Any info on Plaquemines Parish, Venice LA?

[Buras]

I'm from Venice-Buras, LA area in Lower Plaquemines parish where the storm came ashore. None of the local outlets have ANY information that we can find on this area or on Grand Isle.

Has anyone heard anything? I know it's going to be pretty bad as we took alot more of the brunt than the N.O. area. Just trying to find out if I need to pack up from Oklahoma City and come down this weekend with the chainsaws to help out.

 

[Cole McConnell]

Unconfirmed - Under 20' of water.

 

[jsutton]

Whats under 20' water

Where did you find the unconfirmed info at? I have family members staying with me that live in Buras and we can't find any information on what it is like down there besides unconfirmed info. I wish they could hurry and get some photos up! so we can see how bad it is.

jsutton

 

[Buras]

I'd be suprised if they could get down there for a few days other than by boat or helo.

I heard on WWL TV feed that the Belle Chasse tunnel was flooded and that Hwy23 was washed out in alot of places. I just want to find out if the house I grew up in is still there.

 

[Blake Michaleski]

all waterways will be closed by the USCG and Marine Police for quite a while.

 

[jsutton]

We are not real worried about when they can go back, we know it will be a at least a few days. We were wondering IF they will be able to go back. and what they have to go back to. My wife grew up down there (until 8th grade anyway) also and she was upset thinking the house she grew up in may be gone too.

jsutton

 

[Cole McConnell]

FoxNews is where that came from.

 

[Buras]

We are not real worried about when they can go back, we know it will be a at least a few days. We were wondering IF they will be able to go back. and what they have to go back to. My wife grew up down there (until 8th grade anyway) also and she was upset thinking the house she grew up in may be gone too.

jsutton

Pretty much my thoughts too. Best wishes and luck to you and your family. Hopefully I'll see em when we start the cleanup.

 

[jsutton]

Thanks!! Best wishes and luck to you too!! Buras

jsutton

 

[Kurt Wayne]

Pilottown, LA and Mississippi river shipping

This seems almost trival to worry about compared to the loss of life but...all the ships leaving the Mississippi River to the gulf and vice versa are guided by pilots often based at Pilottown, LA in lower Plaquemines.

1. I wonder if there's anything left of Pilottown?

2. I wonder (given possible channel changes due to a Category 4 hurricane) how long it will be before ships can leave and enter the mouth of the Mississippi? All (three?) passes had to have been affected there.

Prayers out to the folks of Plaquemines Parish.

 

[Kurt Wayne]

I won't get much into the article, but...

today's New York Times says (surprise, surprise) the single road into the vital Port Fourchon oil facility is submerged.

 

[Anonymous]

I've heard several times now on Fox news that there is silence where plaquimenes parish is concerned but parts of the lower plaquimes parish have been taken over by the MS river. Just the reporters are saying it though and there has been nothing I can find out of grand isle.

 

[Kurt Wayne]

This hurts

I hate to post this, but I'd heard that a weather person from the New Orleans area was saying: 1. Some parishes may be gone, 2. they may never get water out of some places, and; 3. the southeast coastline of Louisiana (like that of Indonesia and India) has been reshaped.

This story seems to corroborate that...prayers to the families of Buras and those affected:

Imagine that your world is in a laundry basket today.

My daughter's is.

Last night, I laughed and I cried with my daughter Tanya, a 1995 graduate of Superior Senior High and 1999 alumnus of UMD, as we talked about the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

She was calling me on a static phone line from a Motel 6, a hundred miles away from her home in Buras, La., a bayou community that was the first site Katrina made landfall with estimated 150 mile-per-hour winds.

Her entire parish of Plaquemines she is told, is under water, most likely all gone -- complete devastation. A parish is what they call a county in Louisiana.

She was calling to let us know she was safe and scared.

Seven months pregnant with her first child, a son, already named ironically after the Biblical Noah, she couldn't hold back the tears.

http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsu...or/12514784.htm

It makes my concerns about the mouth of the Mississippi River being closed seem trivial, but I indeed wonder what the (very secondary) economic repercussions of that could be.

 

[Anonymous]

 

[David Wolfson]

from http://www.nps.gov/miss/features/factoids/ ....

Sixty percent of all grain exported from the US is shipped via the Mississippi River through the Port of New Orleans and the Port of South Louisiana.

In measure of tonnage, the largest port in the world is located on the Mississippi River at LaPlace, La. Between the two of them, the Ports of New Orleans and South Louisiana shipped more than 286 millions tons of goods in 2001.