digitaldiscipline ◾ ◾ Fear and Loathing on CNN

Took a few minutes from poking bits with a stick to poke billiard balls with a stick, and happened to note that CNN was on the tube. After watching a small child survive being dropped out of a moving vehicle in its car seat (which, apparently, was one of the few smart things the asshat driving the car did before getting himself dead by running into a parked vehicle), they decided to talk about Our Buddy Ivan, and cut to the obligatory moron-on-location in New Orleans, standing on the Canal Place promenade overlooking the river.

I don't mind it if there's a little bit of local geography that eludes an out-of-town reporter who is whisked in for a news event. However, basic observational skill and a modicum of research would be nice. To wit: where this gentleman was standing, by the guard rail literally above the water, is nowhere near the levee. As a matter of fact, downtown New Orleans doesn't even have a levee; it has a sea wall (it's really hard to miss, since it's upwards of eight feet tall, a foot and a half thick, and has really large gates that the CNN news truck would have had to drive through to get to this location).

Most non-NOLA meteorologists and talking doomsayers are fond of pointing out the depth to which downtown can flood. Okay, assuming that enough water to somehow overtop the seawall got there, it would have to -remain- at such a level for the water to keep pouring over in order to flood, rather than just be a glorified wavelike splash, which, while it would certainly get people's attention, wouldn't really cause much more than a localized few inches' flooding, even coupled with torrential rains. Those of you in the FQ, how well is rain handled in your neck of the woods, since the talking heads seem to love to point out that "The French Quarter could be under (six/ten/fourteen) feet of water!"

On the subject of those rains, the bimbo at the studio averred that she used to work in New Orleans, and asked Our Moron On Location what, if anything, the city had done to help cope with flooding. He mentioned the existence of pumps and the levees (again), and the desk-wench piped up that the city wasn't prepared to cope with hurricane-style precipitation. I call BULLSHIT. The levee along the intracoastal waterway was raised two, and in some cases four feet in many areas (the section near my old apartment is among the latter) to protect against a damaging storm surge, should the worst-case scenario ever happen [1].

Tropical Storm Isidore dropped twenty six inches of rain on us two years ago, and while there was certainly flooding (my neighborhood had standing water approximately two feet deep at the peak), it was dispensed with at the rate of four inches an hour by the canal system and pumping stations. Hurricane Lili, three weeks later, was a piker (despite being windier, and nearly making landfall as a Cat 4) by comparison, with only eight and a half inches, and water that barely overtopped the curb. Tropical Storm Bill, last year, brought sixteen inches and had flood waters a foot and a half deep near my apartment, which were dealt with in about three hours or so. I know, because I was directing traffic while standing in the deepest part, and it crested about three inches above my knee.

So, CNN, New Orleans, despite being in a geographically vulnerable location, is actually pretty well equipped to handle a lot of water. There are not a lot of trailer park communities to blow away, either, but the old shotgun duplexes would probably suffer some damage if Cat 4 or 5 winds were to come calling; however, they wouldn't be the utter write-offs that are so mediapathic.

Honestly, the biggest problem with hurricanes visiting New Orleans is the lack of evacuation routes. You have I-10, and that's it. Eastbound, it crosses Lake P, and the causeway gets shut down when the wind gets too nasty, and wesbound, it runs for quite a ways through a swamp. It has low spots that flood, but it's the only road out of town, so you either bail early, or you hunker down and party.

[1] This would be a Cat5 storm walking up the mouth of Barataria Bay, which is SSW of downtown, and pushing a storm surge up the Intracoastal, flooding much of the suburban sprawl south of the city on the Westbank, or chewing through the mouth of Lake Ponchtartrain and pushing the surge around the northside seawall and flooding the western suburbs of Metairie and Kenner. For all the talk of downtown NOLA being generally bowl-shaped and below sea level, folks seem prone to forgetting that in order to have a bowl shape, it needs to have raised edges, and it's darn challenging to push a storm surge capable of overtopping the seawall up the last hundred miles of the Mississippi river agains the current.