I would not like to be in Mississippi right now. I’ve never been even remotely near any sort of large storm, having always lived in rather temperate climates, but I feel for the people stuck in the path of the hurricane. I especially think of those tourists who can’t get out of the area because all major transportation networks (planes, trains, busses) have either shut down or already left. You go on vacation and end up battered by 150 mile per hour winds. Harsh… and terrifying.
The mayor ordered an immediate evacuation Sunday for all of New Orleans, a city sitting below sea level with 485,000 inhabitants, as Hurricane Katrina bore down with wind revving up to nearly 175 mph and threats of a massive storm surge.
Rain started falling on extreme southeastern Louisiana by midday Sunday as the storm moved across the Gulf of Mexico toward land. Highways in Mississippi and Louisiana were jammed as people headed away from Katrina’s expected landfall. All lanes were limited to northbound traffic on Interstates 55 and 59 in the two states.
“We cannot stress enough the danger this hurricane poses to Gulf Coast communities,” Bush told reporters on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.
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BTW, there was a delicious irony for Green-minded individuals on the front page of the print edition of today’s (Wednesday’s) Washington Post. Some 100 column-inches of photographs and ledes detailing the devastation Katrina wrought on the Gulf Coast covered over 90% of the space. The only other “apparently” non-disaster-related news on the front page covered a measly 8 column-inches in the lower right hand corner: “New Rules Could Allow Power Plants to Pollute More.”
The irony is delicious, but the aftertaste is bitter. Après moi, le deluge…
That’s so annoying. Especially considering how so many North-Eastern states have been drafting clean air regulations that would actually make power plants clean up their acts rather than just ramping up pollution levels even more. If you’re a clean plant that still outputs 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, that’s really not clean. For anyone who hasn’t seen the frontpage, I’ve got it below. Email me for a larger version if you like, or head over to Newseum.org before the end of Wednesday EST.
And just to break the HTML code which tries to make this site pretty:
P, you are incredible. And to think I have to walk all the way to the end of the driveway every morning to fish the darned thing out of the gutter.