Live Katrina Newsfeed (local station)

[mattlistener]

...with no commercials. Far preferrable to the Weather Channel, sadly, which has been doing 90 seconds of commercials every 5 minutes during the emergency.

http://mfile.akamai.com/12912/live/reflector:38841.asx
(Windows Media Player)

Note: I'm recording in the comments to this post the more remarkable things I'm learning from this feed today.

Comments

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

Just now, the feed captured a crowd of looters in New Orleans braving the high winds and street flooding. :-(

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

...and just now, the feed captured a car driving through water that was only half-way up its tires. Suddenly, the engine sank out of sight and the rest of the car was floating free of the ground, because the road wasn't there anymore. Fortunately a bystander ran immediately to the car and was able to walk(!!) it to shallower ground and help the driver out the window.

Every time you see footage of cars making little wakes as they drive through flood waters, remember you're witnessing people making a life-threatening error. Never do that!

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

The newscaster just read a transcript of a 911 call from a man trapped in his attic by flooding and begging rescue. He said he had a hammer, crowbar, and axe with him, and was holding off from cutting through his own roof to escape until he was forced to by the water. Rescue teams have not yet been sent into the flooding because conditions are still too dangerous.

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

Utilities say the city of New Orleans will likely be without power for a *month*. People are being told not to drink the tap water as the fresh water supply has been contaminated by sewage and fuel.

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

Just heard a speech from the governor of Louisiana that repeated the above facts, and also noted that if you don't have power, you'reunable to boil water. So people either need to get bottled water from emergency services or get out.

New Orleans missed a direct hit from Katrina's eyewall, but has nevertheless been rendered uninhabitable.

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

The Governor of Mississippi says costal highway 90 has been destroyed.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

I didn't look at the news at all yesterday, so this morning's news headline was the first time I saw the words "New Orleans" and "Katrina" in the same sentence. Which stopped me dead in my tracks, because I knew that it was badly vulnerable. And then I saw the words "Category Five".

[mattlistener.livejournal.com]

For all that everyone's been saying "this is the Big One", the eyewall missed N.O. to the right, sparing it something like 10 feet of surge, and the bowl of the city did not fill to sea level. It'll be a long time cleaning up, but it's well short of the "New Orleans has been destroyed" outcome that it's still vulnerable to, from a slower-moving or more deadly-aimed storm.

[zmook.livejournal.com]

It's not quite the "Atlantis scenario", true. There's always a way for things to be worse. But it's still one of the biggest hurricanes in recorded history, fairly slow-moving, and it only missed the city by a handful of miles. I don't really think there's any reason to be chary of calling it the Big One.