters) - Indian army troops helped evacuate more than 120,000 people from floods in eastern India, but more bad weather raised fears that rivers would to continue to overflow, officials said on Thursday.

The flooding, which officials say are the worst in 50 years, was caused after the Kosi river broke a dam in Nepal where it originates, unleashing huge waves of water that smashed mud embankments downstream in Bihar state.

Many villagers offered prayers and slaughtered goats to appease the Kosi, known as Bihar's "river of sorrow" for its regular floods and ability to change course.

"We are praying to the river goddess and offering her blood since only she can help us," a village woman in the worst affected Supaul district told a local newspaper.

At least two million people have been forced from their homes and a quarter of a million houses destroyed. So far 55 deaths have been officially reported in Bihar, but activists and local media put the toll many times higher.

Stranded villagers complained of an unbearable stench from rotting carcasses and the United Nations warned of the spread of water-borne disease.

TV stations showed swirling flood waters pouring into homes through windows, submerging hundreds of villages and roads and railway tracks. Telephone and power lines snapped.

Torrential rains have killed more than 1,000 people in South Asia since the monsoon began in June, mainly in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh, where 725 people have lost their lives. Other deaths were reported from Nepal and Bangladesh.

Some experts blame the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.

"The administration is misleading people about the casualty, I have myself seen some 40 dead bodies at a village in Araria district alone," flood expert Dinesh Kumar Mishra told The Times of India newspaper.

The newspaper quoted a villager from a badly affected district as saying he had seen at least 250 bodies at one place.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party, flew over devastated areas by helicopter on Thursday.

State officials told Reuters more than 120,000 had been evacuated and kept in more than 100 temporary camps, but bad weather was hampering rescue and relief operations.

"We have the army, disaster management teams, police and other groups of rescuers making every effort to save the population," said R.K. Singh, a top disaster management official.

Officials said floods had destroyed more than 227,000 homes and damaged about 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of vegetables, wheat and paddy crops.

Thousands evacuated from floods in eastern India

[Shammu]

Gustav moves through Caymans

By MAURA AXELROD, Associated Press Writer 57 minutes ago

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands - Gustav became a hurricane again on Friday and moved through the Cayman Islands, the start of a buildup that could take it to the U.S. Gulf Coast as a fearsome Category-3 storm three years after Hurricane Katrina.

Gustav, which killed 71 people in the Caribbean, on Friday evening reached the Cayman Islands, a tiny ubgone51 haven studded with resorts and cruise-ship souvenir shops, on track to next hit Cuba's cigar country and heading into the Gulf of Mexico by Sunday.

Well-heeled tourists fled Cayman hotels by air, while Katrina victims in Mississippi still living in emergency cottages and trailers were told to evacuate beginning this weekend.

Hotels on the Cayman Islands asked guests to leave, then after the airport closed prepared to shelter those who remained. Chris Smith, of Frederick, Maryland, said his hotel handed out wrist bands marked with guests' names and room numbers so that "if something happens they can quickly identify us."

"That was a little bit sobering," he said, standing outside the hotel with his luggage.

About 20 islanders waited for the storm in a high school gym.

"If people give you a shelter, you should take it," said Pamela Hall, 52.

The storm killed four people in a day-long march across the length of Jamaica, where it ripped off roofs and downed power lines. About 4,000 people were displaced from their homes, with about half relocated to shelters.

Prime Minister Bruce Golding said the government sent army helicopters Friday to rescue 31 people trapped by floods. At least 59 people died in Haiti and eight in the Dominican Republic.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami said Gustav could grow to a Category 3 storm, with winds above 111 mph (180 kph), by the time it hits the U.S. Gulf coast next week. Gustav could strike anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to Texas, but forecasters said there is a better-than-even chance that New Orleans will get slammed by at least tropical-storm-force winds.

As much as 80 percent of the Gulf of Mexico's oil and gas production could be shut down as a precaution if Gustav enters as a major storm, weather research firm Planalytics predicted. Oil companies have already evacuated hundreds of workers from offshore platforms.

Retail gas prices rose Friday for the first time in 43 days as analysts warned that a direct hit on Gulf energy infrastructure could send pump prices hurtling toward $5 a gallon. Crude oil prices ended slightly lower in a volatile session as some traders feared supply disruptions and others bet the government will release supplies from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Late Friday night, Gustav was centered 25 miles (40 kms) west-southwest of Little Cayman Island, moving northwest near 10 mph (17 kph). The hurricane center said top winds were to near 80 mph (130 kph).

"Gustav could become a major hurricane near the time it crosses western Cuba," the hurricane center said.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to curl westward into the Bahamas by early next week. It had sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph).

Along the U.S. Gulf Coast, most commemorations of the Katrina anniversary were canceled because of Gustav, but in New Orleans a horse-drawn carriage took the bodies of Katrina's last seven unclaimed victims to burial.

President Bush declared an emergency in Louisiana, a move that allows the federal government to coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance in storm-affected areas.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said an evacuation order was likely, though not before Saturday, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency said it expects a "huge number" of Gulf Coast residents will be told to leave the region this weekend.

Closer to the storm, workers at the Westin Causarina Hotel on Grand Cayman island shored up ground-floor rooms with sandbags.

"We've taken in all the balcony furniture, all the pool furniture, the marquees, tied up what needs to be tied up, cut down any coconuts," said hotel manager Dan Szydlowski.

Thunderstorms associated with Gustav already were bringing heavy downpours Friday to parts of central Cuba and evacuations were ordered in flood-prone areas.

Authorities in the tobacco-rich western Cuba, where Gustav is expected to cross the island, hauled 465,000 sacks of tobacco to higher ground for safekeeping and began distributing extra rations of milk and bread.

Gustav moves through Caymans

[Shammu]

Mississippi evacuations to begin this weekend
Michael Kunzelman - Associated Press Writer - 8/29/2008 12:05:00 PMBookmark and Share

GULFPORT, Miss. - Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says Katrina victims still living in trailers along Mississippi's coast should begin evacuating this weekend as Gustav approaches.

Forecasters say it is possible the storm could hit anywhere along the Gulf Coast from the Florida Panhandle to Texas as a major hurricane next week.

There are more than 5,000 temporary homes along the state's 70-mile coast, which was badly hit by Katrina three years ago. Officials are concerned because trailers are particularly vulnerable to being damaged in high winds.

Barbour says notices are going out to trailer residents on Saturday, and the first trailers in coastal Mississippi will be evacuated Sunday morning.

Mississippi evacuations to begin this weekend

[Soldier4Christ]

New Orleans: Leave or face Gustav alone
Mississippi governor already has called for Gulf Coast residents to leave

Hurricane Gustav strengthened into a dangerous storm Saturday, and as city officials started evacuation plans, some residents weren't waiting to be told to leave.

Cars packed with clothes, boxes and pet carriers drove north among heavy traffic on Interstate 55, a major route out of the city. Gas stations around the city hummed. And nursing homes and hospitals began sending patients farther inland.

"I'm getting out of here. I can't take another hurricane," said Ramona Summers, 59, whose house flooded during Katrina. She hurried to help friends gather their belongings. Her car was already packed for Gonzales, nearly 60 miles away to the west of New Orleans.

Gustav swelled into a major hurricane south of Cuba and could strike the U.S. coast anywhere from the Florida Panhandle to Texas by Tuesday, but forecasters said there is a better-than-even chance that New Orleans will get slammed by at least tropical-storm-force winds. That raised the likelihood people will have to flee, and the city suggested a full-scale evacuation call could come as soon as Sunday.

Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman said buses and trains would begin Saturday taking city residents to shelters north and out of the state.

"We will start moving residents from the 17 pickup areas that are located throughout the city," Nagin spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said.

No shelter at Superdome
Police and firefighters were set to go street-to-street with bull horns over the weekend to direct people to leave. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, there will be no shelter of last resort in the Superdome. The doors there will be locked.

Those among New Orleans' estimated 310,000 to 340,000 residents who ignore orders to leave accept "all responsibility for themselves and their loved ones," the city's emergency preparedness director, Jerry Sneed, has warned.

Officials plan to announce a curfew that will mean the arrest of anyone still on the streets after a mandatory evacuation order goes out. Police and National Guardsman will patrol after the storm's arrival, and Gov. Bobby Jindal has said he requested additional search and rescue teams from other states.

Evacuation of coastal parishes was likely to start on Saturday, said Gov. Bobby Jindal. In St. Mary Parish, which hugs the coastline, the Louisiana Shrimp and Petroleum Festival — the state's oldest chartered harvest festival usually held over the Labor Day weekend_ has been canceled, officials said.

Meanwhile, Jindal said the state would likely switch interstate lanes on Sunday so that all traffic would flow north, in the direction an evacuation would follow.

For the third day in a row, Jindal stressed that people with the means should stock up on food, water and other essentials, and prepare to head away from the coast.

"We all still have personal responsibility," he said. "Now's the time to begin making evacuation plans."

Gustav strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane early Saturday with top winds near 120 mph as it headed for western Cuba. The National Hurricane Center in Miami said it was a dangerous storm and could strengthen further once it gets over the warm waters of the Gulf bound for the U.S. coastline early next week.

At 8 a.m. EDT, Gustav's center was about 225 miles east-southeast of the western tip of Cuba .

No excuse
New Orleans has taken steps to ensure no one has an excuse not to leave. The state has a $7 million contract to provide 700 buses to evacuate the elderly, the sick and anyone around the region without transportation.

LSU's Health Care Services Division began moving patients Friday from its hospitals to facilities north of Interstate 10. A complete evacuation from Leonard J. Chabert Medical Center in Houma and Dr. Walter O. Moss Regional medical Center in Lake Charles should be finished by Saturday evening. Partial evacuations are scheduled for hospitals in Bogalusa and New Orleans and University Medical Center in Lafayette has been placed on alert.

The entire Louisiana National Guard, over 7,000 members, was activated on Friday. Over 1,500 were sent to New Orleans to assist with evacuations and prevent looting. Jindal sought to reassure New Orleans residents, who recall rampant looting during Katrina, that the guard and New Orleans police would fight any recurrence.

"We don't want folks worrying about their property. It is time for people to be worried about their personal safety," Jindal said.

Authorities also wanted to avoid creating any unnecessary panic.

In New Orleans, the locations of the evacuation buses were not made public because people who need a ride are supposed to go to designated pickup points, not to the staging area.

But that approach worried some residents. Elouise Williams, 68, said she called the city's 311 hot line Thursday until she was "blue in the face."

She was concerned about getting a ride to the pickup point and about what would happen to those who left. As of late Friday afternoon, she planned to remain in the Algiers neighborhood and look in on any other residents who stayed behind.

"My thing is, my fright is, if we have somebody in these houses and they're not able to get out, they're going to perish," she said, "And we had enough of that in Katrina."

[Soldier4Christ]

Biblical tragedy
at Sea of Galilee
'I have been here 54 years and I have never
seen the water so low, the situation so bad'

The 2,000-year-old fishing boat of Galilee in which, the story goes, Jesus may have sailed, is one of the most precious ancient treasures in Israel.

The vessel, which draws thousands of tourists to a kibbutz in Ginosar, was discovered by chance in 1986 when the sea level dropped dramatically because of a severe drought.

"This year it is actually worse. I have been here 54 years and I have never seen the water so low, the situation so bad," said Haim Binstock, an expert on the boat in the museum where it is kept. "I don't think the outside world realises just how dangerous the situation is, not just for Israel but for the whole region."

The waters of the Sea of Galilee are now at their lowest on record and, officials say, are set to fall even lower. The crisis is both natural and man-made. Four successive years of droughts, with rainfall less than half the annual average, has combined with a lack of snow on the peaks of Mount Hermon to lead to the shortage. At the same time,Israel's relentless pumping of water to irrigate farmland and supply homes has been massively worsening the situation.

The Israeli government, environmentalists say, seems oblivious to the damage being caused to the largest lake in the country. Despite the water falling below the lowest red line, which denotes serious hazard, the pumping has continued until it is due to reach an even lower black line, seen previously as a point of no return.

Gidon Bromberg, the Israel director of Friends of the Earth Middle East says: "There is a very real danger that this could lead to over-salination. The lower red line indicates the level at which the sustainability of the lake is threatened. We are certainly very alarmed by the authorities' willingness to go to the black line. This development could well be irreversible."

The main factor driving the unending thirst is Israel's projection of itself is a country of pioneering farmers who made the desert bloom while the previous Palestinian owners of the land were prepared to live in a barren environment without seeking progress.

Attempts by the Israeli government to bring in strict restrictions on water usage would, analysts say, be politically suicidal with an election on the horizon. No party would be willing to put forward such proposals against the powerful farming lobby.

Israeli farmers consume 40 per cent of the country's fresh water using some of it, environmental campaigners point out, to grow fruit such as bananas and types of berries alien to the desert, for export to the West. That leads to the perverse equation, they say, of water being exported from the parched Middle East to wet Europe.

The Sea of Galilee has now also taken on another international strategic dimension. The next round of the fledgling talks between Israel and Syria are due to begin and, according to Walid al-Moualem, the foreign minister in Damascus, control of the Sea's shoreline is a bone of contention.

The late president of Syria, Hafez al-Assad, while stressing that much of Galilee used to belong to his country, once described to Bill Clinton how he used to swim in the waters of the sea before the 1967 war when Israel captured the eastern shore and the plateau.

Israel's unwillingness to relinquish those gains led to Assad refusing to sign a peace accord at the time. His son and heir, President Bashir al-Assad, insists that Israel must withdraw from "every inch" of the Golan, including the eastern shore of Galilee.

At the kibbutz of Ein Gev, beside the sea, from where ferries run to Tiberias, Leon Segal, a guide, sees Syria's hand behind part of the problem. "Our cousins – I say that because the Bible says we are cousins – have been drilling in areas they should not, and this is diverting the water. This is the politics of the Middle East."

Mr Segal did acknowledge, however, that the Israeli government should be doing a lot more to alleviate the situation. "They should be setting up manydesalination plants to get water from other sources. They're using Israeli expertise in these matters all over the world but this is the one country which isn't using it enough. I don't think it would be possible to deprive the farmers of their water, so what is needed is alternative sources, it's that simple."

Temperatures at midday on the Galilee shore rise to a cloying, humid mid-50s Celsius. Faye Statiabou, 52, who arrived at the kibbutz from Australia 30 years ago, described how "quite big cracks are now appearing on the walls of our home, that is due to the heat caused by the drought. This is the hottest I can remember. We desperately need some rain pretty soon. Maybe this is global warming.

"But the pumping out of the water doesn't help. My husband was a fisherman and he has seen how the water has gone over the years, and with it the fishes."

Ms Statiabou and Mr Segal wandered down to a shore of shingle. "This is where the water used to come to," said Ms Statiabou. "Now look how far it has gone." The nearest sunbathers and swimmers were at the new shoreline at least 30 yards away.

The Galilee region had been verdant through the ages with a ribbon of flourishing towns and villages beside the lake. The historian Flavius Josephus, writing in the first century, was so taken with the area that he wrote: "One may call this place the ambition of nature." He reported 230 fishing boats working each day.

Ari Binyamin, a fisherman, said he wished he was living in that time. "We used to say even a few years ago that one place where you couldn't go wrong fishing was Kinneret [Hebrew name for the Sea of Galilee] but now it is getting very, very hard because the stocks are so low. Many fishermen fear for their livelihood and so do I. But it seems no one really cares about us."

At Ginosar, after showing another group of visitors round the Galilee boat – made out of 12 different types of wood -Mr Binstock said: "Of course many of the disciples of Jesus were fishermen at Galilee. If you recall, he said he would make them fishers of men. Well, that wouldn't be possible now, there are hardly any fish left around here.

"This country has found itself, through circumstances, as the keeper of some of the most precious things in the world, both made by man and by nature. It has a responsibility to the rest of mankind to look after these things. They are failing to do this here, at the Sea of Galilee."

[Shammu]

Category 4 Gustav slams Cuba

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer 42 minutes ago

HAVANA - Gustav slammed into Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip as a monstrous Category 4 hurricane Saturday, destroying homes and roads as it roared toward the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans, where the authorities order an evacuation of the city.

Forecasters said Gustav was just short of becoming a top-scale Category 5 hurricane when it hit Cuba's mainland after passing over its Isla de la Juventud province. At least 300,000 people were evacuated from the storm's path in Cuba.

On the Isla de la Juventud, an island of 87,000 people south of mainland Cuba also known as the Isle of Youth, Gustav's screaming 140 mph (220 kph) winds toppled telephone poles, mango and almond trees and peeled back the tin roofs of homes.

Civil defense chief Ana Isla said there were "many people injured" on the Isla de la Juventud, but no reports of deaths. She said nearly all of the island's roads were washed out and that some regions were heavily flooded.

"It's been very difficult here," she said on state television.

By late Saturday night, Gustav's eye had crossed over Cuba into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Gustav had weakened slightly, but was expected to regain strength on Sunday, possibly becoming a Category 5 hurricane with winds above 155 mph (249 kph) as it spins toward the U.S. coast, where it was expected to make landfall on Monday.

A hurricane watch was issued from Texas east to the Florida-Alabama border.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin ordered the mandatory evacuation of the city, turning informal advice to flee from the approaching Gustav into an official order to get out.

More than a million Americans made wary by Hurricane Katrina took buses, trains, planes and cars as they streamed out of New Orleans and other coastal cities, where Katrina killed about 1,600 people in 2005.

Nagin called Gustav the "mother of all storms" and told residents to "get out of town. This is not the one to play with."

City officials began putting an estimated 30,000 elderly, disabled or poor residents on buses and trains for evacuation.

Gustav already has killed 81 people by triggering floods and landslides in other Caribbean nations.

The center said Gustav was about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Havana late Saturday night and it was moving northwest near 15 mph (24 kph).

Cuba's top meteorologist, Jose Rubiera, said the hurricane's massive center made landfall in mainland Cuba near the community of Los Palacios in Pinar del Rio — a region that produces much of the tobacco used to make Cuba's famed cigars. There, the storm knocked down power lines, shattered windows and blew the roofs off some small homes.

Rubiera said the storm brought hurricane-force winds to much of the western part of Havana, where power was knocked out as winds blasted sheets of rain sideways though the streets and whipped angry waves against the famed seaside Malecon boulevard.

Felled tree branches and large chunks of muddy earth littered roads that were largely deserted overnight.

Cuba grounded all domestic flights and halted all buses and trains to and from Havana, where some shuttered stores had hand-scrawled "closed for evacuation" signs plastered to their doors.

Authorities boarded up banks, restaurants and hotels, and residents nailed bits of plywood to the windows and doors of their houses and apartments.

"It's very big and we've got to get ready for what's coming," said Jesus Hernandez, a 60-year-old retiree who was using an electric drill to reinforce the roof of his rickety front porch.

In tourist-friendly Old Havana, heavy winds and rain battered crumbling historic buildings. There were no immediate reports of major damage, but a scaffolding erected against a building adjacent to the Plaza de Armas was leaning at a dangerous angle.

Lidia Morral and her husband were visiting Cuba from Barcelona, Spain. She said Gustav forced officials to close the beaches the couple wanted to visit in Santiago, on the island's eastern tip earlier in the week. The storm also prevented them from catching a ferry from Havana to the Isla de la Juventud on Saturday.

"It's been following us all over Cuba, ruining our vacation," said Morral, who was in line at a travel agency, trying to make other plans. "They have closed everything, hotels, restaurants, bars, museums. There's not much to do but wait."

In the Gulf of Mexico, where about 35,000 people work staffing offshore rigs and production facilities, among other tasks, oil companies wrapped up evacuations in preparation for the storm.

As of midday Saturday, more than three-fourths of the Gulf's oil production and nearly 40 percent of its natural gas output had been shut down, according to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore activity.

The U.S. Gulf Coast accounts for about 25 percent of domestic oil production and 15 percent of natural gas output, according to the MMS. The Gulf Coast also is home to nearly half the nation's refining capacity.

Analysts say prolonged supply disruptions could cause a sudden price uptick for gasoline and other petroleum products.

On Friday, Gustav rolled over the Cayman Islands with fierce winds that tore down trees and power lines while destroying docks and tossing boats ashore, but there was little major damage and no deaths were reported.

Haiti's Interior Ministry on Saturday raised the hurricane death toll there to 66 from 59 and Jamaica raised its count to seven from four. Gustav also killed eight people in the Dominican Republic early in the week.

Meanwhile, the hurricane center said Tropical Storm Hanna was projected to near the Turks and Caicos Islands late Sunday or on Monday, then curl through the Bahamas by early next week before possibly threatening Cuba.

As it spun over open waters, Hanna had sustained winds near 50 mph (85 kph) Saturday evening and the hurricane center warned that it could kick up dangerous rip currents along parts of the southeastern U.S. coast.

The U.S. State Department urged Americans to be aware of the risks caused by Hanna to people traveling to the Bahamas and the Turks and Caicos Islands. It urged U.S. citizens lacking safe shelter to consider leaving while flights are still available.

Category 4 Gustav slams Cuba

[Shammu]

Mandatory evacuation ordered for New Orleans

By BECKY BOHRER, Associated Press Writer 17 minutes ago

NEW ORLEANS - Spooked by predictions that Hurricane Gustav could grow into a Category 5 monster, an estimated 1 million people fled the Gulf Coast Saturday — even before the official order came for New Orleans residents to get out of the way of a storm taking dead aim at Louisiana.

Mayor Ray Nagin gave the mandatory order late Saturday, but all day residents took to buses, trains, planes and cars — clogging roadways leading away from New Orleans, still reeling three years after Hurricane Katrina flooded 80 percent of the city and killed about 1,600 across the region.

The evacuation of New Orleans becomes mandatory at 8 a.m. Sunday along the vulnerable west bank of the Mississippi River, and at noon on the east bank. Nagin called Gustav the "mother of all storms" and told residents to "get out of town. This is not the one to play with."

"This is the real deal, this is not a test," Nagin said as he issued the order, warning residents that staying would be "one of the biggest mistakes you could make in your life." He emphasized that the city will not offer emergency services to anyone who chooses to stay behind.

Nagin did not immediately order a curfew, which would allow officials to arrest residents if they are not on their property.

Gustav had already killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean, and if current forecasts hold up, it would make landfall Monday afternoon somewhere between East Texas and western Mississippi.

The storm's center moved into the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba late Saturday and at 11 p.m. EDT was about 530 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. Top winds were near 140 mph and likely to strengthen.

Forecasters warned it was too soon to say whether New Orleans would take another direct hit, but residents weren't taking any chances judging by the bumper-to-bumper traffic pouring from the city. Gas stations along interstate highways were running out of fuel, and phone circuits were jammed.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center said they were surprised at how quickly Gustav gained strength as it slammed into Cuba's tobacco-growing western tip. It went from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in about 24 hours, and was likely to become a Category 5 — with sustained winds of 156 mph or more — by Sunday.

"That puts a different light on our evacuations and hopefully that will send a very clear message to the people in the Gulf Coast to really pay attention," said Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison.

Levee building on the city's west bank was incomplete, Nagin said. A storm surge of 15 to 20 feet would pour through canals and flood the neighborhood and neighboring Jefferson Parish, he said.

Nagin estimated that about half the population had left and admitted officials were worried that some people would try to stay.

Even before the evacuation order, hotels closed, and the airport prepared to follow suit.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff planned to travel to Louisiana on Sunday to observe preparations. Also, likely GOP presidential nominee John McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, are traveling to Mississippi on Sunday to check on people getting prepared.

As part of the evacuation plan New Orleans developed after Katrina, residents who had no other way to get out of the city waited on a line that snaked for more than a mile through the parking lot of the city's main transit terminal. From there, they were boarding motor coaches bound for shelters in north Louisiana. The city expects to move out about 30,000 such residents by Sunday.

"I don't like it," said Joseph Jones Jr., 61, who draped a towel over his head to block the blazing sun. "Going someplace you don't know, people you don't know. And then when you come back, is your house going to be OK?"

Others led children or pushed strollers with one hand and pulled luggage with the other. Volunteers handed out bottled water, and medics were nearby in case people became sick from the heat.

Unlike Katrina, when thousands took refuge inside the Superdome, there will be no "last resort" shelter. "You will be on your own," Nagin said.

About 1,500 National Guard troops were in the region, and soldiers were expected to help augment about 1,400 New Orleans police officers in helping patrol and secure the city.

Standing outside his restaurant in the city's Faubourg Marigny district, Dale DeBruyne prepared for Gustav the way he did for Katrina — stubbornly.

"I'm not leaving," he said.

DeBruyne, 52, said his house was stocked with storm supplies, including generators.

"I stayed for Katrina," he said, "and I'll stay again."

Many residents said the early stage of the evacuation was more orderly than Katrina, although a plan to electronically log and track evacuees with a bar code system failed and was aborted to keep the buses moving. Officials said information on evacuees would be taken when they reached their destinations.

Advocates criticized the decision not to establish a shelter, warning that day laborers and the poorest residents would fall through the cracks.

About two dozen Hispanic men gathered under oak trees near Claiborne Avenue. They were wary of boarding any bus, even though a city spokesman said no identity papers would be required.

"The problem is," said Pictor Soto, 44, of Peru, "there will be immigration people there and we're all undocumented."

Farther west, where Gustav appeared more likely to make landfall, Guard troops were also being sent to Lake Charles.

The National Hurricane Center issued a hurricane watch for Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and part of Texas, meaning hurricane conditions are possible within 36 hours.

Two East Texas counties also issued mandatory evacuation orders, and authorities in Mississippi began evacuating the mentally ill and aged from facilities along the coast.

National Guard soldiers on Mississippi's coast were going door-to-door to alert thousands of families in FEMA trailers and cottages that they should be prepared to evacuate Sunday.

In Alabama, shelters were opened and 3,000 National Guard personnel assembled to help evacuees from Mississippi and Louisiana.

"If we don't get the wind and rain, we stand ready to help them," Gov. Bob Riley said.

Mandatory evacuation ordered for New Orleans

[Shammu]

Tropical quartet: 4 storms with more to come

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer Tue Sep 2, 4:57 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The tropics seem to be going crazy what with the remnants of Gustav, the new threat from Hanna, a strengthening Ike and newcomer Josephine. Get used to it.

Hurricane experts say all the weather ingredients, which normally fluctuate, are set on boil for the formation of storms. And it's going to stay that way for a while, they said.

Four named storms at the same time is a bit odd, but not unprecedented, meteorologists said. In 1995 five named storms lived simultaneously. And in 1998 there were four hurricanes at the same. But wait and see what happens next.

"Give us time, this is only Tuesday," said meteorologist Dennis Feltgren, spokesman for an all-too-busy hurricane center in Miami.

The peak of hurricane season isn't until Sept. 10 and this season already has 10 named storms, which is the long-term average for an entire season.

"Normally in an active season, there are bunches of hurricanes and lulls. It just doesn't seem like there's been bunches of lulls. I sure hope we're not talking (hurricanes) Christmas Eve," said meteorology professor Hugh Willoughby at Florida International University.

Two hurricane prognosticators — including William Gray, who pioneered the field of storm season forecasts — predicted Tuesday that this month would be almost twice as busy as an average September. They forecast five named storms, four of them hurricanes and two of them major.

These latest predictions cover only September and are not a revision of the season-long forecast, which called for a total of nine Atlantic hurricanes through November.

The wind and water conditions that led to the September update will likely continue for the next month or so, said Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University, co-author of the new report. But if history is any guide, those conditions should change sometime in October, he said.

Wind shear — wind coming from a different direction at high altitude — often weakens a hurricane or at least puts the lid on some developing storms. But at the moment, the only wind shear in the entire Atlantic hurricane region is around Hanna, Feltgren said. So a major factor keeping other storms from forming or strengthening is absent, he said.

Waves of clouds and thunderstorms this time of year head westward from northern Africa every couple days. Some become tropical storms and hurricanes and others just die down. Gustav, Hanna, Ike and Josephine all started as those waves. What's different right now is that all those waves from Africa head right into a brew of air and water conditions ideal for strengthening, Klotzbach.

First, in the deep tropics, certain winds are blowing from the west and in the subtropics they are coming from the east, creating a propensity for spinning in between — which is the main hurricane development region — Klotzbach said. The current "spin factor" is among the top 20 percent in history, he said.

Add to that the fact that water temperatures are slightly warmer than normal, Klotzbach and Feltgren said. Warm water serves as fuel for storms.

And finally, Klotzbach factored into his forecast how the season has already been so far this year: Extremely busy. That means the atmosphere is unstable, which is good for storm development. He said the atmospheric pressure in the hurricane formation area is among the lowest it has ever been and storms are giant low pressure systems.

So Klotzbach advises to keep watching those waves coming off Africa: "There may be one today or tomorrow. But certainly today we have enough to worry about with Hanna, Ike, Josephine and Gustav remnants to keep us all busy."

Tropical quartet: 4 storms with more to come