NOAA Warning for Hurricane Katrina
I’ve never seen anything like this advisory:
URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA 413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
…EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA…
…DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED…
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE…INCLUDING SOME
WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY…A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD…AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS…PETS…AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS…AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING…BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.
AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WATCH IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE…OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE…ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 TO 36 HOURS.
Wikipedia’s Hurricane Katrina page is proving to be an exceptional resource for additional information.
(Via Jeff at Shape of Days)
Updated Feb 16, 2007, after a reddit link: Fixed formatting and pointed the first link to NOAA archive thanks to CB’s comment for the url, though a quick quick Google Search finds this text all over the place.
unbelievable. this administration is supremely incompetent. i’m so pleased it’s all coming out. impeach the snotty imperialistic sonovabitch.
so typical. It’s the presidents fault that not everyone left? Shouldn’t the governors have picked everyone up in their Excursions and then asked W. to help. No?
Didn’t the president say ‘No one could have predicted this’? Either he’s evil, or hopelessly, fatally stupid. And the next idiot conservative who tries to defend him deserves to share a prison cell with him. I’m sick of being nice, I’m sick of trying to see it your way. You voted for this evil, corrupt, dangerous man, you deserve to share the consequences with him.
And your lies about Katrina are as tiresome as the rest of your arguments. The governor asked for Louisiana to be declared a disaster area before the hurricane struck land, in preparation of what was to come. But as usual the Republicans did nothing, then claimed it was everyone else’s fault.
The only thing that’s typical here is conservative myopia, and a pathological inability to accept blame. And it sickens me, as usual.
everybody knew destruction like this was bound to happen. As a college junior in 2000 I prepared disaster assessment for a class stating just what could happen. obviously if a college student could predict it, then everyone knew (or could have known).
As for this “warning”, it has to be fake. There is no way the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration would issue a WEATHER statement with sayings like “will make human suffering incredible by modern standards” or predictions about high rise office buildings swaying to the point of collapse. First off, why would they feel the authority to speculate on office building stability? Second of all, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a reinforced steel structure (especially one built in hurricane alley) collapsing from high winds. Its an absurd notion.
ok, i take that back. MSNBC did a story on it soon after the hurricane.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9358447/
Where is the primary source for this? “MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…” has not, to my knowledge, ever appeared in any weather advisory ever given by the National Weather Service.
Just typing something in a blog post doesn’t make it so. Ya know?
Primary sources, people.
Here’s your primary source.
http://www.srh.noaa.gov/data/warnarchive/LIX/NPW/0828155101.txt
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August28200510:11AMCDTNOAA_Bulletin also.
Blugh, rich text mangling. Put an underscore wherever you see the italicized text switch, or Google “National Weather Service bulletin for New Orleans region”.
Being that I’m from South LA, I can say that this is not as the first comment says,
“this administration is supremely incompetent. i’m so pleased it’s all coming out. impeach the snotty imperialistic sonovabitch.”
The president had nothing to do with the recovery effort and its failure. The governor was a complete tard and the local city of NOLA government –read: chocolate city Nagin– was the cause of most of the problems — further read: Democrats.
Had we done the right thing and elected Bobby Jindal in our prior governor’s election and perhaps actually had a competent mayor of NOLA, then we could have alleviated tons of these problems.
“As for this “warning”, it has to be fake.”
I assure you it’s not. I vividly remember reading this the morning Katrina made landfall, because for me that was the moment when the scale of the horror we were about to see really sunk in.
This did not predict “almost exactly the devastation that the White House claimed nobody could have predicted” unless you’re talking about Biloxi.
Most of the damage in New Orleans was the result of breached levees. Popular Mechanics published an extensive article debunking the myths about Katrina which should be required reading before any discussion of what did or didn’t happen. Television news coverage of Katrina was horrible and often completely wrong.
The destruction of a gulf coast city is not historically unprecedented. The destruction of Galveston in 1900 seems to have dropped out of collective memory, but the circumstances are very similar. Except that the Galveston hurricane can’t be blamed on global warming or President Bush.
Original Katrina warning predicted the devastation of the storm…
The original warning from the NOAA said Katrina would fuck shit up, and it did !…
Everybody knew that Katrina was going to be bad. They did NOT know the levees would break. ALSO, Bush cannot be blamed for nobody leaving New Orleans, it was Ray Nagan and the LOCAL governments who went out on the air and told people that evacuations were not necessary. President Bush didn’t say anything on the matter until after Hurricane Katrina hit. If you want to say something about the length of time for a response, that is another argument.