Well that happened

 Posting on a phone is not ideal. Also phone needs to be charged so I'll keep it short.  

Basically a category 4 hurricane came up on the New Orleans area from the Lafourche Parish side and just sat there for six hours without diminishing very much.  That is, not only the worst case scenario imaginable, it is also more or less unprecedented.  Luckily New Orleans appears to have "fought the last war" well enough. The flood control system seems to have held and storm surge has not inundated the city.

The same is not true for areas outside of the system however.  There are nightmarish reports of flooding coming in from the river parishes and total devastation to the south. We'll know more about that soon. It will not be good.

In town, there is no power and probably won't be for weeks.  Entergy says there is catastrophic damage to main transmission lines which sounds similar to what happened during Gustav.  Which is frustrating because after that event we were promised that problem would be solved.  

Miraculously,  SWB says they have turbine power. The pumps are working (sort of) and the water is safe to drink.  There are problems, however with the sewerage lift stations which..good lord I hope they can fix that soon.

Other random damage reports so far. Municipal and traffic court buildings apparently had their roofs ripped off so lol there. Both of the new Metal Shark ferries got loose on the river last night. No idea what happened to them. Other than that, it's too early to know the scope of the damage.  Assuming the worst. But yesterday at a press conference, a clearly frustrated LaToya Cantrell loudly shouted, "You can be calm!" at us so we are doing that now.

More when I can post again. Gotta figure out how to charge this phone right now. Then we'll figure out how to put the city back together.  We've done it before (sort of.)