<p>For those trying to figure out the flooding, the mayor said that St. Charles street is six feet below sea level and the current level of Lake Ponchatrain is 3 feet above sea level.</p>
<p>If you go to this link, St. Charles is highlighted by a number of markers. It runs in a circular layout, parallel to the Mississippi River from the French Quarter around to Tulane. As near as I can tell, St. Charles has been about the farthest reaches of the floodwater throughout the day today – maybe wet, but not deeply flooded. </p>
<p>The mayor said he expects St. Charles to be 9 feet under water by tomorrow morning.</p>
<p>To find the 17th Street Canal, locate the City Park Golf Course (big green area). Then, go about 16 blocks west (to the left). I think that’s the canal. The breach is up very close to the Lake. Go from there to St. Charles St and you can get an idea of the extent of the flooding.</p>
<p>If that’s true, that means Tulane and all the surrounding neighborhoods will be 9 feet under water. The officail front of the campus and the President’s House sit on St Charles Avenue, across from Audobon Park.</p>
<p>This is all more than I can fathom. Could a terrorist attack have been any worse? All of you effected by this horrible disaster are in my prayers.</p>
<p>Update from a Vanderbilt Student from Mississippi:
My town (Laurel) is about 2 hours northeast of N.O. and 1.5 hours north of Gulfport and the MS Gulf Coast. As of early Tuesday residents were w/o power, gas, or water. According to my friend who was at home Tuesday you cannot enter town from the north or east due to downed trees and other debree(which is not spelled correctly at all). All this means that I have not been able to communicate with any of my family and will probably not be able to for atleast 2 weeks. I will hopefully be driving home this weekend with a friend of mine. But until then I have no idea if I have a house or how any of my family is doing. Unfortunately when my friend visited(he attends school in Jackson MS) he was not able to get anywhere near my house. The last report I got from home was that a tornado had touched down near my house. I am praying and hoping that I have a house and that my family is okay. So as you pray for the obvious victims(N.O. and Gulf Coast residents) remember people like me who live further inland and are still drastically affected by these storms.</p>
<p><strong><em>The city of Jackson was recently without power but regained it late Tuesday evening.</em></strong></p>
<p>And continue through slide #27 to see two different breaches in the 17th Street Canal. It’s a concrete floodwall on top of an earthen levee. The surge from the lake undercut the floodwall, wiping out the earthen levee underneath.</p>
<p>They could drop sandbags til the cow’s come home and they’ll never plug those “gaps”. Now I see why the Corps of Engineers has decided to abandon that plan and think about blocking off the bridge closer to the lake.</p>
<p>oh berry, you are in my thoughts. We drove up 55 yesterday and were in Jackson for a moment. There was a lot of power outage, though not total, but things did not look bad around there. Communications just weren’t working - when I did have cell service (interemittent) any calls I tried to the local area yielded just busy circuits. I realize that your home is in a different area, but I hope for the best around there. Don’t worry too much about not hearing. Many people are fine, but just have no communication service.</p>
<p>Mominoptent - I’m just home to Katrina, and back on line - my thoughts and prayers are certainly with all the Tulane, Xavier and Loyola kids - but when I read your words, my heart dropped, until I got a page or 2 over and saw that your parents are safe. There are many like them that did not survive, possibly some of their neighbors, our prayers are withtheir families.</p>
<p>Thank you everyone, on behalf of so many who can’t say thanks.</p>
<p>Whoever said give money - do it, Red Cross and other agencies need it. Do forget the people in NO and Biloxi, their nightmare has only begun - people in Pensacola still do not have homes repaired from Ivan, and this is worse. The economy of the whole Central Gulf Coast is devastated - we depend on the casinos, the shipyards, the oil rigs, the fishing/shrimping, the refineries, the port activity - it is all gone. The major east-west link for gasoline for the Southeast, is at the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain - we have a long way to go.</p>
<p>Concerneddad: Not meaning to be flippant at this time, but my guess is that even if your S decides to become an accountant, he’ll work for the Red cross or the like, using his EMS skills as a volunteer.</p>
<p>Our thoughts are with those whom we’ve read about and seen on TV. One of my cousins lives in NO. The last we heard, two days ago, she and her family were with many others in one of the hotels. They are probably physically OK, relatively speaking, but contact isn’t possible right now, as the power and phone systems are out.</p>
<p>I feel very selfish
Our neighbor is in Mississippi working on a boat but we haven’t heard anything from him. He didn’t even want to go to Miss but it was a job & his roommate/girlfriend- heck I don’t know what their relationship is, was supposed to watch our dog this weekend when we go to Canada- but I feel self absorbed even reminding her.
Heres to regaining power.</p>
<p>dadofsam: Not flippant at all, and way too true. As a football player, he was just crazy, not afraid of anything. He would always tear himself up snowboarding. One day, after another broken collar bone from snowboarding, his coach told me he should just join the chess team and not board. I said the way he would play chess, he would wind up with the bishop in his eye.</p>
& his roommate/girlfriend- heck I don’t know what their relationship is, was supposed to watch our dog this weekend when we go to Canada- but I feel self absorbed even reminding her.