7 ms·

What some might not know is that New Orleans is currently extremely unprepared for a major hurricane. Some water pumps are offline, and the city is currently in

What some might not know is that New Orleans is currently extremely unprepared for a major hurricane. Some water pumps are offline, and the city is currently in the middle of a huge amount of road and infrastructure work. Flooding will likely be much worse for this storm than normal. If you're in New Orleans, I recommend considering an evacuation if you have somewhere to go.

selimthegrim 5y ago
Most people I know here are staying at present. If it is Cat 4+ that might change.
- AdamN 5y ago
  This is what I hate about the category system - it's entirely wind based and while that's important, rainfall and direction of wind (for coasts) is what's most important. Cat 2 can be worse than Cat5 also because they move slower so more inches of rain per hour.
  - interestica 5y ago
    Interestingly, the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF) used for tornadoes takes into account damage as well as wind speed. Maybe something like that would be more appropriate for hurricanes. An 'enhanced' saffir-simpson scale? https://www.weather.gov/oun/efscale https://www.weather.gov/oun/efscale
    - beerandt 5y ago
      It already does. There's no problem with the system, for people that understand what it is meant to describe. Rainfall isn't a part of that. The best way to describe rainfall is by... giving the rates and cumulative amount of rainfall. Flash flood warnings exist when excessive rain causes... flash flooding. As for direction: hurricanes are circles. Everyone knows the east eyewall is the worst part. Idk what else you'd want to incorporate/describe that's useful. Except that people that haven't been through bad hurricanes always think what they experience must be worse than the category of the storm. Eg: Sandy not being hurricane strength when it came ashore, so they made up the term "Superstorm Sandy" because "just" tropical storm somehow lessons their experience.
      - interestica 5y ago
        >It already does. There's no problem with the system, for people that understand what it is meant to describe. Rainfall isn't a part of that. I wasn't necessarily saying there was a problem with the system. However, when these terms/systems are used in the primary means of communicating dangers to the public (mass media: tv, radio, web) then they are doing a disservice. For a layman, the only difference between a cat 4 and a cat 5 hurricane is that the cat 5 is worse. Yet, for different areas, the category doesn't actually speak of the dangers. And, you risk people thinking "oh, I was in a category 4 before" and not realizing the potential of a 'lower' storm depending on the conditions. I think the recent flooding in NY from the remnants of Hurricane Ida speak to that.
- whymauri 5y ago
  damn, Cat 3 is enough to make South Floridians evac north and that doesn't cause nearly as much flooding as places like New Orleans or TX. They really should evac...
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  Update: they are mostly leaving now.
da_chicken 5y ago
> What some might not know is that New Orleans is currently extremely unprepared for a major hurricane. Honestly, I think it's a little incredible that someone might think they would be prepared. The city was woefully unprepared for Katrina, and the only cities I can think of that might have a more robust history of political corruption and wasted tax dollars are Chicago and Washington, D.C.. Of course nothing has changed and they're entirely unprepared for a hurricane.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  You know, I have some hope. The Army Corps of Engineers is not what I would call a politically charged area of the government, and the costs, while substantial, are manageable for the work that needed to be done. https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures/FactsFiguresAugust2012.pdf https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures... "Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized and funded to design and construct the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System for southeast Louisiana. The Corps strengthened and improved virtually all of the levees, floodwalls, pump stations and surge barriers that form the 133-mile Greater New Orleans perimeter system. The system that is in place now is stronger and more resilient than it has ever been in the area’s history. The new system is capable of defending against a 100-year level storm." "The Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) is fully funded at $14.45 B." "Risk cannot totally be eliminated; everyone shares responsibility for buying down risk through insurance, zoning and building codes, coastal protection and restoration, and complying with mandatory evacuations." My emphasis on this last statement from the pamphlet I reference. Everyone is responsible for working together to derisk. Lets see what that money bought.
  - joecool1029 5y ago
    Just a few days ago I went to Bound Brook, NJ as the river crested the highest it's been since 2005, at around 30.5ft on the gauges. This would have previously left most of the town, including its main street underwater as it famously did during hurricane Floyd. However this time it was totally dry due to improvements the Army Corps of Engineers completed in 2012. https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Portals/37/docs/civilworks/projects/nj/frm/GreenBrook/plan_2.pdf https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Portals/37/docs/civilworks/pr...
nxpnsv 5y ago
Naive question: Isn’t it possible to plan those things when it’s not hurricane season?
- sschueller 5y ago
  Yes, just how you plan construction on existing infrastructure that can't be "turned off". You should at least not make what exists worse.
- R0b0t1 5y ago
  Not-hurricane season is the winter, difficult for construction, though I don't know exactly about that far south.
  - btbuildem 5y ago
    Winter in Louisiana is nice and balmy, we northerners would not call that winter. Above freezing, no snow. Much better conditions for manual labour than the summer there tbh.
    - R0b0t1 5y ago
      Ok, fair enough. A lot of civil planning uses really long tail distributions for temp and so on, so I still wonder when stuff is schedulable.
    - genewitch 5y ago
      haha, it does freeze, for days at a time. It hard freezes for at least 2 days, this past winter it hard froze for nearly a week. You may have heard about that in the news, because Texas went offline. Louisiana fared better in the grid area, but we still have rough winters, depending on the year. It's snowed thrice in the past 6 years, too.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    "Not-hurricane" season extends from November through May, and potentially into June, in terms of low likelihoods of storms. As others note, Louisiana winters are exceptionally mild, and are generally preferable to summers for outdoor activity. Late August / early September, by marked contrast, is peak hurricane season.
acchow 5y ago
> Some water pumps are offline, and the city is currently in the middle of a huge amount of road and infrastructure work. Why?
- whymauri 5y ago
  Some context: https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11ec-91fd-3f5d8662ebe7.html https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11... Sounds like turbine failures?
  - nolaspring 5y ago
    Turbine failures, lack of redundancy, 100 year old equipment with no supply chain.
ddoolin 5y ago
New Orleans is almost below sea level. I'm not sure how much good all the preparation would do even if it did get done.
- selectodude 5y ago
  Most of New Orleans is literally below sea level.
- egypturnash 5y ago
  Ain't no "almost" about it, most of the city's like 5' below. It's still been there for more than 300 years. The effort put into levees and pumps has been heroic.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    The levees are sinking too.
    - egypturnash 5y ago
      everything's sinking
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Ask the Netherlands that question.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
samstave 5y ago
You know what's fucked up; the USA. Recall the student that built a detailed map of critical telco infra and was censured by the Gov because it contained "secret" infa info even though it was all from public record. Infra is a joke in the US. Pay attention to whom the funds go from the infra bill... Especially on the micro level: recall that MANY Congress officials wives created LLCs during the TARP 2008 "bailout" to receive funds with no consequence. We are seeing the same. We need a live update on budget appropriations
- samstave 5y ago
  Love the downvotes, either by compliant or other: Senators wives were caught creating LLC "foundations" to funnel money from the bailouts to their fake orgs. It happens, does happen and will continue to happen.
  - Clubber 5y ago
    Vote out the incumbent every time is the only strategy I can think of. If you vote in an honest person, which is unlikely, the system will likely corrupt them after a year or two.
  - meowster 5y ago
    It's off-topic, and complaining about votes is against the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - samstave 5y ago
      Seriously, get lost... You've been on HN for 10 months... I've been here 15 YEARS... I KNOW How this forum works... dang can damn me if he so chooses..
      - meowster 5y ago
        This username was created 10 months ago. Please don't make false assumptions (I have another username that is older than yours), please don't use ad hominem arguments, and please help by doing your part to keep HN a nice place.
nolaspring 5y ago
I live in a part of town affected by one of the pump outages. In any other city in the country this would be shocking and whatnot. Here it’s an opportunity to lampoon the local government because that’s all we have.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  It's also just false outrage generated by media that wants to shock readers. The reality is that, from the article... >Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack At the individual pump level... > 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.
siruncledrew 5y ago
I’d imagine being prepared will be harder and harder to do each year as climate change means longer/worse hurricane seasons. The reality is there will always be rain/winds/damage from hurricanes, but how is a place supposed to be ready for another Katrina every couple years now? It sounds like a constant state of disaster-rebuilding-disaster-rebuilding…
- ctoth 5y ago
  Crazy idea: instead of rebuilding, move. If this is happening every 15 years, maybe that's a message that we should be listening to. Somebody else said that if we evacuated every time a hurricane threatened, we'd be evacuated half the year. Sounds half right!
  - genewitch 5y ago
    Also move away from: California - earthquakes, wildfires, draught, PNW - fires, complete snow in, barren eastern side of states, the entire gulf coast, the entire eastern seaboard, the City of New York, anywhere there's ever been an EF5 tornado (most of the 'midwest' i guess?) ...
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Why? The pumps are not used a majority of the time. They are only needed when it rains. They are usually not working, so maintenance should be easy. ...which it is because 96 of the 99 pumps are currently operational.
exegete 5y ago
Here’s a link regarding the pump outages https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11ec-91fd-3f5d8662ebe7.html https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11...
- koheripbal 5y ago
  > Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack This post seems like fearmongering. Out of 24 pumping station, one is out, two are at partial capacity, and the other 21 are working at full capacity. At the individual pump level... > 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.

selimthegrim 5y ago

Most people I know here are staying at present. If it is Cat 4+ that might change.

AdamN 5y ago
This is what I hate about the category system - it's entirely wind based and while that's important, rainfall and direction of wind (for coasts) is what's most important. Cat 2 can be worse than Cat5 also because they move slower so more inches of rain per hour.
- interestica 5y ago
  Interestingly, the Enhanced Fujita scale (EF) used for tornadoes takes into account damage as well as wind speed. Maybe something like that would be more appropriate for hurricanes. An 'enhanced' saffir-simpson scale? https://www.weather.gov/oun/efscale https://www.weather.gov/oun/efscale
  - beerandt 5y ago
    It already does. There's no problem with the system, for people that understand what it is meant to describe. Rainfall isn't a part of that. The best way to describe rainfall is by... giving the rates and cumulative amount of rainfall. Flash flood warnings exist when excessive rain causes... flash flooding. As for direction: hurricanes are circles. Everyone knows the east eyewall is the worst part. Idk what else you'd want to incorporate/describe that's useful. Except that people that haven't been through bad hurricanes always think what they experience must be worse than the category of the storm. Eg: Sandy not being hurricane strength when it came ashore, so they made up the term "Superstorm Sandy" because "just" tropical storm somehow lessons their experience.
    - interestica 5y ago
      >It already does. There's no problem with the system, for people that understand what it is meant to describe. Rainfall isn't a part of that. I wasn't necessarily saying there was a problem with the system. However, when these terms/systems are used in the primary means of communicating dangers to the public (mass media: tv, radio, web) then they are doing a disservice. For a layman, the only difference between a cat 4 and a cat 5 hurricane is that the cat 5 is worse. Yet, for different areas, the category doesn't actually speak of the dangers. And, you risk people thinking "oh, I was in a category 4 before" and not realizing the potential of a 'lower' storm depending on the conditions. I think the recent flooding in NY from the remnants of Hurricane Ida speak to that.
whymauri 5y ago
damn, Cat 3 is enough to make South Floridians evac north and that doesn't cause nearly as much flooding as places like New Orleans or TX. They really should evac...
selimthegrim 5y ago
Update: they are mostly leaving now.

da_chicken 5y ago

> What some might not know is that New Orleans is currently extremely unprepared for a major hurricane. Honestly, I think it's a little incredible that someone might think they would be prepared. The city was woefully unprepared for Katrina, and the only cities I can think of that might have a more robust history of political corruption and wasted tax dollars are Chicago and Washington, D.C.. Of course nothing has changed and they're entirely unprepared for a hurricane.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
You know, I have some hope. The Army Corps of Engineers is not what I would call a politically charged area of the government, and the costs, while substantial, are manageable for the work that needed to be done. https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures/FactsFiguresAugust2012.pdf https://www.mvn.usace.army.mil/Portals/56/docs/PAO/Brochures... "Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was authorized and funded to design and construct the Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System for southeast Louisiana. The Corps strengthened and improved virtually all of the levees, floodwalls, pump stations and surge barriers that form the 133-mile Greater New Orleans perimeter system. The system that is in place now is stronger and more resilient than it has ever been in the area’s history. The new system is capable of defending against a 100-year level storm." "The Hurricane and Storm Damage Risk Reduction System (HSDRRS) is fully funded at $14.45 B." "Risk cannot totally be eliminated; everyone shares responsibility for buying down risk through insurance, zoning and building codes, coastal protection and restoration, and complying with mandatory evacuations." My emphasis on this last statement from the pamphlet I reference. Everyone is responsible for working together to derisk. Lets see what that money bought.
- joecool1029 5y ago
  Just a few days ago I went to Bound Brook, NJ as the river crested the highest it's been since 2005, at around 30.5ft on the gauges. This would have previously left most of the town, including its main street underwater as it famously did during hurricane Floyd. However this time it was totally dry due to improvements the Army Corps of Engineers completed in 2012. https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Portals/37/docs/civilworks/projects/nj/frm/GreenBrook/plan_2.pdf https://www.nan.usace.army.mil/Portals/37/docs/civilworks/pr...

nxpnsv 5y ago

Naive question: Isn’t it possible to plan those things when it’s not hurricane season?

sschueller 5y ago
Yes, just how you plan construction on existing infrastructure that can't be "turned off". You should at least not make what exists worse.
R0b0t1 5y ago
Not-hurricane season is the winter, difficult for construction, though I don't know exactly about that far south.
- btbuildem 5y ago
  Winter in Louisiana is nice and balmy, we northerners would not call that winter. Above freezing, no snow. Much better conditions for manual labour than the summer there tbh.
  - R0b0t1 5y ago
    Ok, fair enough. A lot of civil planning uses really long tail distributions for temp and so on, so I still wonder when stuff is schedulable.
  - genewitch 5y ago
    haha, it does freeze, for days at a time. It hard freezes for at least 2 days, this past winter it hard froze for nearly a week. You may have heard about that in the news, because Texas went offline. Louisiana fared better in the grid area, but we still have rough winters, depending on the year. It's snowed thrice in the past 6 years, too.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  "Not-hurricane" season extends from November through May, and potentially into June, in terms of low likelihoods of storms. As others note, Louisiana winters are exceptionally mild, and are generally preferable to summers for outdoor activity. Late August / early September, by marked contrast, is peak hurricane season.

acchow 5y ago

> Some water pumps are offline, and the city is currently in the middle of a huge amount of road and infrastructure work. Why?

whymauri 5y ago
Some context: https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11ec-91fd-3f5d8662ebe7.html https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11... Sounds like turbine failures?
- nolaspring 5y ago
  Turbine failures, lack of redundancy, 100 year old equipment with no supply chain.

ddoolin 5y ago

New Orleans is almost below sea level. I'm not sure how much good all the preparation would do even if it did get done.

selectodude 5y ago
Most of New Orleans is literally below sea level.
egypturnash 5y ago
Ain't no "almost" about it, most of the city's like 5' below. It's still been there for more than 300 years. The effort put into levees and pumps has been heroic.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  The levees are sinking too.
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    everything's sinking
koheripbal 5y ago
Ask the Netherlands that question.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

samstave 5y ago

You know what's fucked up; the USA. Recall the student that built a detailed map of critical telco infra and was censured by the Gov because it contained "secret" infa info even though it was all from public record. Infra is a joke in the US. Pay attention to whom the funds go from the infra bill... Especially on the micro level: recall that MANY Congress officials wives created LLCs during the TARP 2008 "bailout" to receive funds with no consequence. We are seeing the same. We need a live update on budget appropriations

samstave 5y ago
Love the downvotes, either by compliant or other: Senators wives were caught creating LLC "foundations" to funnel money from the bailouts to their fake orgs. It happens, does happen and will continue to happen.
- Clubber 5y ago
  Vote out the incumbent every time is the only strategy I can think of. If you vote in an honest person, which is unlikely, the system will likely corrupt them after a year or two.
- meowster 5y ago
  It's off-topic, and complaining about votes is against the HN guidelines. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - samstave 5y ago
    Seriously, get lost... You've been on HN for 10 months... I've been here 15 YEARS... I KNOW How this forum works... dang can damn me if he so chooses..
    - meowster 5y ago
      This username was created 10 months ago. Please don't make false assumptions (I have another username that is older than yours), please don't use ad hominem arguments, and please help by doing your part to keep HN a nice place.

nolaspring 5y ago

I live in a part of town affected by one of the pump outages. In any other city in the country this would be shocking and whatnot. Here it’s an opportunity to lampoon the local government because that’s all we have.

koheripbal 5y ago
It's also just false outrage generated by media that wants to shock readers. The reality is that, from the article... >Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack At the individual pump level... > 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.

siruncledrew 5y ago

I’d imagine being prepared will be harder and harder to do each year as climate change means longer/worse hurricane seasons. The reality is there will always be rain/winds/damage from hurricanes, but how is a place supposed to be ready for another Katrina every couple years now? It sounds like a constant state of disaster-rebuilding-disaster-rebuilding…

ctoth 5y ago
Crazy idea: instead of rebuilding, move. If this is happening every 15 years, maybe that's a message that we should be listening to. Somebody else said that if we evacuated every time a hurricane threatened, we'd be evacuated half the year. Sounds half right!
- genewitch 5y ago
  Also move away from: California - earthquakes, wildfires, draught, PNW - fires, complete snow in, barren eastern side of states, the entire gulf coast, the entire eastern seaboard, the City of New York, anywhere there's ever been an EF5 tornado (most of the 'midwest' i guess?) ...
koheripbal 5y ago
Why? The pumps are not used a majority of the time. They are only needed when it rains. They are usually not working, so maintenance should be easy. ...which it is because 96 of the 99 pumps are currently operational.

exegete 5y ago

Here’s a link regarding the pump outages https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11ec-91fd-3f5d8662ebe7.html https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/article_2f508a9e-06b8-11...

koheripbal 5y ago
> Other nearby stations are expected to have enough capacity to pick up the slack This post seems like fearmongering. Out of 24 pumping station, one is out, two are at partial capacity, and the other 21 are working at full capacity. At the individual pump level... > 96 out of the S&WB’s 99 main drainage pumps are ready for Ida.