Weather

Katrina was just a cat 3 right?

Quineloe said:

Katrina was just a cat 3 right?

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At landfall yes.

I’m reading surge is less than predicted, but wind damage was more severe than people expected

Lake Charles heavy petro chemical town. Isle of Capri casino boat wedged under I-110 now. Chlorine leak from one of the plants. No idea if they got it under control, most likely just letting it go since everything is under water acess wise.

Chanur said:

Brother in law is out near Alexandria too.

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Friends parents stayed in natchitoches and the eye went right over them. No word yet. My friend is having class today in Dallas, she was ticked they wouldn't come stay with her.

Grandmother lives about 100 miles west of natchitoches and her power is out. Said it was cool so she just opened up the house. I think the mid 70's. The town she's nearest to has the electric co-op office and work trucks, so we'll see.

The guy I know that stayed in Lake Charles at the hospital I thought he was an upper executive or something. I can't believe he stayed. He runs the heart bypass machine when you have surgery or whatever. Doesn't seem like that's a big need right now and for a while.

My friend that is a nurse stayed at the Charity hospital in New Orleans during Katrina. They had one landline phone the entire time that worked. But when the phone batteries went out a lot of people didn't know the numbers to call since it was all in their phone. He could call me in East Texas. But he couldn't call his wife in a surburb of Baton Rouge. So I had to relay a bunch of messages. He couldn't call his parents in Metarie not far away either. Since then I always tell people stick a few numbers in your wallet, phone dies you may be screwed.

Lake Charles got fucked. I saw that image of that high rise building that had like 90% windows blown out.

Chemical industry safety board has been on a kick as of late to have procedures in place to handle such stuff. I think it was Harvey at a plant near Beaumont they put a bunch of chemicals in trailers to get them off the ground. Then moved the trailers when the water came up and it was above the 100 year flood plain. They flooded and it killed the generator that kept the stuff cool and there was a huge leak.

Seeing as plants had at most a few days warning I expect once the water goes down they will get an idea of what actually happened. The plant mentioned above had a staff during the storm on site to handle emergencies. The nuke plant just outside New Orleans kept running during Katrina. Most of these plants don't have a magic key that says "on/off" and even a shutdown in one line can take a week for a turnaround and such.

Chlorine leak in Lake Charles under control finally. Shelter in place still for those within a mile I think. Fighting a lot of smaller fires at the plants and refineries.

Friend that stayed at the hospital in Lake Charles said he made it ok. Made it to his house and his house came out of it ok as well. Guess a miracle. His wife and kids went to Baton Rouge for the storm.

I live in lake charles, westlake actually which is a small city just across the I10 bridge from lake charles. City and surrounding areas are completely fucked. Lake Charles has like 7 water plants, 2 of them were utterly destroyed, 2 took damage and the other 3 are working at limited capacity. They had to evacuate most of the hospitals in the area cuz of the water issue. My wife works in the capital one tower which is the big glass high rise that everyone has been seeing with all the windows blown out. I just spoke to a neighbor of mine and we live in a metal house with a metal roof and as best he can tell we took no damage other than our privacy fence was demolished. All trees near and around my house are gone. Me and the wife kids and dogs evacuated to Baton Rouge. We heading back tomorrow morning to grab clothes for the kids and bringing them to Houston where my father in law lives. Im coming back for cleanup. I work at the local university there and its completely fucked. Basically every building on campus took some type of damage. Its gonna be a long recovery but we gonna make it.

Yeah listened to the news conference today about the water issues. Oddly enough my friend that works at one of the hospitals and stayed had pics of his house and it came out undamaged. Not sure what community it is in. From the looks it's an upscale rural area in about a $600k or more house, he posted pics of a new bass boat he had bought for his two kids in high school. All he said was back to the hospital.

As normal, a family of 5 died to running a generator with no ventilation.

Just a few trucks staged in Sulphur. Goes on and on and on. They had a bunch staged here on the MS/LA line on I-55. They had the entire town full, the mall, walmart parking lot, the special hurricane center lot. I think they left to head toward Lake Charles before landfall. From the signs on the trucks they looked to be from much further north and apparently were staging and waiting to see where it would go.

Not unusual. I remember seeing caravans of them driving through Kentucky every couple years over a decade ago. They come from all over the country.

Lot of trucks for a town that size even 100% gone. Lake Charles is 75k. Sulphur and westlake are suburbs but they're smaller than Lake Charles.

Here they had a bunch from TN at the hurricane evacuation center, wal mart parking lot, the mall and everything else to park. It's right off I-55 on the LA/MS border. They left town before official landfall and before it got dark here with about a 5 hour trip ahead of them to get to where the video was made.

Friend that stayed in Lake Charles at the hospital posted some pics of his house. Shingle damage was all mostly. No trees down on the house in a very wooded area. His 2 college aged kids were up top making a temp repair and he was taking videos and pics. You can tell it's Louisiana, no power and town nearly gone. He was cooking gumbo for people.