An Errie Simulation finished on the Same Day??

Hurricane Simulation Predicted 61,290 Dead
By RON FOURNIER and TED BRIDISAssociated Press Writers


More Stories, Multimedia
WASHINGTON (AP) -- As Katrina roared into the Gulf of Mexico, emergency planners pored over maps and charts of a hurricane simulation that projected 61,290 dead and 384,257 injured or sick in a catastrophic flood that would leave swaths of southeast Louisiana uninhabitable for more than a year.
These planners were not involved in the frantic preparations for Katrina. By coincidence, they were working on a yearlong project to prepare federal and state officials for a Category 3 hurricane striking New Orleans.
Their fictitious storm eerily foreshadowed the havoc wrought by Category 4 Katrina a few days later, raising questions about whether government leaders did everything possible - as early as possible - to protect New Orleans residents from a well-documented threat......

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/K/KATRINA_WHAT_PLANNERS_FEARED?SITE=WIMIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

......click above link for complete story. Too weird.

What about all our Marriotts in New Orleans??

As many of my friends and family know, I work at a Marriott Hotel in Racine.
I have been wondering about all the Marriotts down in New Orleans and how they fared in the hurricane.
One story I just found sheds a little light on the conditions of the properties down there....

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Marriott addresses Hurricane KatrinaNEW ORLEANS-
Marriott International is working to evacuate 350 people, victims of Hurricane Katrina, who remain at two downtown New Orleans hotels, according to reports by Marriott executives during a conference call that took place Sept. 1.
About 300 people remain in the Ritz-Carlton, which is surrounded by about 4 feet of water, and about 50 people are in the JW Marriott, following the Aug. 29 storm.
At the start of the hurricane, there were 2,000 associates represented in the city and about 2,500 guests. Marriott has 15 hotels with over 4,600 guestrooms in the New Orleans market.
"Our intent is to move in once we get accessibility from local officials," said Lenny Jachimowicz, vice president, engineering , North American lodging. Engineers are standing by to assess the conditions of the structures at that point, Jachimowicz said.
"This is a most distressful and concerning time for us in the New Orleans area and the Gulf Coast-obviously the biggest natural disaster that probably has ever hit our country," said Bill Marriott, chairman and c.e.o., Marriott International.
"… The long-term outlook for New Orleans, I think, is very positive. When this country gets mobilized and decides they're going to do something, it gets done … We get it rebuilt and we do it in a hurry. We have great resources in this country. We've got what it takes to rebuild the city and we are very confident that it will be rebuilt in a timely fashion and come back better than ever before. We recognize the tremendous importance of New Orleans not only as the major port and refinery area for the country, but also in many other respects. We will get through and the future is going to be fine."
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Well folks....you heard it here first. The Marriott Hotels in the "Big Easy" will rebound and be rebuilt. At least I know I still have a place to sleep when they do bring back "Mardi Gras"........I was a bit worried.

It also sounds as if the Lodging industry as a whole is putting some muscle behind trying to make for some semblence of orginazation down in this area also:
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FEMA requests your help
AH&LA is working in close cooperation with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to mobilize hoteliers in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the surrounding states that are willing and able to assist with hurricane relief efforts.
HSMAI reacts to Katrina
In response to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International has spearheaded a series of initiatives, including the creation of a foundation.
Marriott gives update on impactMarriott International has established a toll-free line for friends and families to call for information about guests and associates who may have been affected by the hurricane: (866) 211-4610.
IHG advises on travel
InterContinental Hotels Group announced that as a result of the hurricane, many hotels are overbooked, especially in areas with a huge influx of evacuees, including Alabama, Arkansas, east Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. IHG guests who have plans to travel to these areas during the next several weeks are encouraged to call (800) 331-0573, or call the hotel directly.
Hilton Hotels reports status of hotels
Hilton Hotels Corp. continues to monitor the status of its hotels. The company is waiving group cancellation damages for meetings through Sept. 30 at hotels in the New Orleans area. For families of guests trying to locate current and evacuated guests, the number is: (888) 240-6152.
La Quinta lists closed properties
La Quinta Corp. reported that as of Aug. 31, eight company-owned hotels in the greater New Orleans area are closed and will be unable to accept reservations until further notice. None of the company's franchised locations in the area are currently closed. For families of guests trying to locate current and evacuated guests, call: (866) 328-1759.
• The Royal Sonesta and Chateau Sonesta hotels in New Orleans, both located in the city's French Quarter, sustained only minor damage from Hurricane Katrina, although managers are still assessing the condition of each property. The hotels are not able to reopen because they do not have power or any ability to receive deliveries. Both hotels will remain closed until Sept. 30.
• Harrah's Entertainment expects Harrah's New Orleans to remain closed for at least four weeks. The company's six other properties in Louisiana and Mississippi are supporting relief efforts and remain in full operation.
• MGM Mirage issued a statement about Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Miss. A team is in the process of evaluating the damage and expects the process to take several weeks. The company is working to establish a means of communicating with employees.
• Jameson Inns reports no significant damage. All hotels affected by the hurricane remain open.

• According to the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau, http://www.neworleanscvb.com/, a number of New Orleans hotels remain open and are accommodating guests and survivors. However, all are attempting to evacuate remaining tourists. The focus of hotels is managing water and food supplies to guests and making them as comfortable as possible under difficult disaster conditions.

Changes in Saturn's Rings baffle scientists....

The following news tidbit talks about the recent discovery by scientests at NASA, of the changes going on in Saturn's rings that surround the planet. The scientests say they are baffled by the change and do not know what the changes mean.

Maybe they should read "The 12th Planet". A book I read a year or so ago that talks about the return of a rouge planet entering our solar system from afar. In the book, they talk about changes to Saturn's Rings as this planet called "Niburu" comes circling back into our immediate solar system...after a long absence of approx. 3,600 years. Many more plantet anomolies are to happen in our solar system as well.

Hmm...who whould have thought.....

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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- New observations by the international Cassini spacecraft reveal that Saturn's trademark shimmering rings, which have dazzled astronomers since Galileo's time, have dramatically changed over just the past 25 years.
Among the most surprising findings is that parts of Saturn's innermost ring - the D ring - have grown dimmer since the Voyager spacecraft flew by the planet in 1981, and a piece of the D ring has moved 125 miles inward toward Saturn.
While scientists puzzle over what caused the changes, their observations could reveal something about the age and lifetime of the rings.
Cassini-related discoveries were discussed Monday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's division of planetary sciences in Cambridge, England.

"I don't think Saturn's rings will disappear anytime soon, but this tells us how the rings are evolving and how long they might last, " deputy project scientist Linda Spilker said in a telephone interview from England.
Scientists are interested in Saturn's rings because they are a model of the disk of gas and dust that initially surrounded the sun. Studying them could yield important clues about how the planets formed from that disc 4.5 billion years ago.

The ring observations were made this summer. The $3.3 billion Cassini mission, funded by NASA and the European and Italian space agencies, was launched in 1997. Cassini is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
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Happy Monday to all.

A New Orleans Resident Says There's Something Strange..

Included in this post are a few photos of the situation that the citizens of New Orleans are encountering as they try to survive one of the worst experiences of their lives. The "Big Easy" doesnt seem so easy right now..


I came across this story a few minutes ago. From the different news stories, esp. from foreign web sites, the news is taking on a different spin. For example this editorial from a London newspaper:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2005/09/05/dl0501.xml&sSheet=/portal/2005/09/05/ixportal.html

....says alot about explaining the whys of what happened in the "Big Easy".

I dont know how many people know that the "Big Easy" is also the "Big Poor house" with 68% of its population being black and a good portion of that being under the poverty level of the U.S.
Some web sites I have stumbled upon are saying the death toll in the city alone has already passed 50,000!! Yet the mainstreem news media is saying that only 59 reported dead in the city in the immediete aftermath! (Though some are heading in the direction of "thousands").......

I think our government has some agenda other than the speediest saving of life as possible. And this story (here in its entirety) makes me wonder even more. I will let people decide for themselves if they think there is something "fishy" going on in New Orleans..........
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KATRINA: NATURAL DISASTER OR SABOTAGE AND INSTITUTIONAL TERRORISM?
(from a local resident of New Orleans)

I would like to explore the unusual circumstances that have been largely unreported in the media that occurred in the wake of Katrina. As a lifelong resident of the city, it seems in the recent past we’ve had at least three hurricanes which seemed to be heading directly for New Orleans, but that miraculously turned away from it at the last minute. I had always attributed these last minute course corrections to Carmelite nuns in the past, and was hoping against hope that it would be repeated once again with Katrina, which was almost as big as the Gulf of Mexico and whose eye was the size of Lake Ponchartrain itself.

Amazingly again, Katrina turned from its dead on course to New Orleans at the last minute and we all thought we had been spared the worse. Although there was severe flooding in some areas, the levees held, and the force of the winds and rain created a relatively acceptable level of damage compared to what could be expected from a category 4 hurricane.

But then the next day, the 17th St. canal levee broke as well as others around the city. A complete phone and communications outage enveloped not only the city but the entire outlying area as well, greatly hampering the initial efforts to stem the levee breaks and other crises. The scattered and sheltered residents of the city were completely cut off from one another and from finding out what was going on. The pumping stations, including the new multimillion dollar one near the cemeteries all failed.

Despite the chaos and confusion in the hours after the hurricane, a lightning fast reorganization of the news coverage on the conservative and almost monopolistic Clear Channel radio stations and regional television station conglomerates went into effect immediately, even as much of the region was left without power.

The reorganized media seemed to have an agenda in its coverage. The overemphasis on the looters, which anyone who lived in New Orleans could have predicted, a very deliberate minimization of the number of lives that were lost, and an obscuring of exactly how much of the city was left dry and intact. On Friday evening’s ABC hour long newscast, for example, it was filmed on the city’s Canal Street, making it look like Venice, when in fact they were standing in mere inches of water. None of the wall to wall coverage explored the simultaneous and suspicious levee breaches, pump failures and collapse of the land and cell phone system, as well as the jamming of ham radio frequencies.

Cell phone towers are completely autonomous switching stations with two super computers that are cooled and powered by their own propane generators when city power is disrupted. They are designed with military redundancy and a built in toughness for survival in disasters. Also if they were to fail en mass, their wealthy parent companies and subsidiaries have the capacity to send in temporary mobile cell phone towers that are normally employed at sporting and other large events to augment coverage during heavy usage. Both the land lines and cell phones remained non-functioning immediately afterwards and were never fixed. Additionally Ham radio operators, who can usually communicate anywhere on the globe report they have not been able to get through the region, as if their signal and frequencies were being jammed.

The price of gasoline and oil has already risen astronomically, to the extent that some are calling the oil companies the real looters in Katrina’s aftermath. Other pin striped looters appear in the form of real estate agents who are going around the city with video cameras, scoping out the potential hot properties in the dryer regions of the city in the inevitable buyer’s market that will follow when city dwellers are allowed to return, if they ever do. Of course they won’t allow the homeowners and businesses who could help save the city to return, at least to secure their lifetime investments, even though somehow these predatory speculators are given free reign.

The world and even this country by now already know how FEMA, the Red Cross, and the federal government stood passively by, letting the worse happen, for five days without lifting a finger. To some it mirrored this country’s puny response to the Christmas timed tsunami, when it snowed in New Orleans for the first time in recent memory. To some, it almost seemed this indifference to life may be an indication that what was going on was exactly what they wanted to happen. Dennis Hastert’s comments certainly seemed to confirm this sentiment.

The horrors of uncared for refugees in the Superdome and convention center are likely to be repeated in the inevitable tent cities FEMA is planning in the outlying areas. How long will it be before these refugee camps are compared to the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay?
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Warm Regards for a restful Labor Day for all.....

Is New Orleans Worse than we are being Told???

The news, esp. tv news such as CNN and the Network affiliates like CBS, NBC and ABC as well as the major newspapers, seem to be "softening" what is going on down south. Look at the following article (which I have posted in it's entirety below) and another long but insightful story via this web link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-1764186,00.html

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(From Unknown Country.com)

There are increasing indications that the situation in New Orleans may be worse than Americans are being told. TV outlets abroad are reportedly showing video of large numbers of floating bodies, and just as the US media did not show people jumping from windows in the World Trade Center on 911, it may be that we're being spared the worst.
Russian intelligence analysts are calling New Orleans a "dead city." Some foreign reports estimate that as many as 50,000 people may be dead. It may be impossible to get an accurate count of the dead because alligators are devouring the corpses.
One problem is that looters have broken into gun shops, so now criminals are roaming the streets armed with guns. A Wal-Mart was completely cleaned out of all the guns in the store. One policeman was shot in the head in a confrontation with looters. Rescuers have been withdrawn from areas of the city where chaos and danger are simply too extreme.
Most tourists in New Orleans visit for the French Quarter, which, since it was built on higher ground than the rest of the city, has been spared the worst flooding. However, its stores and boutiques have seen the worst looting.
Some of the goods being stolen in the city are necessities, like food, water and diapers. However, many looters are taking this opportunity to steal luxury goods, such as antiques, electronics and jewellery.
There is concern that armed gangs of criminals may soon move into highly populated areas and start breaking into homes and holding up citizens. An ambulance carrying a police officer was shot at. One man was sitting on his porch when a gang armed with a knife insisted he hand over his electric generator, a prized possession in a city without power. The homeowner took out his own gun and fired over their heads, causing them to run away.
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For more info on all of this, and a lot of other interesting news stories that deal with Katrina and other things, click on over to the website below....
www.unknowncountry.com
and browse the headlines.
Once at this website, click on the "Dreamland" tab and in the upper left corner, click on the "listen" tab and there is also a radio show you can listen to online. The radio show will start in its own window.....

So Bush finally admits (sort of) the REAL Reason for Iraq War....

Won't somebody please think of the vast oil fields?

"President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country's vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists."
Read article...
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/08/31/bush_gives_new_reason_for_iraq_war/

I knew this was going to come out eventually.....

Total Devistation and Utter Chaos ensues in New Orleans

Part of a news article I just read today (Thurs-Sept 1,2005)
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With thousands feared drowned in what could be America's deadliest natural disaster in a century, New Orleans' leaders all but surrendered the streets to floodwaters Wednesday and began turning out the lights on the ruined city - perhaps for months.

Looting spiraled so out of control that Mayor Ray Nagin ordered virtually the entire police force to abandon search-and-rescue efforts and focus on the brazen packs of thieves who have turned increasingly hostile.
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It is just going from bad to worse in the "Big Easy". I think that nickname will shortly be changed to "The Not So Easy".......Ikkes!