Mayoral Survey For Congress: New Orleanians interested in returning home and/or restoring the city’s cultural offerings are requested to fill out this survey prepared by the cultural wing of the Bring New Orleans Back organization. Whether you are active in Performance Arts, Visual Arts, Design, Education, Literature or Culinary Arts, the survey is designed to assess your current status and what your organization will require to return to pre-Katrina status.
According to the Cultural Committee’s website, the compiled information “will be presented to Congress in hopes of acquiring their assistance in rebuilding the cultural fabric of New Orleans.” While the entry of old and new business is critical to New Orleans’ survival and recovery, the city will die without its soul. Your opinion is being sought; this is the time to organize those armchair woulda-coulda-shoulda thoughts and BE USEFUL in the rebuilding of our city.
The survey must be completed by Sunday, December 4, 2005. Please pass this information on to those without computer access as they can call (800) 691-8313 ( M-F, 9AM-5PM) or visit the local library’s computing facility to complete the survey.
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Interesting Houston-Related Hurricane Maps Provide Fodder For Thought: While poking around the WaPo’s Storm Coverage section this morning, I came across this heretofore unseen graphic on hurricane/TS wind strength during Hurricane Rita.
What caught my attention is a rectangle in the southwest of the map that reads “Houston Flooding Simulation.”
Houston Flooding Simulation . courtesy The Washington Post
According to this map, merely storm surge from a Category 4 or 5 would flood portions of Houston inside the 610 loop and that too only in the southeast. Granted, this is damage enough, and South Houston, Pearland, Hobby Airport, Pasadena and the Houston Ship Canal would be, pardon the expression, up a creek without a paddle. But, what about the areas of Houston that were flooded by TS Allison in 2001? One must remember that a storm surge will cause the flooding postulated in the above map, but, the rains associated with such a fierce storm will also contribute to the drowning of areas not colored in on this map.
Back to the topic at hand – Have drainage basin, will surge. Also note the chemical plants and oil refineries that dot Houston’s water outlets to the sea. I sincerely hope that the industrial canals of eastern Houston do not turn into our MR-GO and Intracoastal Waterway, manmade navigational conduits that contributed greatly to the destruction of eastern New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish.
28-35 feet for my area of Pasadena? Why does it flood MORE in the outlying areas away from the ship channel ??? I’m no geologist, so I can’t make any intelligent remarks, but it just looks weird.
No, it’s not 28-35 feet of water. It’s the storm surge elevation, which means that the storm surge will reach that area as hurricane category increases. So, it’s not flood depth increasing away from the channel, it’s the chances of areas farther away from the channel flooding _at all_ with increasing hurricane intensity and, therefore, storm surge. Does that make any sense?