Azure Jane Lunatic (Azz) 🌺 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
azurelunatic) wrote2005-08-29 01:38 am
azurelunatic) wrote2005-08-29 01:38 am
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It's not a white-healing-light situation. It's a "drain the fuck out of the storm" situation. and I have fucked up for not starting this sooner, not looking sooner.
Anybody up, link up if you want. I'm on IM.
Anybody up, link up if you want. I'm on IM.
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Yours does too, at that. w00t!
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For a pulling-in, it's sure draining. But I don't want any of it in me, so I'm letting the control energy go to ground too...
Now *there's* an interesting thought. I'm damn near out of my own steam, but if I can use *Reiki* as control energy to drain...
... That's a seriously fucked-up thought, but it's interesting.
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I need an update and a briefing. Should I get on AIM?
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I think I fall under the category of not quite experienced enough for a fragile situation, but needing the experience and being trained for the sort of work. Something may be done tonight.
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Google News
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Katrina Weakens as Storm Lashes Mississippi; New Orleans Spared
Aug. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Hurricane Katrina weakened as it moved across Mississippi after pummeling the Louisiana coast with winds as high as 140 mph. New Orleans was spared a direct hit.
The center of Katrina, a Category 1 storm with winds of 95 mph, was about 20 miles (32 kilometers) west-southwest of Hattiesburg, Mississippi, moving to the north at about 18 mph (29 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center at 2 p.m. local time. The storm, which pushed oil prices to a record, knocked out power to hundreds of thousands along the Gulf Coast.
Katrina is moving through southern Mississippi on a northeastern path that will bring the storm into Tennessee by tomorrow morning. The storm's surge has caused flooding, trapped people in buildings and caused an unspecified amount of damage, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour said today.
``It came in on Mississippi like a ton of bricks,'' Barbour, a Republican, said at a press conference. ``It's a terrible storm.''
An earlier projected path had Katrina directly striking New Orleans, some of which lies 20 feet below sea level. Officials and area residents -- millions of whom fled for higher ground -- had been concerned the storm would cause flooding that would overwhelm the city's system of levees and pumps. Katrina lashed the city with winds as high as 135 mph.
``It looks like a war zone, with tree branches down everywhere,'' John Hazard, 44, said today from the uptown New Orleans home of his brother-in-law Bill Hines. Looking out on Audubon Boulevard, he said, ``garbage cans are floating in 3 feet of water. The wind is howling and the trees are dancing like crazy.''
Tennessee Tomorrow
After Hattiesburg, Katrina will move on through Jackson, said National Hurricane Center spokesman Chris Sisko. The projected three-day path for the storm shows it crossing into Tennessee by 7 a.m. tomorrow and into the Great Lakes region a day later.
Residents of Jackson -- the state capital -- are receiving some rain and Katrina may cause flooding in the Pearl River, said Mick Bullock, a spokesman for the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency.
Areas of Harrison and Hancock counties, on the Gulf Coast, are under water, Barbour said. Officials haven't yet been able to confirm reports that water reached the second floor of the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino in Biloxi, Bullock said.
There are no casualty or property damage estimates yet and officials can't go rescue people trapped until the winds die down, Barbour said.
Inside the Superdome
New Orleans, just 100 miles upriver from the Gulf of Mexico, has 500,000 residents within a metropolitan area of 1.3 million people, and depends on pumps and levees to keep dry. The hurricane center warned of storm-surge flooding in Louisiana of as much as 28 feet.
Since Aug. 26, more than 1 million people fled New Orleans and about half a million vehicles left southern Louisiana, State Police spokesman Markus Smith said in a telephone interview today from Baton Rouge. Mandatory evacuations were also in place in parishes surrounding the city.
About 10,000 people sought shelter inside the Superdome football stadium in New Orleans, Louisiana State Police spokesman Kevin Cowan said in a telephone interview from Baton Rouge. The storm blew off two parts of the stadium's roof, each of about 2 feet by 6 feet, Social Services Department spokesman Irby Hornsby said.
Plenty of Supplies
``The structure of the roof is still there, it's probably just the stuff covering the structure that's peeled away,'' Hornsby said. ``I just hope that this is the worst of it.''
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco said county emergency coordinators have determined there are no structural problems with the roof.
About 41,000 more people are in other shelters statewide, Cowan said.
Tom Higgerson, of Hammond, Louisiana, arrived at a shelter in Shreveport, Louisiana yesterday with his wife, two grandchildren and two Chihuahuas after being ordered by his parish to evacuate. He said he expected to be able to return home this afternoon.
``I'm just taking care of my dogs and waiting,'' he said in a phone interview.
Continued...
Entergy said 717,560 customers lacked power in Louisiana and 9,873 in Mississippi. Southern said 150,606 customers were without power in Alabama, mostly in the Mobile region, and 82,509 in Florida.
$26 Billion
Katrina may cost U.S. insurers such as Allstate Corp. $10 billion to $26 billion, making it among the most expensive storms to hit the industry, three storm modelers said.
Eqecat Inc. cut its claims forecast to $12 billion to $25 billion from $30 billion as the storm spared New Orleans a direct hit. Risk Management Solutions Inc. predicted $10 billion to $25 billion.
``The hurricane tracked somewhat east of downtown New Orleans and the western side of the storm showed evidence of weakening as it moved inland,'' said Kyle Beatty, a meteorologist at Newark, California-based Risk Management. ``Both of those served as positives for New Orleans.''
President George W. Bush today declared parts of Mississippi a major disaster area. He signed an emergency declaration for Louisiana yesterday, freeing up federal disaster aid.
`Take Precautions''
``I urge the citizens there to continue to listen to the local authorities,'' Bush said in a televised press conference today. ``Take precautions because this is a dangerous storm.''
Crude oil for October delivery rose $1.12, or 1.7 percent, to $67.25 a barrel at the 2:30 p.m. close of floor trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Earlier oil jumped as high as $70.80 a barrel, the biggest increase in 29 months. Natural gas, heating oil and gasoline climbed to all-time highs as well.
Investors are concerned Katrina, the fiercest storm to strike the U.S. Gulf coast since 1969, will rupture pipelines, rip rigs from their moorings and disrupt production for weeks. Hurricane Ivan last September cut the region's oil output by as much as 80 percent.
Supply Trucks
The hurricane forced companies including Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. to evacuate rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, where 30 percent of U.S. oil is produced. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said today that Bush is prepared to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the U.S.'s emergency oil stockpile, to assist energy producers and refiners in the path of Katrina.
Part 3
Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has extra trucks waiting at surrounding distribution centers to haul more canned food, generators, batteries, tarps and Pop Tarts to affected regions, company spokeswoman Sharon Weber said.
The storm damaged some roofs of buildings at Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Michoud facility in New Orleans, where the company assembles the external fuel tanks for space shuttles, spokesman Evan McCollum said in a telephone interview from the company's space operations headquarters in Colorado.
Today's shutdown of some pumps in New Orleans will worsen flooding, said Roumain Peters, a lawyer who evacuated his uptown New Orleans home near Tulane University on Aug. 27 with his family to Monroe, Louisiana.
Pumps
``With the pumps shut down, every drop of rain that falls is going to stay there,'' Peters, 37, said in a telephone interview. ``Nothing drains out of New Orleans without being pumped out.''
Disruptions to Gulf natural-gas production are being felt as far away as Detroit and New York state after El Paso Corp. and NiSource warned power plant operators, manufacturers and gas utilities to curtail gas consumption because of shortfalls in Gulf supplies.
The American Red Cross has opened dozens of shelters in Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and the Florida Panhandle, Southeastern regional spokeswoman Laura Howe said. The organization can house 50,000 people in Mississippi and Alabama and will open more shelters if needed, she said.
``Shelters along the Mississippi-Alabama border are filling up very quickly'' with people from New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf coast, Howe said in an interview.
Category 5
Katrina was earlier a maximum Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with winds as high as 175 mph. It would have been the most powerful hurricane heading for the U.S. since 1992's Andrew, which hit south Florida.
The storm swept through southern Florida last week as a minimal hurricane, killing at least nine people and cutting power to more than a million homes.
Tracy Watson, a botanist who lives in New Orleans, left the city yesterday to stay with friends in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The trip that normally takes her 11 hours took her 15, she said. Before leaving, Watson said she spent about three hours boarding up windows in her greenhouse to protect more than 100 plants and flowers, some of which she uses in her work.
``It's my garden and greenhouse I'm most worried about,'' Watson said in an interview. ``I have thousands of dollars in plant life back there. I've brought as much with me as I could but really, it could never be enough. Now I just wait, and hope.''
To contact the reporter on this story:
Heather Burke in New York at hburke2@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: August 29, 2005 15:51 EDT