Comments on: Aerial survey of Katrina damage

Aerial survey of Katrina damage

F Mackenzie — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 18:57:21 -0800

NOAA posts more than 350 aerial images of areas decimated by Katrina. You can download zip files or use a clickable interface. The 2MB-3MB images are not rotated, so if you're comparing the eastern mouth of Bay St. Louis (3MB) to a Google Map image, for instance, you might have to tilt your head and zoom before the damage really hits you.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:05:51 -0800

One that shows the non-floating casinos (the red-roofed buildings aren't supposed to be there).

By: Justinian

Justinian — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:23:03 -0800

This is a good link. In fact. I was going to make it my first submission to the Blue except you submitted before I was finished. Damn you, Mackenzie! I think we're still in denial about the eventual death toll. I wonder why there aren't any pictures of New Orleans?

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:26:27 -0800

I looked at the Google photo, and the NOAA one, using those two roads that arc before crossing the river as a point of reference. I don't quite get why they're so different. Could someone help me?

By: Justinian

Justinian — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:31:35 -0800

You mean besides the fact that almost all of the buildings, including huge hotels and the like, are virtually obliterated?

By: F Mackenzie

F Mackenzie — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:34:05 -0800

PP: I'm on a dial-up at the moment, so I don't have the bandwidth to hunt for the most dramatic comparison. However, if you zoom in I think you'll see what looks to be a resort, well... gone. You'll also notice the missing bridge spans if you pan around. Skim the site and compare with Google or other satellite imagery.

By: snsranch

snsranch — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:35:00 -0800

(Opinion, not fact) they're probably not posting NO photos because they're being used for criminal investigations. The whole cops looting thing sucks big ass!

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:36:02 -0800

Bandwidth appears to slowly be getting choked. I think mirroring this site's content would be a worthwhile gesture for those who are stranded away from their homes, or what's left of them. That NOS Explorer alternative they refer to doesn't seem to have the images.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:48:06 -0800

Justinian, I'm looking at the images on a Powerbook (15"), and the noaa image isn't clear enough to see buildings destroyed (a la, say, the Tsunami before and after photos). But I'll take your word for it. OT: looters, WTF...

By: weretable and the undead chairs

weretable and the undead chairs — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:54:36 -0800

Yeah, they showed video of some cops in NO looting earlier. I don't remember which one of the news channels it was... thinking Fox but it might have been CNN. Or MSNBC. Too much flipping back and forth.

By: monju_bosatsu

monju_bosatsu — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 19:59:31 -0800

Justinian, I'm looking at the images on a Powerbook (15"), and the noaa image isn't clear enough to see buildings destroyed (a la, say, the Tsunami before and after photos). What? Do you have the auto-scale feature turned on in your browser and not know it?

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:01:42 -0800

Autoscale? Huh? Firefox....let me look a third time...

By: odinsdream

odinsdream — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:05:01 -0800

If the titlebar of your browser says something like (Scale: 15%) at the end of it, you're using auto-scaling. Click on the image to expand it to normal size.

By: ParisParamus

ParisParamus — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:05:34 -0800

monju, you were correct--switched to Safari. Wow.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:16:13 -0800

One thing you don't see on these straight-down aerial shots: the few buildings on the shore that have perfect roofs actually have gutted 1st and 2nd floors, due to the storm surge.

By: F Mackenzie

F Mackenzie — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:16:21 -0800

Looks like the site is hosed for the moment. You can see five sample images from the main NOAA news site. I'll hunt for mirrors.

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 21:26:04 -0800

paris - do you support santorum's proposed gutting of public access to the information provided by NOAA?

By: hartsell

hartsell — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:42:31 -0800

It's so easy to import these NOAA images into Google Earth to overlay them with the "before" satellite/aerial photography. This is amazing.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:47:10 -0800

I hacked together a very crude before/after comparison. Click to swap. Unfortunately the resolution is pretty low, which is mainly Google's fault. On preview, hartsell's way is probably much better.

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 22:51:08 -0800

NASA has several satellite and CG Katrina images (some with HR links) here and here. The Roiling Clouds of Katrina image (940 kb) is part anaglyphic 3D, and there's a brief QuickTime (592 kb) movie of Katrina's eye.

By: RockBandit

RockBandit — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 23:18:55 -0800

zsazsa - Great job regardless. The destruction is incredible. :(

By: specialk420

specialk420 — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:05:28 -0800

whatever that starship shaped monstrosity surrounded by cleared treated lawns that was on the tip of henderson point.... the gulf coast probably will be better off without - i'd love to know the story behind the fat cat whole built that one.

By: dabitch

dabitch — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:28:12 -0800

wasn't it a resort of some kind?

By: Vidiot

Vidiot — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 00:31:37 -0800

areas decimated by Katrina Tragically, it's much worse than that. [/nitpick]

By: atchafalaya

atchafalaya — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 05:03:49 -0800

I just got back from New Orleans. Earlier, I posted an AskMeFi about how to volunteer. Here's what happened: I walked into the local Red Cross office after noon yesterday, and found a guy on the phone trying to find boats to help people get out of N.O. I called a friend who put our request on the local TV station. We soon had more calls and boats than we could handle. I led a small group out at 3:00 p.m., and we stopped at Jimmy Swaggart Ministries in Baton Rouge to check in with the Red Cross there. They gave us papers that let us past the roadblocks. Another group left at 6:00 p.m.; we ended up bringing probably 100 boats. We arrived at the intersection of Causeway Blvd and I-10 around 6 p.m. The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries crews were shutting down for the night. On the way in, we had seen a couple of people unhurriedly looting a convenience store, amid a scene of calf-deep flooded streets, damaged roofs and downed trees. We decided to stay put for the night, after some back and forth over whether we would be overrun after the LaDWF left. The helicopter traffic from inside the city to the intersection was constant, and an ambulance service was running a triage center under the overpass. Evacuees from the helicopter flights were assembled there and put on buses. Around midnight we were asked to move to a staging area in a Sam's parking lot a couple of miles away. The night sky's beautiful there now; there's no power anywhere. This morning we waited for someone to arrive to tell us where to go and what to do, but the few law enforcement officials that finally came around asked us to stay put. One guy, who had stayed in the city in his boat after the LaDWF left, seized the initiative and led a charge for where highway 610 ran into the floodwater near Canal Street. We all piled on. I think we were all in the water by 7:30. The area we were in was bounded by levees, and had been pretty well covered yesterday, but some people with small boats found ways across into further reaches of the city. They found people and brought them back to points on the levee where the bigger boats met them and brought the evacuees to the landing. The last I heard when I came home this afternoon was that we had pulled about 1800 people out today. When we brought in the first set of people, a local Sheriff's Office lieutenant started telling us to leave. He said this had come from FEMA. A lot of guys got upset by this, because we had all come over here with our own boats, paying for our fuel, food and water, and were in the water and working before anyone else. FEMA, while certainly able to do more than us, didn't get in the water until around noon. We explained to the guy how this was going to look, and he finally relented. We had to take down everybody's names, and create an official badge with duct tape and an oversized red crayon. It turned out to be a good thing we didn't leave, because pretty soon some other FEMA guys were asking us to take their teams out. Which seemed to work out well. I saw: Canal Street flooded six feet deep. Stores had been looted already. Homes were flooded right up to the top of the ground floor, but otherwise untouched. Apparently there are still a lot of people in there. Nobody's in charge in the beginning; the official organizations don't get there until later. At first, everyone's looking for someone to tell them what to do, and initiative is everything.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 06:02:13 -0800

Thank you for posting this. I used it to find my mother in law's camp in Waveland. Or actually, the slab where it used to be. atchafalaya, be careful.

By: cenoxo

cenoxo — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 13:38:37 -0800

specialk420, dabitch: ...starship shaped monstrosity surrounded by cleared treated lawns... OK, now you've piqued my interest. Starting with zsazsa's (nicely done!) before & after images of Henderson Point, Mississippi, look at this hybrid Google Map. A railroad track extends east-west across the upper third of the map, and passes under Highway 90 running north-southeast on the right. If you mean the large inverted-Y building (with a long jetty west from it) on the western shore of Henderson Point, just south of the RR track, this is the Gulfshore Baptist Assembly. A brief history of their site is here. From GBA, follow the shoreline as it curves south and east. The large inverted-V building on the southern shore are The Inn by the Sea luxury condos. These bear the same name as the historical resort originally built on the GBA site. Immediately to the east of TIBTS is The Village luxury condominium resort. The Henderson Point-Pass Christian area was also devastated by Hurricane Camille in 1969, but I wonder how much has been learned since then...

By: F Mackenzie

F Mackenzie — Thu, 01 Sep 2005 14:04:58 -0800

CNN now has aerial photos of New Orleans.

By: ColdChef

ColdChef — Sun, 04 Sep 2005 09:59:56 -0800

I also want to add that the site linked above now contains some unbelievable New Orleans and Jefferson Parish photos as well.