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Here the Gulf goes again...

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:37 am
by Martrae
Hurricane Rita is now a cat 4 hurricane with expected landfall in TX or western LA on Saturday.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:38 am
by Zanchief
Man God hate's the south.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:39 am
by Langston
Cool... maybe this one will take out the rest of those black people before they can finish their looting.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:47 am
by vonkaar
Mikey's Galveston history, part 1:
My mom's side of the family is all from Galveston bay... I have like... for seriously and for literally-ness... 150+ family members down there =/. Every fourth of July we had a huge party in Anahuac, TX... which has a population of probably 1200. My grandad owned a shrimping company for 50 years... had 3 boats... I used to go out with him every Summer to pull in the 'ole haul. Hell, my parents just bought 75 acres of land down on the bay... it's supposed to be their 'retirement' property :ohnoes: .

Nobody is shrimping right now... it's killing the bay economy... but now Rita is scaring the fuck out of people. If you thought New Orleans was unprepared... wait til (if) this hits. My granddad is the only person in the area who built his house on 'stilts'... but he's saying that even his home wouldn't last in the type (mainly duration) of water that the homes affected by Katrina are seeing. Basically...

And for you racist fucks, most of the shrimping industry are hard-working, tax-paying, flag-bearing Americans - both white and black (no Jews though, they are lynched). If this hits as bad as Katrina, it could completely ruin the entire bay shrimping industry. :( .

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:51 am
by Zanchief
They should have been prepared Vonkaar. The government shouldn't be expected to help them if they can't help themselves.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:01 am
by vonkaar
Well... they 'think' they are prepared. My grandfather's boats are all moored in a pretty l33t shelter... his house was built atop steel supports, completely in accordance with hurricane specs. The only thing that people are freaked about is all the shit that happened to New Orleans - they thought they were prepared. It's making people wonder how prepared they really are. I'm glad they are taking the evacuation seriously... shrug...

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:04 am
by Gidan
Hopefully if an evacuation is called for, the horribe events in NO will make people take the the evacuation seriously.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:21 am
by mofish
Yeah I heard one reporter call it the 'Katrina Effect.' I guess Key West had like 30% more people evac this time as compared to the last time a hurricane pathed near/over it.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:10 am
by Martrae
You know the people that got evacuated to TX are gonna start thinking hurricanes are following them.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:30 am
by Gidan
Of course with the short memory people have, this time next year if the same thing hits, peopel will ignor the evacuation order becasue they will have completely forgotten.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 9:36 am
by Tikker
so like, volcano's didn't work, let's hit em with hurricanes

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:24 am
by Guest
Martrae wrote:You know the people that got evacuated to TX are gonna start thinking hurricanes are following them.


Hahaha the officials in Houston saw the opportunity and shipped them to Arkansas. You know the mayor of Houston called that mayor and laughed his ass off saying "GOTCHA! LOLZ!"

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:32 pm
by Langston
Category 5 now.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:33 pm
by Goose_Man
People here in San Antonio are being stupid. Talk of having to evacuate the city because of massive tornados and flooding from the Hurricane....

The news isn’t helping either OMGZ WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:36 pm
by Harrison
wtf are you still doing there?

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:40 pm
by Langston
Goose_Man wrote:People here in San Antonio are being stupid. Talk of having to evacuate the city because of massive tornados and flooding from the Hurricane....

The news isn’t helping either OMGZ WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!


Maybe you haven't been watching the news?

New Orleans was hit by a Category 4 hurricane. 1000+ people died. The city is in ruins.

Now, why are you still there and how fucking stupid are you to be complaining that they're recommending that people evacuate?

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:51 pm
by xaoshaen
Goose is in San Antonio, not Houston...

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 2:55 pm
by kaharthemad
all those texas towns look alike.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:28 pm
by brinstar
only two things come from texas...

:cool6:

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:32 pm
by Goose_Man
Langston wrote:
Goose_Man wrote:People here in San Antonio are being stupid. Talk of having to evacuate the city because of massive tornados and flooding from the Hurricane....

The news isn’t helping either OMGZ WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE!!!!!


Maybe you haven't been watching the news?

New Orleans was hit by a Category 4 hurricane. 1000+ people died. The city is in ruins.

Now, why are you still there and how fucking stupid are you to be complaining that they're recommending that people evacuate?


Maybe because San Antonio is 3 hours from the coast?

The concern here is the heavy rains and high winds/tornados. They problem with San Antonio is that our ground is rock and water doesn’t drain for shit so we can get flash floods pretty easy. I sit on top of a hill so I’m not too worried.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:51 pm
by Langston
OK - I retract my comment about you being stupid.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:17 pm
by Captain Insano
I wish I had a gun that made tornadoes... hOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!!!

Didn't all the people from NO evacuate to Houston? I think god is pissed about something and is trying to finish the job...

LOL RACIMS!!!

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 7:28 pm
by Phlegm
vonkaar wrote: If this hits as bad as Katrina, it could completely ruin the entire bay shrimping industry. :( .


Tell your grand dad to stay out on his boat. Weather it out on the water like Forrest Gump. After the storm, he owns the shrimping industry.

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:18 pm
by mappatazee
Captain_Insano wrote:I wish I had a gun that made tornadoes... hOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?!!!

Didn't all the people from NO evacuate to Houston? I think god is pissed about something and is trying to finish the job...

LOL RACIMS!!!


Ahah

Posted: Wed Sep 21, 2005 8:42 pm
by DESX
They are fucking screwed this one is stronger then katrina. Possibly strongest one to hit texas.

Rita Could Be Strongest Storm to Hit Texas By PAM EASTON, Associated Press Writer
3 minutes ago



GALVESTON, Texas - Gaining strength with frightening speed, Hurricane Rita swirled toward the Gulf Coast a Category 5, 165-mph monster Wednesday as more than 1.3 million people in Texas and Louisiana were sent packing on orders from authorities who learned a bitter lesson from Katrina.

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"It's scary. It's really scary," Shalonda Dunn said as she and her 5- and 9-year-old daughters waited to board a bus arranged by emergency authorities in Galveston. "I'm glad we've got the opportunity to leave. ... You never know what can happen."

With Rita projected to hit Texas by Saturday, Gov. Rick Perry urged residents along the state's entire coast to begin evacuating. And New Orleans braced for the possibility that the storm could swamp the misery-stricken city all over again.

Galveston, low-lying parts of Corpus Christi and Houston, and mostly emptied-out New Orleans were under mandatory evacuation orders as Rita sideswiped the Florida Keys and began drawing energy with terrifying efficiency from the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Between 2 a.m. and 4 p.m., it went from a 115-mph Category 2 to a 165-mph Category 5.

Forecasters said Rita could be the most intense hurricane on record ever to hit Texas, and easily one of the most powerful ever to plow into the U.S. mainland. Category 5 is the highest on the scale, and only three Category 5 hurricanes are known to have hit the U.S. mainland — most recently, Andrew, which smashed South Florida in 1992.

Government officials eager to show they had learned their lessons from the sluggish response to Katrina sent in hundreds of buses to evacuate the poor, moved out hospital and nursing home patients, dispatched truckloads of water, ice and ready-made meals, and put rescue and medical teams on standby. An Army general in Texas was told to be ready to assume control of a military task force in Rita's wake.

"We hope and pray that Hurricane Rita will not be a devastating storm, but we got to be ready for the worst," President Bush said in Washington.

By Wednesday evening, Rita was centered about 580 miles east-southeast of Galveston and was moving west near 13 mph. Forecasters predicted it would come ashore along the central Texas coast between Galveston and Corpus Christi.

But with its breathtaking size — tropical storm-force winds extending 350 miles across — practically the entire western end of the U.S. Gulf Coast was in peril, and even a slight rightward turn could prove devastating to the fractured levees protecting New Orleans.

In the Galveston-Houston-Corpus Christi area, about 1.3 million people were under orders to get out, in addition to 20,000 or more along with the Louisiana coast. Special attention was given to hospitals and nursing homes, three weeks after scores of sick and elderly patients in the New Orleans area drowned in Katrina's floodwaters or died in the stifling heat while waiting to be rescued.

Military personnel in South Texas started moving north, too. Schools, businesses and universities were also shut down. Some sporting events were canceled.

Galveston was a virtual ghost town by mid-afternoon Wednesday. In neighborhoods throughout the island city, the few people left were packing the last of their valuables and getting ready to head north.

Helicopters, ambulances and buses were used to evacuate 200 patients from Galveston's only hospital. And at the Edgewater Retirement Community, a six-story building near the city's seawall, 200 elderly residents were not given a choice.

"They either go with a family member or they go with us, but this building is not safe sitting on the seawall with a major hurricane coming," said David Hastings, executive director. "I have had several say, `I don't want to go,' and I said, `I'm sorry, you're going.'"

Galveston, a city of 58,000 on a coastal island 8 feet above sea level, was the site of one of the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history: an unnamed hurricane in 1900 that killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people and practically wiped the city off the map.

The last major hurricane to strike the Houston area was Category-3 Alicia in 1983. It flooded downtown Houston, spawned 22 tornadoes and left 21 people dead.

In Houston, the state's largest city and home to the highest concentration of Katrina refugees, the area's geography makes evacuation particularly tricky. While many hurricane-prone cities are right on the coast, Houston is 60 miles inland, so a coastal suburban area of 2 million people must evacuate through a metropolitan area of 4 million people where the freeways are often clogged under the best of circumstances.

Mayor Bill White urged residents to look out for more than themselves.

"There will not be enough government vehicles to go and evacuate everybody in every area," he said. "We need neighbor caring for neighbor."

Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt issued a stern warning to anyone staying behind that looting would not be tolerated and anyone caught stealing after the storm would be prosecuted.

At the Galveston Community Center, where 1,500 evacuees had been put on school buses to points inland, another lesson from Katrina was put into practice: To overcome the reluctance of people to evacuate without their pets, they were allowed to bring them along in crates.

"It was quite a sight," Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. "We were able to put people on with their dog crates, their cat crates, their shopping carts. It went very well."

But Thomas warned late Wednesday that the city was nearly out of buses. She said those left on the island will have to find a way off or face riding out a storm that is "big enough to destroy part of the island, if not a great part of the county."

City Manager Steve LeBlanc said the storm surge could reach 50 feet. Galveston is protected by a seawall that is only 17 feet tall. More than 180 police officers were expected to stay behind to guard the city, along with 117 firefighters.

Rita approached as the death toll from Katrina passed the 1,000 mark — to 1,036 — in five Gulf Coast states. The body count in Louisiana alone was put at 799, most found in the receding floodwaters of New Orleans.

The Army Corps of Engineers raced to fortify the city's patched-up levees for fear the additional rain could swamp the walls and flood the city all over again. The Corps said New Orleans' levees can only handle up to 6 inches of rain and a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin estimated only 400 to 500 people remained in the vulnerable east bank areas of the city. They, too, were ordered to evacuate. But only a few people lined up for the evacuation buses provided. Most of the people still in the city were believed to have their own cars.

"I don't think I can stay for another storm," said Keith Price, a nurse at New Orleans' University Hospital who stayed through Katrina and had to wade to safety through chest-deep water. "Until you are actually in that water, you really don't know how frightening it is."

Rita also forced some Katrina refugees to flee a hurricane for the second time in 3 1/2 weeks. More than 1,000 refugees who had been living in the civic center in Lake Charles, near the Texas state line, were being bused to shelters farther north.

"We all have to go along with the system right now, until things get better," said Ralph Russell of the New Orleans suburb of Harvey. "I just hope it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing."

Crude oil prices rose again on fears that Rita would smash into key oil installations in Texas and the gulf. Hundreds of workers were evacuated from offshore oil rigs. Texas, the heart of U.S. crude production, accounts for 25 percent of the nation's total oil output.

Rita is the 17th named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, making this the fourth-busiest season since record-keeping started in 1851. The record is 21 tropical storms in 1933. The hurricane season is not over until Nov. 30.