BookBlog

I’d been wondering about the horrible on-the-ground communications problems in Louisiana, and this article in fcw.com (Federal Computer Week) has the answer.
The handheld radios used by first responders in the New Orleans area use cellphone-style batteries that require electricity to recharge. Without new power, they ran out of battery and were out of touch. Fcw.com reports that the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho, sent in radio systems that run on AA batteries.
Something as simple as radios that run on AA batteries can save lives.
Also, the different parishes used different frequencies to communicate, and local groups used different frequencies than the feds, according to this Wall Street Journal article. There was a sort of central switchboard that could patch together communications across the systems, but it was knocked out during the storm.
Upgrading to AA-battery radios with compatible frequencies is just the sort of unglamorous maintenance expense that is easy to avoid in tight budgetary times. And a seemingly little thing that is infinitely expensive in an emergency.
Update: another reason for the breakdown in communications — apparently the National Guard’s backup generators were in Iraq. Need to re-find the source that reported this.

Worldchanging.com has creative and inspirational ideas about how to rebuild New Orleans to make it less vulnerable. Also some good ideas from Ergosphere. Both articles suggest razing neighborhoods that are destroyed and filling in to a much higher level. Ergosphere suggests building with stilts and jackable frames, so houses can be raised as the ground sinks. The WorldChanging article suggests using fitting new buildings with solar panels, which would be too expensive to retrofit but would be reasonable and financeable in new construction.
Dennis Hastert has backed away from his suggestion not to rebuild New Orleans. A strategy to continously rebuild coastal property in Florida and abandon New Orleans seems suspiciously like natural-disaster-enabled redistricting.

There’s a traditional Jewish blessing said after using the bathroom, expressing awe at the complexity of the human body and thanks that we can rely on this system. Atheists and agnostics can search-and-replace God with Nature.
“Blessed are You, Hashem, our G-d, King of the universe, Who formed man with wisdom and created within him many openings and many hollows (cavities). It is obvious and known before Your Throne of Glory that if but one of them were to be ruptured or if one of them were to be blocked it would be impossible to survive and to stand before You (even for a short period of time). Blessed are You, Hashem, Who heals all flesh and acts wonderously.”
The Katrina disaster shows how much we have become utterly dependent on manmade systems of wondrous complexity:
* water
* sewer
* electricity
* telecommunications
* natural gas
* gasoline
When these sytems are disrupted as with Katrina our civilization dissolves. This is incentive to give thanks every day for systems that we take for granted and for their maintainers. Every day there is light and water and indoor plumbing and net access is a day to be thankful.
……
And to do what we can to prepare for disruptions. What caused the nearly complete failure of the on-the-ground communications in New Orleans, among police, emergency workers, and flooded areas? Was it a lack of extra batteries and generators? The military has communications systems for wartime. What was NO missing?

is from the Times Picayne Breaking News blog. Very local coverage of Hurricane Katrina with updates several times an hour.
Update: The Times Picayune is evacuating their building and they’re not posting right now. WWL-TV is evacuating also. WWL is posting blog-style updates every few minutes.
Update: Also, StormDigest blog coverage is collating original reports from the mainstream media.
A local tv station had been on the air with substantive interviews with local officals interspersed with vacuous tv chatter; the stream isn’t working anymore. Update: they now have CBS broadcasting WWLTV
Best of luck and prayers for the people in New Orleans.

Doing some homework on alternative energy and sustainable investing, I came across a paper in the Financial Analysts’ Journal using data from Innovest showing superior returns for a portfolio of companies rated highly on environmental metrics.
The difference between this study and earlier research is that green performance is measured, not just by reducing pollution, but by eco-efficiency, “defined as the ratio of the value a company adds (e.g., by producing products) to the waste the company generates by creating that value.” This makes some sense — attention to material efficiency, like supply chain efficiency, would improve a company’s performance.