Found this Article on Hurricane Ivan and thought I'd share it with y'all...
PENSACOLA, Florida (AP) - Northwestern Florida marked the first anniversary of Hurricane Ivan with prayers and a multimedia theatrical remembrance Friday while tending to thousands who fled an even greater catastrophe.
Hurricane Katrina evacuees from Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are in shelters, hotels and private homes in a region where hundreds of Ivan victims still remain in temporary quarters, including government travel trailers and mobile homes.
Ivan ranks as the United States` fourth-costliest hurricane, causing about $13 billion in damage, behind Hurricanes Katrina, Andrew in 1992 and Charley last year. It caused flooding and wind damage across the Southeast. Ivan killed 25 people in the United States - 14 in Florida - while 32 more U.S. deaths were indirectly attributed to the storm.
At Navarre Beach, about 25 miles east of Pensacola, restaurant owner Cheryl Rudzki said that after seeing what Katrina did, she`s no longer complaining about losing her home to Ivan and then getting battered again in July by Hurricane Dennis.
"My problems don`t seem like much compared to what`s happening there," she said. "I lost a house, but at least I have a place to go to. I still have a community. I can`t imagine losing everything."
Ivan`s center made landfall Sept. 16, 2004, at Gulf Shores, Alabama, just west of the Florida border with 120 mph winds and a storm surge of 10 to 15 feet. It was the third of four hurricanes that struck Florida last year - a record for the state.
An ecumenical service at Pensacola`s Olive Baptist Church was broadcast live, while "Hurricane Monologues" debuted Thursday night for a four-day run. Part of the show`s proceeds will go to Katrina relief. The production features 19 monologues accompanied by music, photos, video, and lighting effects.
Reminders of Ivan still scar the landscape, including piles of debris, gutted homes, empty lots where buildings once stood, eroded beaches and twisted road signs.
Sunday, September 18, 2005
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
Something less depressing
I've been talking about Hurricane Katrina so much the last couple weeks that I've gotten away from tell y'all what I've been doing.
Mostly, I've been working on my final projects in my Photoshop and Web Design classes. Both projects are web sites designed in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I'm making a page on Nas. So far, it's coming out pretty good. This is my first attempt in making a page entirely in Photoshop. The second page is simply a page for the fantasy football league I'm in. This will actually be a combo of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, much like this page.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot going on. Mostly working anymore. I'm currently in a long streach without a day off. Fortunately, my break from classes is coming soon.
B.E.Z.
Mostly, I've been working on my final projects in my Photoshop and Web Design classes. Both projects are web sites designed in Photoshop. In Photoshop, I'm making a page on Nas. So far, it's coming out pretty good. This is my first attempt in making a page entirely in Photoshop. The second page is simply a page for the fantasy football league I'm in. This will actually be a combo of Photoshop and Dreamweaver, much like this page.
Other than that, there's not a whole lot going on. Mostly working anymore. I'm currently in a long streach without a day off. Fortunately, my break from classes is coming soon.
B.E.Z.
Friday, September 09, 2005
We Live in Paradise
This is an email I recieved from my father in the wake of Hurricane Katrina:
We live in Paradise. I have lived in a little trailer park just south and east (toward the Gulf) from the Hiway 90 bridge that they showed from Biloxi to Ocean Springs (the one with all but the raised portion missing) and even at or below poverty level it was a great place to be young! It was only about the height of a Gator belly above mean high tide so if it is still there it would have been covered with about 20 feet of water or more. Luckily I now live just at the very highest possible Category 5 high water mark so flooding/tidal surge is of little concern.
Most (not all) of the folks that were caught had no way of leaving and there was NOT enough time to bring in ships, busses, trains, or even cattle trucks to get many of them out. I have heard complaints that the Navy should have had ships there, including the Hospital Ship, waiting to help. Whoever posted that has never been in the position that I have of riding out a typhoon/hurricane at sea. Even on an eight hundred foot, 105 foot beam, 42 foot draft a category two storm is dangerous, a category 4 or 5 is deadly not to mention how the flat bottom amphibious and high superstructure hospital ships would ride.
People live where they have roots, find work, enjoy playing, or where they are just trapped by economic situation. It is the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast that keep a large percentage of the country in oil. They work the Rigs out in the Gulf and the refineries along the coast. Most of the rice eaten in the U.S. comes out of that area as well as many other products. Every body wants to believe the worst won't happen and many say they "put themselves in the hand of god". Sometimes their faith is all they have and this time for many it was not enough.
The one oil rig that washed up on the coast would have easily supplied enough oil to make gas for everyone of my riding companions for the rest of the time we own our Pacific Coasts. We will face fuel shortages possibly worse than other parts of the country because our gas supplies come in the Inter-coastal Waterway by barge and much of it is impassable now. In many ways we are partially isolated even by road with much of I-10 traffic cut or drastically reduced by this storm and previous storms.
Just so much can be done to maintain a city in such a location but the Army Corps of Engineers have spent billions of tax money attempting to maintain the vital lifeline that is The River. If it was possible to pump oil, refine gas, grow rice, and throw a month long party, and live "The Big Easy" in Ames, Iowa or Lincoln, Nebraska maybe things would be different but that is not human nature nor they way that nature laid out things.
Shunkmanitu
Ikce Wicasa (Lakota)
JUST SOME NOTES: About the ships, my father had 20+ years experience in the US Navy, so, I repect his knowledge there. Lastly, National Geographic reported that during Hurricane Ivan in 2004, there were waves of at least 90 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. They say "at least" because the insterments measuring the waves were of course broken by the time the eye got near.
We live in Paradise. I have lived in a little trailer park just south and east (toward the Gulf) from the Hiway 90 bridge that they showed from Biloxi to Ocean Springs (the one with all but the raised portion missing) and even at or below poverty level it was a great place to be young! It was only about the height of a Gator belly above mean high tide so if it is still there it would have been covered with about 20 feet of water or more. Luckily I now live just at the very highest possible Category 5 high water mark so flooding/tidal surge is of little concern.
Most (not all) of the folks that were caught had no way of leaving and there was NOT enough time to bring in ships, busses, trains, or even cattle trucks to get many of them out. I have heard complaints that the Navy should have had ships there, including the Hospital Ship, waiting to help. Whoever posted that has never been in the position that I have of riding out a typhoon/hurricane at sea. Even on an eight hundred foot, 105 foot beam, 42 foot draft a category two storm is dangerous, a category 4 or 5 is deadly not to mention how the flat bottom amphibious and high superstructure hospital ships would ride.
People live where they have roots, find work, enjoy playing, or where they are just trapped by economic situation. It is the people of New Orleans and the Mississippi Coast that keep a large percentage of the country in oil. They work the Rigs out in the Gulf and the refineries along the coast. Most of the rice eaten in the U.S. comes out of that area as well as many other products. Every body wants to believe the worst won't happen and many say they "put themselves in the hand of god". Sometimes their faith is all they have and this time for many it was not enough.
The one oil rig that washed up on the coast would have easily supplied enough oil to make gas for everyone of my riding companions for the rest of the time we own our Pacific Coasts. We will face fuel shortages possibly worse than other parts of the country because our gas supplies come in the Inter-coastal Waterway by barge and much of it is impassable now. In many ways we are partially isolated even by road with much of I-10 traffic cut or drastically reduced by this storm and previous storms.
Just so much can be done to maintain a city in such a location but the Army Corps of Engineers have spent billions of tax money attempting to maintain the vital lifeline that is The River. If it was possible to pump oil, refine gas, grow rice, and throw a month long party, and live "The Big Easy" in Ames, Iowa or Lincoln, Nebraska maybe things would be different but that is not human nature nor they way that nature laid out things.
Shunkmanitu
Ikce Wicasa (Lakota)
JUST SOME NOTES: About the ships, my father had 20+ years experience in the US Navy, so, I repect his knowledge there. Lastly, National Geographic reported that during Hurricane Ivan in 2004, there were waves of at least 90 feet in the Gulf of Mexico. They say "at least" because the insterments measuring the waves were of course broken by the time the eye got near.
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