re: Who here remembers Hurricane Katrina and the Superdome?

Katrina / Rita taught me a valuable lesson as a young adult that civilization is really just a thin veneer and can switch to chaos alarmingly quick.

Experiencing the absolute cluster frick of the Rita 'evacuation' routes, watching buses of nursing home patients die of heat exhaustion in gridlock, nonsensical closing of roads and funneling millions to a handful of routes, absolute anarchy at gas stations and no fuel. All this after just watching Katrina footage that looked like it was from some 3rd world country.

Something no one really talks about regarding Katrina was how it took the city by surprise. It sounds dumb, but it's really true.

I started working downtown New Orleans the year before and the company was on the 12th floor of the building we were in. There was a tropical storm coming through and this guy from our IT department comes by and hands me a trash bag and phone book. I'm like - what the hell do I do with these? He says put the trash bag over your monitor and the phone book under your computer on the floor when you leave. The windows leaked so bad they could get flooding - and this is how they protected the computers. I was like wtf.

Well - fast-forward to Katrina. Nobody remembers that the storm started off on the east side of Florida and had gotten to be pretty big (Cat 4 or 5). Then it cut due west across Florida and lost a lot of power - only a tropical storm. It took a day or so, then it swole up again in power, but the weather guys kept saying it was going to turn north. On Tuesday it was going to hit Panama City. On Wednesday it was going to hit Pensacola. On Thursday it was projected to hit Mobile. On Friday it was projected to hit Biloxi. All of these projections gave everyone a false sense of safety because we were still on the west side of the eye - so no major panic.

I left work on Friday late and there was no trash bag and phone book, nobody on the news thinking we were going to even really see the storm's effects.

Then we all woke up Saturday morning and went - ohhhhhh shite.

The storm landed late Sunday night/early Monday morning. Pretty much the city only had 48 hours to prepare which is insane.

I say all of this not to take up for any failings on the responses - at all. But knowing whether or not you're on the west side or east side of the eye is really a major determining factor in how people respond. And we didn't find out until less than 2 days to go. If you weren't prepared in advance, there was no time to prepare - you just had to get out.

People had known for decades that the perfect hurricane track for destruction was having the eye ride up into Lake Pontchartrain. The thing nobody knew could/would happen is the storm might surprise you by pretending to go up the east coast of the United States, make a surprise kick left over Florida, and then roll up on you all stealth like.

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Was it as bad as everyone says it was? I was too young to fully realize the event at the time. Was it as bad as covid/BLM riots? How close did it come to total anarchy?

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Every time I see a game played in there on tv I always think about the atrocities that were committed in that building. Disgusting.

True. I remember going grocery shopping Saturday bc now we had a hurricane to prep for more seriously. The air was still, no birds out, I still remember how weird it felt. Sunday morning we are told to leave, so we did.

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Well - fast-forward to Katrina. Nobody remembers that the storm started off on the east side of Florida and had gotten to be pretty big (Cat 4 or 5). Then it cut due west across Florida and lost a lot of power - only a tropical storm. It took a day or so, then it swole up again in power, but the weather guys kept saying it was going to turn north. On Tuesday it was going to hit Panama City. On Wednesday it was going to hit Pensacola. On Thursday it was projected to hit Mobile. On Friday it was projected to hit Biloxi. All of these projections gave everyone a false sense of safety because we were still on the west side of the eye - so no major panic.

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You're misremembering some of this.

Katrina did start out to the East of Florida, but it only strengthened to a Cat. 1 just prior to its first landfall near Hollywood, FL. It weakened nominally while over land, but began to rapidly intensify as soon as it cleared Florida. That rapid intensification continued until it hit Cat. 3. Katrina then went through an eyewall replacement cycle which temporarily halted that Intensification and greatly increased its size. After the EWRC was complete RI resumed, where Katrina pretty much explosively intensified to a Cat. 5 storm in under 10 hours. Katrina would hold that strength as it finished its turn to the North, eventually beginning, and completing another EWRC. That EWRC was what ultimately doomed NOLA.

Katrina weakened again as a result of the EWRC, dropping to a Cat. 3. That drop in strength was deceiving, however. That was the second EWRC Katrina had fully completed, and it again increased the overall size and windfield of Katrina. That's how it wound up being such a huge storm that moved a massive amount of water. Had Katrina remained a Cat. 5 and continued heading N/NNE, hitting the city/area as a powerful, but smaller storm, the city would have actually faired better.

To your point about the forecasting dropping the ball. You're right there to an extent. Yet, it was that rapid intensification that led to the tricky track forecast. There were some ensemble members that were fairly accurate on the track, though.

Worse. Savagery

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Well - fast-forward to Katrina. Nobody remembers that the storm started off on the east side of Florida and had gotten to be pretty big (Cat 4 or 5). Then it cut due west across Florida and lost a lot of power - only a tropical storm. It took a day or so, then it swole up again in power, but the weather guys kept saying it was going to turn north. On Tuesday it was going to hit Panama City. On Wednesday it was going to hit Pensacola. On Thursday it was projected to hit Mobile. On Friday it was projected to hit Biloxi. All of these projections gave everyone a false sense of safety because we were still on the west side of the eye - so no major panic.

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Nobody remembers? lol.

Flooding, storm surge and wind damage and the destruction it caused, I remember it very well. I don’t know what happened in the Superdome because it was at least a week before the lucky ones got power back and a hell of a lot longer for most people. If anything it should have awakened people to the point that if shite really hits the fan that the government isn’t going to be there to help. The Mississippi Gulf Coast got fricked seven ways to Sunday with wind and storm surge, south of the lake storm surge and flooding because the water had to go somewhere. The NorthShore definitely had storm surge, especially around Slidell and the wind damage for St. Tammany and Washington Parish and the surrounding counties of Mississippi was pretty bad because of all the trees. At the time of Katrina I was working for a tree company that was contracted with WST and the damage caused by that surge in and around the Slidell area was something I’d never saw before or since.

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A minority of NOLA residents shot, repeatedly, at rescue helicopters and boats.

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I can’t understand why anyone would do this. I can understand pushing your way to the front of the line, so to speak, but actively hindering — *shooting at* — those dispatched to bring rescue? It boggles me.