Hurricane gone, recovery begins

CONTINUED WEAKENING IS EXPECTED AND GFS MODEL FIELDS SUGGEST THAT KATRINA SHOULD LOSE TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS IN ABOUT 36 HOURS...AND BECOME INDISTINCT WITHIN A LARGE EXTRATROPICAL LOW AFTER 72 HOURS.

The updates from the Hurricane Center grow quiet, and the winds die down in the French Quarter. People breathe easier and think of returning, but New Orleans has taken a battering, with large expanses under water. The Mayor is advising that people don’t return for at least a week, but fear of looting has already drawn some people back.

It’s encouragingly easy to start thinking of rebuilding, and New Orleanians have a ‘fuck you’ determination about them, which is why some stayed. Tragically, some of them are dead — there were reports of bodies floating in the water when I looked last night — and because the levees which guard the city are now holding all that water in, there is still a lot to watch for, plan for, and prevent: some of the city’s pumps are underwater so don’t work; the water has nowhere to go; and it is polluted with sewage.

A powerful storm surge pushed huge waves ahead of the hurricane, flooding much of St. Bernard Parish and New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward, just as Betsy [did] 40 years ago. But this time the flooding was more extensive, spreading upriver as well to cover parts of the Bywater, Marigny and Treme neighborhoods.

With the power out throughout the area and fierce winds raging throughout the day, officials barely began Monday to assess the full damage of the monstrous storm, which was expected to leave thousands homeless and many more coping with damage from the wind and water.

Meantime, five miles to the west, engineers worked to close a breach along the New Orleans side of the 17th Street Canal.

Huge drainage pumps ordinarily can drive millions of gallons of rainwater uphill through the canal, as it takes water from the low-lying city into Lake Pontchartrain. But the breach turned the canal into a major threat. Lake water flowed back through the breach, hemorrhaging into Lakeview and beyond.

Across Lake Pontchartrain and closer to the site of Katrina’s landfall, thousands of homes in Slidell flooded. From the Interstate 10 overpass at Slidell’s Old Spanish Trail, the only visible structure from the dense commercial intersection was a boat bobbing on the waves.

For myself, I’d quite like to visit one day, and I hope Café du Monde is still OK. Here’s a gallery of the damage; the WWLTV website, which has detailed news for all areas of the city; a Yahoo! News photo gallery; the flickr gallery.

[hurricane katrina] [new orleans]