Oh look some of the emergencies are officially ending.
NEW ORLEANS — Mayor LaToya Cantrell has issued two separate declarations that terminated the state of emergency declarations for Tropical Storm Zeta in October 2020 and the cyber-security attack in December 2020, respectively.
Not sure but this might bring the total number of active emergencies back below the number of consent decrees in operation but I don't feel like doing the math.
Yesterday I got out on the bike for a little while to see how bad it was around us. It wasn't all that bad, really. A lot of tree debris everywhere. Most not quite as extreme as the photo above but I didn't go very far. The roads were okay by the time I was out. But the night of the storm, one person was electrocuted by downed power lines which is horrifying. A lot of people still don't have power. 325,000 Entergy customers are still down as of this morning. But, generally speaking, for a high category 2 hurricane passing directly over the city, things could have been a lot worse.
It's not over yet, though. Sewerage and Water Board certainly had themselves a night on Wednesday.
Yet another New Orleans Sewerage & Water Board turbine failed Wednesday during Hurricane Zeta, although a spokesperson for the public utility said loss of that power source did not impair drainage.
Turbine 3 was brought online at the height of the storm but went down after “it reached its capacity,” S&WB spokesperson Courtney Barnes said. The turbine has typically been reserved for emergency use in recent years but was pressed into normal service for Zeta because Turbine 4, the largest of the S&WB’s operational turbines, broke Sunday.
Turbine 3 appears to have been activated as a back up for pumps that would have taken Entergy power under normal circumstances. But they made the switch when either that power or some other equipment failed. Anyway, it sounds like they were able to juggle and jerry rig their way through it. Happily, the storm moved quickly enough that the rainfall didn't put the pumping capacity to a serious test.
Yesterday, the city and SWB were asking people to use less water until they could be assured of full sewerage pumping capacity. But the details of that and several other issues were still incredibly vague as of this morning. McBride enumerates a few in this FB post. In the meantime, while it is still highly doubtful that there will be any Mardi Gras parades in 2021, I think several krewes have asked Turbine 6 to ride as a Grand Marshall
We are hearing some concerns about water being safe to drink due to power loss across the city. Power at our Carrollton Water Plant, where water is purified, maintained power throughout impacts from Zeta thanks to Turbine 6.
— SWB New Orleans (@SWBNewOrleans) October 29, 2020
This afternoon the Entergy map is still looking pretty Christamassy. Eyballing it, I think that looks like we might be close to 50% restored in Orleans Parish.
The Lens reports that the clerk of court needs 48 hours advance notice if we have to move any polling locations for Tuesday. 54 of them were without power as of today. Also in that article we read that the city is starting to get estimates as to the general cost of repairs. (It also happens to be city budget season and the outlook is not good.) As is the usual case with a major disaster, we would expect the federal government to reimburse these expenses. How much they pay out, though, might depend on certain data.
FEMA hasn’t approved a major disaster declaration for Hurricane Zeta yet, according to The Times Picayune/New Orleans Advocate, and is awaiting more complete damage assessments.
Cantrell said that the National Hurricane Center would also be reviewing data as to whether the storm was indeed at Category 2 or if it had slipped over the Category 3 threshold. That would have reimbursement implications, she said. Green said the city was also looking into federal assistance for individual residents over lost food.
It has been widely reported that Zeta's maximum winds may have been just 1 mph below the threshold for what we would consider a Category 3. If we had known at the time that this would make a difference, maybe we could have all gone out and waved some fans.
Let's dance.
Man, I don't know about y'all but I haven't felt this giddy since February. Finally, something different is happening. It's happening fast too. This thing is hauling ass across the Gulf. Yesterday we were told to expect it to come in after 7 PM so people have planned their day according to that. City offices are open until noon. Schools haven't cancelled their virtual classes. This morning while I was out I saw the regular joggers jogging, the commuting, the panhandlers handling pans. People are determined to business up until the last possible businessing minute.
That's probably not the appropriate way to behave. And the current scenario where we see a hurricane accelerate and strengthen unexpectedly is a perfect example of why. The recent years of near misses followed by talk radio wise-assses complaining about "lazy" people taking the days off shouldn't have bullied us into this. But that's what happens when leadership is too sensitive to that kind of nonsense. I mean, you want them to be responsive to vox populi, but you also want to err on the side of safety whenever possible.
Hopefully it all works out. I always end up having to calm down the people around me in situations like this and one thing I try to do is remind them how little agency they have in any of it. Most events in this world transpire in total independence of our individual choices. The Saints win the game or they don't. The roof blows off of your house or it doesn't. It's just stuff that happens. Sometimes it affects you and sometimes it doesn't. But none of it is about you at all. Once you get that, you worry less.
Anyway, I had been planning to hit the grocery store one more time before the power goes out. I wonder if they are open.
Look, we all knew there would have to be a Hurricane Zeta because there was just no way that the year 2020 A.D. was going out with the second most named storms in history. Got to tie that record at least. We also all knew that it had to make at least one serious run at Southeast Louisiana before this was over.
But we'll wait and see if it can follow through. So far, its aim has not been particularly impressive.