NOLA Public Services Map: CNN hosts yet another interactive map with New Orleans zip codes and the status of amenities – water, sewage, trash removal, power – for each area. Eight weeks after Hurricane Katrina and the flood, water is available throughout the city, but for New Orleans East. All public services have been restored to the Lower Garden District, Uptown west of the Garden District and the Westbank. North and east of there, the situation is not so good, but improves slowly and surely. Contrary to the map, the French Quarter and the part of the Marigny closest to the river also have all services. Now, we need a map of free wi-fi hot spots. This post in WiFiNetNews is a starter.

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One Month And One Week Before The Close Of Hurricane Season: s.b. just reminded me that the end of hurricane season is not a week but five weeks away. With every counterclockwise-moving swath of white I see on a screen, my chest hurts more and more. Gulf of Mexico hurricanes are quickly starting to resemble those sold at Pat O’Briens – too many of them and my stomach doesn’t want to be in me any longer. Feh.

For fear of sounding trite, it has been a very tough year on the Gulf of Mexico region, and it was all I could do to keep it together this afternoon, as almost everyone from the local gym to the grocery store spoke of nothing but Hurricane Wilma. My heart goes out to the residents of Cancun who were affected by Wilma’s floods, and we have another landfall to look forward to tomorrow.

… police shot into the air to scare away looters and quickly evacuated more than 30 tourists from a downtown area overrun by people raiding stores … some people, hungry and unable to find anything open, began taking things they needed. Downtown, the city handed out food packages that included rice, beans, crackers and cooking oil, and people stood in line for blocks to collect …

… the storm knocked out many of the island’s docks, making it difficult for the navy to arrive. State officials were trying to clear airstrips on Cozumel and nearby Isla Mujeres so that planes could land with aid.

Windows were blown out at the city’s main public hospital and about an inch of water stood on the floor of the intensive care unit, although a generator provided electricity.

The U.S. Embassy was sending consular officials to shelters to help tourists prepare to leave. The U.S. government also offered to donate $200,000 in hurricane aid.

Granted Mexico did not sustain the scale of devastation that our portion of the Gulf coast did after Katrina, I admire the responsiveness of the Mexican government who seem to have a better handle on emergency management than we do. Also, notice how quick we were to evacuate our people in Mexico, but could not and still cannot offer that level of aid to our very own in New Orleans and surrounding areas. Some people qualify as more American than others, I suppose.

Pop Culture Faux Pas Of The Day (via FoxNews TV) – Man boards up his property and spraypaints the following on one of the planks “Barny [sic] Wilma’s Not Here.” That would be Fred, unless something new has transpired in the Flintstones universe.

Louisiana Requests Illinois Mud: Remember my Wonders Of Science post from two days ago? Here’s another one that shames me into an inner silence so unbelievably quiet. What ARE we doing to this earth and, in the process, to ourselves?

In order to restore marshes destroyed during Hurricane Katrina, the state of Louisiana has requested for silt from Illinois River overflow. If the Mississippi River down in southern Louisiana were left to its own devices, the river would: a) not flow where it does, and b) overflow periodically and create its own levees by depositing the requisite amount of silt along the riverbanks, which in turn would provide natural protection against storm surges caused by tidal or hurricane activity.

Now, we are forced to import levee material from the midwest.

Louisiana officials want to bolster the marshes ” already badly eroded before Katrina ” as a barrier against potential storm surges from future hurricanes. They are in early talks with Illinois to transport by barge or pipeline large amounts of mud to the Louisiana coast. Scientists say the loss of the buffer-like marsh over the decades was a big factor in Katrina’s powerful storm surge, which overwhelmed the city’s levees.

2.7 miles of marsh knocks out 1 foot of storm surge. Since the 1950s, more than 8,000 miles of canals have been dug for oil and gas exploration and shipping in the area, causing more than a third of coastal Louisiana’s loss of 1,900 square miles of marsh since the 1930s …

Storm surge finds its way far inland by traveling up the canals and shipping channels, most of which lead straight to levees that protect homes and businesses … a lack of sediment is at the heart of the losing fight against hurricanes, experts say.

Before the levees were built, the Mississippi River overflowed in the spring and replenished Louisiana’s marshes and swamps with silt, sand and mud. But today the 200 million tons of sediment that come down the river flow straight into the Gulf …

Now the states quibble over how much transporting the mud is going to cost our state and the Sierra Club wonders whether or not we are introducing Illinois River toxins to the region and the Gulf.

Earth to Sierra Club, we already receive the toxins of our particular drainage basin all the way from Minnesota down and, oh, remember Cancer Alley? Illinois River material may actually ameliorate our marshes.

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Foaming At FEMA:

9 = Number of times FEMA has called me in the last 36 hours to leave automated voice messages informing me that “your home was in one of the worst-hit regions, we do not require to check your home, you will be provided with assistance, if you have any questions, please call …”

0 = Number of times they have called Machelle

A decent sum (which has been put aside in savings just in case FEMA manages to see daylight and logic through all of the red tape and asks for some or all of the money back) = Amount of money they have given relocated and employed me

$0 = Amount of money they have given unemployed student, Machelle. The woman has been to the FEMA/DHS office in New Orleans over and over again only to be told that her application is in perfect order, they just don’t know why she hasn’t received the money yet, and, sorry, they can’t give her any themselves. It has been two months now since the hurricane.

I love my country, but am fully irritated at my government’s abject inefficiency. How hard is it for one of the richest nations on the planet to help its own? With a Category 4/5 headed towards the United States. Again.

Wilma Wind Model: From Bob C., the German-Canadian-Aussie geophysicist also in exile in Houston,

“For the true believers, this modeler has hit the last two on the money (predicted eye shift from west to east of New Orleans for Katrina and TX/LA border when all the other models had Rita going to Galveston). Check tomorrow or Saturday and look for the eye of the hurricane … early days, but if it doesn’t turn, we could get it by Monday.”

NOAA has Wilma making a hard right at the northeastern tip of the Yucatan peninsula after which she will proceed to shear the waters of Lake Okeechobee.

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Lakeview Resident And Her Katrina Website: Introducing Hurricane Release, with pictures of various New Orleans neighborhoods before, during and after the storm. Also home to an up and coming forum known simply as “cutting-edge information and blistering foment.” Susu’s my kind of girl.

A Lot More Category Fives Headed Towards The Gulf Coast: My assumption that most people seek out, absorb and base their opinions on scientific facts is wrong. In fact, many don’t, including scientists, a lot of whom work within a rational framework only when it comes to their own line of study. I can’t believe people who are perplexed by the number of high-intensity storms in the Gulf of Mexico region this year, and remain in ignorance of the fact that there are many more to come in the next decade. That we still live on this coast (be it South Padre, Houston, New Orleans, Ocean Springs, Mobile Bay, Pensacola or the Florida Keys), after a Katrina, with a Wilma on its way and many more to contend with, is equal parts disbelief and pride to me.

Incredulity — What are we doing here?
Chutzpah — We are here! And how.

For example, in another entertaining NO Metroblog post, Jack Ware opines, “In about the last 24 hours Wilma has gone from a Tropical Storm to a Category 5 hurricane. Amazing. She’s rolling past the little arrows on the lane in God“s Bowling Alley …” While Jack extends that metaphor into the post rather nicely, I am in turn stunned by people who are surprised at yet another Big Honking Storm in the Gulf. At first, I thought it was laypeople ignoring science, much less treatises on increasing hurricane activity. However, when I mention it to fellow scientists, they look at me like I’m a Cassandra and, golly, they have never heard of such studies before. Even USA Today did a story on it, for the love of mainstream reporting.

[NOAA’s] official outlook is for 12 to 15 tropical storms, seven to nine of them becoming hurricanes … three to five could be major hurricanes, with winds of at least 111 mph … the trend is likely to continue for another decade or longer because a global climate pattern causes ideal conditions for hurricanes: warmer Atlantic waters, more summer monsoons over western Africa and fewer monsoons in the Amazon basin.

Science, people, science! Yet, do not misconstrue my take on these findings to imply abandoning New Orleans or the Gulf Coast. Just recognize that wherever we live in the Gulf states, we are susceptible to this activity and must be prepared to live with the consequences. If anything, it is a call to cities such as New Orleans to shore up their defenses and to be very realistic during rebuilding. Nor is Houston safe from the wrath of Vayu and Poseidon.

Will Durant was not kidding when he said, “Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” Add the word climatological to that statement. Any of you feeling especially smug while residents of San Francisco, L.A., Seattle-Tacoma, Hawaii, the Plains states or hilly regions should take some time to think about this, too. Nature happens. And we go on.

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Cellphone Alternatives: Given that my solar plexus still reels from merely peering at my post-Katrina cellphone bills (despite Verizon’s kind credits and refunds), I’ve been exploring alternatives to the daylight robbery that is the American cellphone industry. No more paying for incoming and outgoing calls, while the person on the other end does the same. As internet access returns to New Orleans, I encourage readers to contact friends and family using instant messaging (I’m partial to GoogleTalk myself — less cluttered than other IM software) and my new plaything, Skype. Not intent on boring my readers with the intricacies of Voice over IP, let it suffice to say that you can talk to someone over the computer with a microphone-headphone combo for free. As real, live telephones get involved, so does money.

Would it be encouraging to tell you that my parents (gasp!) managed to install the program, acquired a headset and called me on my laptop last night? Crisp and clear with a decent internet connection, and they’re going to use this technology to call me from their Indian travels. I’m talking about my parents here, winners of Most Insecure Passwords On The Planet five years running. If they can do it, and plan to get through to me from halfway around the world, so can you.