Guess how many people died in Australia's Katrina?

[Tiger Wench]

NONE.  NOT ONE PERSON.  And why, may you ask? 

THEY GOT THE FUCK OUT.  No waiting on the gubmint to help them.  No waiting around for someone else to do something for them.  THEY GOT THE FUCK OUT BECAUSE A MASSIVE FUCKING STORM WAS COMING AND THAT IS WHAT RATIONAL PEOPLE DO.

Sheesh.

Residents and officials were amazed and relieved that no one was reported killed by the monstrous Cyclone Yasi, which roared across northern Queensland with winds up to 170 mph (280 kph). Tidal surges sent waves crashing ashore two blocks into seaside communities, several small towns directly under Yasi's eye were devastated and hundreds of millions of dollars of banana and sugarcane crops were shredded.

Officials said lives were spared because, after days of increasingly dire warnings, people followed instructions to flee to evacuation centers or bunker themselves at home in dozens of cities and towns in Yasi's path.

Hundreds of houses were destroyed or seriously damaged, and the homes of thousands more people would be barely livable until the wreckage was cleared, officials said. Piles of drenched mattresses, sodden stuffed animals, shattered glass and twisted metal roofs lay strewn across lawns in the hardest-hit towns.

The region is considered a tourist gateway to the Great Barrier Reef, but whether the storm caused damage to the reef was not yet known. Experts say that cyclones can cause localized reef damage as they cross over and that under normal circumstances they will recover.

Yasi crossed the coast around midnight at the most-destructive Category 5 rating and then immediately began to weaken. Still, it was strong enough to hold a Category 1 cyclone rating about 500 miles (800 kilometers) inland, where it was threatening to cause flooding late Thursday in the Outback town of Mount Isa.

[eagleair89]

It also helps if one does not live in a hole surrounded by water.

[Tiger Wench]

It also helps if one does not live in a hole surrounded by water.

These people lived on the coast with nothing between them and the Pacific but the Great Barrier Reef.  I think that cancels out the whole below sea level thing for NOLA.

My original point still stands.

[AUTiger1]

It also helps if one does not live in a hole surrounded by water.

I see what you are saying, but if you are too stupid to get the fuck out of the way of a Cat5 hurricane, then you deserve what you get.

The same people from Missouri back in the early 90's that live in the flood planes of the Mississippi River on the news crying "This is the third time we have had to rebuild our home and lost everything!".  Really?  You know rivers flood, you live in the flood plane and you are going to cry b/c this is the third time you have lost your home?  Something tells me you shouldn't have built there in the first place, but for sure after the first time you should have sought out higher ground.

[Saniflush]

And fuckers call me heartless when I say we need to stop protecting stupid people.  Doing stupid shit should hurt.

[eagleair89]

These people lived on the coast with nothing between them and the Pacific but the Great Barrier Reef.  I think that cancels out the whole below sea level thing for NOLA.

My original point still stands.

I was not arguing.....your original point is valid.................but no, coastal living ABOVE sea level does not cancel out coastal living BELOW sea level.

NOLA is a great town, but it is literally a toilet bowl.......and water always flows downward and collects at the bottom of the bowl...........everything other than Jackson Square and the Old Quarter is well below sea level.

If Katrina had actually been a CAT 5 at land fall and just west of NOLA, NOLA would have disappeared completely..........seeing that it was a CAT 3 and the strongest winds and surge were well east of NOLA saved a lot of lives and property.

And if you read the article above it clearly states that SOME people did hunker down in their homes and survived  (read the part you underlined and bolded)..........hunkering down in NOLA during a direct hit of a CAT 5 equals certain death, unless you live in Quarter and then your chances a slightly better than zero.

[AUTiger1]

And phukers call me heartless when I say we need to stop protecting stupid people.  Doing stupid poop should hurt.

My favorite on bash.org

<xterm> The problem with America is stupidity. I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

[eagleair89]

I see what you are saying, but if you are too stupid to get the phuk out of the way of a Cat5 hurricane, then you deserve what you get.

The same people from Missouri back in the early 90's that live in the flood planes of the Mississippi River on the news crying "This is the third time we have had to rebuild our home and lost everything!".  Really?  You know rivers flood, you live in the flood plane and you are going to cry b/c this is the third time you have lost your home?  Something tells me you shouldn't have built there in the first place, but for sure after the first time you should have sought out higher ground.

agree..............but NOLA is over 300 years old and a major economic engine for this country.............we are not going to just close the town and move it.

The French, as usual, phuked it up........although they did build the Quarter at sea level and then the town grew out into the below sea level swamps.

Look, folks should evacuate...no argument here..........just pointing out that NOLA is a unique city on the Gulf......remember Katrina did not do that much damage in NOLA.......the damage occured AFTER the levees broke and the water flowed DOWN into the city.

IF NOLA had been above sea level.........no levees to break and thus no wide spread flooding and being cut off from help after the storm.

Katrina did not kill very many if any people in NOLA..........the Flooding did after the levees broke and the water flowed down into the city.

[eagleair89]

"The storm weakened before making its second landfall as a Category 3 storm on the morning of Monday, August 29 in southeast Louisiana. It caused severe destruction along the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas, much of it due to the storm surge. The most severe loss of life occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland.[4] Eventually 80% of the city and large tracts of neighboring parishes became flooded, and the floodwaters lingered for weeks.[4] However, the worst property damage occurred in coastal areas, such as all Mississippi beachfront towns, which were flooded over 90% in hours, as boats and casino barges rammed buildings, pushing cars and houses inland, with waters reaching 6–12 miles (10–19 km) from the beach.

[GH2001]

agree..............but NOLA is over 300 years old and a major economic engine for this country.............we are not going to just close the town and move it.

The French, as usual, fucked it up........although they did build the Quarter above sea level and then the town grew out into the below sea level swamps.

Look, folks should evacuate...no argument here..........just pointing out that NOLA is a unique city on the Gulf......remember Katrina did not do that much damage in NOLA.......the damage occured AFTER the levees broke and the water flowed DOWN into the city.

IF NOLA had been above sea level.........no levees to break and thus no wide spread flooding and being cut off from help after the storm.

Katrina did not kill very many if any people in NOLA..........the Flooding did after the levees broke and the water flowed down into the city.

Again, as tw said....if they had just gotten out, none of that would have been an issue. The levees were a concern before it hit. They knew the trickle down effect of it would be bad. And still, they stayed. That's just stupidity.

[Tiger Wench]

I was not arguing.....your original point is valid.................but no, coastal living ABOVE sea level does not cancel out coastal living BELOW sea level.

NOLA is a great town, but it is literally a toilet bowl.......and water always flows downward and collects at the bottom of the bowl...........everything other than Jackson Square and the Old Quarter is well below sea level.

If Katrina had actually been a CAT 5 at land fall and just west of NOLA, NOLA would have disappeared completely..........seeing that it was a CAT 3 and the strongest winds and surge were well east of NOLA saved a lot of lives and property.

And if you read the article above it clearly states that SOME people did hunker down in their homes and survived  (read the part you underlined and bolded)..........hunkering down in NOLA during a direct hit of a CAT 5 equals certain death, unless you live in Quarter and then your chances a slightly better than zero.

I did not post the entire article, but the people that hunkered down were further inland.  The people right on the coast evacuated.

And I understand all about NOLA - no diagrams needed.  My husband is from there.  Even if he wasn't, the media made sure everyone understood that for months afterwards. 

But Cat 5 or Cat 3 or a strong squall  - no matter - people had warning - PLENTY of warning.  And they either stayed put or ignored warnings or spent time looting instead of preparing or sat waiting for someone else to bail them out.  Even those who got up the energy to get to the Dome at the last minute were woefully unprepared.

But in AUS, NO ONE DIED.  Not one person.  And it was a direct Cat 5 hit. 

Not.  One.

[CCTAU]

So. Let me get this straight. People live in a bucket with very old sides. A hurricane is coming and the bucket could be surrounded on all sides by more water than ever in history. The sides of the bucket are very old. I guess if I am one of them, I could surmise that the old bucket sides might hold. I think I'll stay.

And we all know who lives in the bucket, poor, not so smart people. They are there because all of the smart people know better. That is why the land is cheap and the area is (was) a blight. But as we all know from watching the last election with maobama supporters, all poor people have TVs, VCRs, DVD players, etc. because those are the basics of life. But apparently the digital signal was turned on early in NOLA and all the poor people, with the basics of life, living in the bucket could not get the warnings on their basic TVs.

I believe what TW is saying is that, apparently the type of person living in Australia on the coast in the path of ANY size hurricane, have enough intelligence to GET THE HELL OUT.

[eagleair89]

Again, as tw said....if they had just gotten out, none of that would have been an issue. The levees were a concern before it hit. They knew the trickle down effect of it would be bad. And still, they stayed. That's just stupidity.

again, do not disagree....but if you think anyone can entirely evacuate a city the size of NOLA....well ok.

Government can not do it, and people are damn stubborn and people with limited resources might not be able to even if they wanted too.......and the infrastructure is not their to support a mass evacuation NOT coordinated by the government (and again the government is incapable of doing it)........Hell you could not find lodging in Huntsville, Alabama (over 7 hours away) for the folks who did leave and this was the case all over the southeast.

Again, not everybody in Australia left....read the article.........in fact they give no hard numbers about who left and who stayed......they also do not say how FAR one had to travel to get to an evacuation shelter in Australia.

In NOLA, you have to travel a good distance, probably beyond Baton Rouge to get he phuck out of the swamp.

In the case of NOLA, it is just not as simple as EVERYBODY leave!........the logistics are an impossibility.

The city is a trap and you take your chances if you live there.

What irked me about the whole thing, was all the bitching afterward...............hell they live in a fucking hole.......water flows downhill, dumbass.

 

[eagleair89]

I did not post the entire article, but the people that hunkered down were further inland.  The people right on the coast evacuated.

And I understand all about NOLA - no diagrams needed.  My husband is from there.  Even if he wasn't, the media made sure everyone understood that for months afterwards. 

But Cat 5 or Cat 3 or a strong squall  - no matter - people had warning - PLENTY of warning.  And they either stayed put or ignored warnings or spent time looting instead of preparing or sat waiting for someone else to bail them out.  Even those who got up the energy to get to the Dome at the last minute were woefully unprepared.

But in AUS, NO ONE DIED.  Not one person.  And it was a direct Cat 5 hit. 

Not.  One.

I read the entire article, in fact I have read several on the storm.

And if you want to compare the Australia coast, which is very sparsely populated to a major US  city..............ok go ahead.........  But it is like evacuating Gulf Shores.....ie doable.

They prepared AND they got lucky.  They did not get so lucky in the flooding earlier this year as people did die.

Again, not arguing but NOLA is a unique situation..........simply put NOLA is phucked if they get hit by a hurricane and there is not much you can do about it.

Phuk it, just nuke the dumbasses

 

[CCTAU]

I wonder if we can see this type of picture in Australia:



http://wizbangblog.com/content/2005/10/04/never-flooded-n.php

[Tiger Wench]

Australia is an ISLAND - a big island, but an island nonetheless.  And yet people GOT OUT. 

I would not care if I had to drive all the way from Houston to Fargo, ND.  If that is what it took to get my family to safety, I would do it.

The problem with evacuating NOLA was that everyone waited until the last damn minute - had people left from the get go, a large part of the problem would have been averted.   Houston is three times or more the size of NOLA, but you can bet your bippy that as soon as they started talking hurricane Rita, we were in the car and headed north, along wth more than three MILLION of our closest friends.  Yeah, it sucked, and yeah, I had a nearly 2 year old kid in the car for 15 hours, and yeah, it took forever to get to Dallas, where we stayed with friends, and I know people who went all the way to OK.  But we got out.  Fortunately, Rita was a fizzle, and that's fine, but rather go early and look a bit foolish if it is a waste, than wait too late and die.

So you can't tell me there is no way to evacuate NOLA and its less than one million population when Houston, Galveston and FIVE SURROUNDING COUNTIES with a total population of more than 5 million did it for Rita and Ike.

It is a matter of effort and taking responsibility for your own.

[eagleair89]

 

 

[eagleair89]

Ninety percent of the residents of southeast Louisiana were evacuated in the most successful evacuation of a major urban area in the nation's history.

By the time Hurricane Katrina came ashore early the next morning, Mayor Nagin estimated that approximately one million people had fled the city and its surrounding suburbs.[21] By the evening of August 28, over 100,000 people remained in the city (not this many folks on the part of the Australia cost that was hit)

Final reports indicate that the official death toll, according to the Louisiana Department of Health, was 1,464 people.[38] The first deaths were reported shortly before midnight on August 28, 2005, as three nursing home patients died during an evacuation to Baton Rouge.

There were six deaths confirmed at the Superdome. Four of these were from natural causes, one was the result of a drug overdose, and one was a suicide.

At the time of the hurricane there were some 400 priests and 750 nuns in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, many stationed in the city. While most elderly and infirm clergy and nuns were evacuated, many others refused to leave, even when a general evacuation was ordered.

[Tiger Wench]

1,464 people.

Zero people.

[CCTAU]

1,464 people.

Zero people.

Wow. Even if you use ratios or percentages, zero is still slightly lower.

I loathe Katrina whining. That idiot SLINK used to be the world's worst. At least no one on here is blaming Bush and his "Weathering Machine".