And the Cummins Family gets power back just in time to watch helplessly as a now Category 5 Katrina prepares to batter and drown the city of New Orleans.

Yesterday there were no less than 9 large pole-digger trucks in my neighborhood alone. They all had South Carolina license plates. The actual crew that was working on the power lines draped gracelessly across my neighbors swale was from New York, New Jersey, and One fellow was from Texas.

My neighbors across the street still do not have power. (or most of their solar power panels either, for that matter; just one left.)

I'm not looking forward to going up on the roof today (after just getting back my a/c) and breaking out the sawzall to rid my home of the new leafy crown it now wears because a 25 foot oak branch fell on it from one of my trees.

And yet, the people of New Orleans? Category 5?

The stubborn had better flee.

There won't be trees on houses after that storm, there'll be trees "in" houses, or worse: empty, flooded plots.

Don't think you can ride this one out! Get out of there!

Steve H over at Hog On Ice points out that the nation will feel the effects of this storm as well, from sea to shining sea.

Most people have never heard of Port Fourchon, but it is the nation's premiere oil and gas support services facility--and right now it lies within 12 miles of Hurricane Katrina's CAT-3 or CAT-4 bullseye. Over 600 platforms and 75% of the Gulf’s deepwater projects lie within a 40-mile radius of Port Fourchon. Unfortunately, Port Fourchon is a Louisiana island. An island that is connected to the mainland by a single two lane bridge...an old, single two lane bridge. This bridge is the only means of getting cargo and supplies to the Port. More than 1,000 cargo trucks go across this bridge each day, delivering materials to the Port for Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) drilling rigs. If there’s no bridge, there’re no drilling parts and supplies.

Do you see where this is going? When people say our infrastructure is vulnerable, they are not kidding—and not all of it is about terrorism.

The Port is crucial to our national security—for a number of other reasons. While the Persian Gulf provides around 23% of the U.S. oil supply, Port Fourchon supports the offloading of over 18% of all domestic oil and gas and 13% of all oil imports. Port Fourchon is the site of the enormous booster pumps that carry crude oil from the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port (LOOP) to underground salt dome storage areas in Galliano. The LOOP is the first and only offshore oil terminal operating in the United States. It's located less than 20 miles south of Port Fourchon in the Gulf of Mexico and allows the off-loading of oil from supertankers into special pipelines that connect directly to more than 30% of the nation’s refining capacity. The LOOP takes in about one million barrels of foreign oil and 300,000 barrels of domestic crude from Gulf of Mexico OCS each day. Loose that capacity and you've got big trouble.

Put another way, there is no other dot on the map that is more important to the nation’s energy supply, yet it’s connected to the mainland by an obsolete bridge and highway and it has a possible CAT-4 hurricane bearing down on it. It’s not a good situation and Port Fourchon authorities have been warning government officials about it for years.

The transportation bill they just approved had so much pork in it that it should have had a heart attack before the president signed it. If I remember correctly, there were funds for a multi-million dollar bridge in Alaska that connected an island of 50 people to the mainland.

Why wasn't a better bridge built here?

I am feeling like I want some heads on a platter, and if I have to vote democrat to get them then that's just what I will do.

Posted by Michael at August 28, 2005 11:08 AM