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Month: May 2011
When the Mississippi River crests at 48 feet on May 11th, it’s expected to stay that way for several days, according to National Weather Service meteorologist Rich Okulski.
Okulski told a crowd of media and emergency professionals gathered at the Memphis and Shelby County Emergency Management Agency (EMA) operations center today that the high water may last from four to seven days. The Mississippi River is expected to maintain a 40 foot crest through the end of May. But Okulski said no additional rainfall is expected in the Memphis area over the next week. He said he isn’t sure how rainfall in the Ohio Basin might affect flooding downstream.
“This is not a flash flood. This is a progressive flood,” said Memphis and Shelby County EMA director Bob Nations. “It may rise about one foot every 24 hours.”
Nations said the expected slow recession of water could “be a very damaging event” in terms of how it may affect infrastructure.
The latest numbers from the EMA show that 2,832 properties in Shelby County will possibly be flooded by the time the river crests. Some have already been evacuated. That number is down from yesterday’s prediction of 5,300 properties.
Northside High School is the only Memphis City School that may see flood waters high enough to come into the building. Six other schools may see some flooding on their property, but specifics were not available at today’s 4 p.m. press briefing.
Nations said he had “high confidence” that area levees would hold, but he admitted those levees have never been tested like they will be when the river crests.
Nations issued a warning to people who may think the lack of rainfall and lowered number of potentially flooded properties could mean the threat of flooding is lessened: “The bullet hasn’t been flown yet,” Nations said. Maps are being updated often, and he said people should remain on guard.
For a look at areas expected to flood by zip code, check out the maps here.
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High Water
John Branston on the “new 100-year flood.”
Here’s the latest numbers from the emergency flooding operations center on Avery. I’ll be attending a press briefing there later today, so I’ll report additional information at that time.
When the Mississippi River crests at 48 feet, which is expected to happen on Wednesday, May 11th, the following numbers of properties will be potentially be affected:
* 2,832 properties
* 706 single family residences
* 12 Apartment complexes-(432 units)
* 7 Schools
* 226 Businesses
* 322 Industrial sites
The 2,832 properties are not in addition to the 5,300 that was announced yesterday. It’s a new and lower total, according to county public affairs officer Steve Schular.
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The View at Tom Lee
From Hungry Memphis: Pamela Denney visits Tom Lee Park and sees why Memphis in May officials decided to move the Barbecue Festival.
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Game 2: Déjà Vu All Over Again
The déjà vu series continued for the Grizzlies last night, as they lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder 111-102.
If Game 1 in this second-round series was reminiscent of Game 1 in the first-round series against the San Antonio Spurs — only better — then Game 2 in OKC was reminiscent of Game 2 in San Antonio — only worse.
In both series, the Grizzlies have stolen homecourt advantage on the strength of dominating play from frontcourt tandem Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol — who combined for 49 points on 19-25 shooting in Game 1 against the Spurs and 54 points on 21-33 shooting in Game 1 against the Thunder.
And now, in both cases, opponents have come back strong in desperation Game 2s with better focus and effort in stopping the Grizzlies’ interior duo, which fell off sharply with only 23 points on 7-23 shooting against the Spurs and 28 points on 5-22 shooting last night in Oklahoma City.
Adjustments and counter-adjustments made, those first two games in San Antonio ended up being the most and least productive games of the series for Randolph/Gasol. I’m betting that pattern holds in this series as well.
I’d been wondering if officials with Memphis in May erred on the side of caution by deciding to move the Barbecue Festival to Tiger Lane in East Memphis. Short answer: They did not.
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High Water Everywhere
As bad as they are, Mississippi River floods, thankfully, are not what they used to be.
The standard for high water in Memphis is 1937, when the river reached 48.5 feet on the Memphis gauge. That flood, the subject of two books in the last 10 years, made tens of thousands of people in Memphis and Arkansas refugees.
The standard for misery and destruction, however, is the 1927 flood which was lower but broke the levee and flooded a huge part of Mississippi, as described by John Barry in his book Rising Tide and bluesman Charley Patton in “High Water Everywhere.”
Memphian Frances Kauffman, 92, remembers that one. Her mother loaded her and her siblings and the maid into the family Hupmobile and drove to the Harahan Bridge, the only one over the Mississippi River in Memphis at that time.
“It had a wooden viaduct at the end going to Arkansas,” she said. “We drove all the way across, and when we got over, we could not see land ahead as far as we could see. There was no dry land until you got to Forrest City. I can remember it vividly. We were looking out the windows, and that muddy water was all but on the bridge itself. So my mother had to turn around and bring us back. In downtown, the water was over the railroad tracks and all the way up to Front Street and Cotton Row.”
It’s unlikely that anyone will write a famous book or song about the 2011 flood even if it reaches 48 feet or even 50 feet on the gauge next week. A flood is a harsh teacher, the men and women at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are fast learners, and levees and flood walls are wonderful things.
On Tuesday, workers were stacking sandbags at the base of the flood wall behind the Pyramid, which is apparently out of harm’s way. (Too bad, some of you are thinking.) The parking lots on Mud Island Greenbelt Park were closed, but most of the sidewalk was open. The residential and commercial part of Mud Island was high and dry.
Architect Tony Bologna, part of the team that developed Harbor Town, is confident it will stay that way. Mud Island was reshaped and built up 10 to 12 feet when the Hernando DeSoto Bridge was built.
“At Harbor Town, we are six to 10 feet above the 100-year flood,” he said. “At 45 feet on the gauge, we are fine. At 48 feet, we would be concerned about the 12 cottages on the harbor. That is the only place we have any potential problem.”
This is the new 100-year flood. The National Weather Service defines that as an event that statistically has a 1 percent chance of occurring in any given year.
Extreme weather has been clobbering mathematics lately. It’s only been 74 years since the Great Flood of 1937. And one year ago this week, Nashville was swamped by a 500-year flood. This is one civic competition that I hope we lose.
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The Story of S.S. Kate Adams
Vance Lauderdale recounts the story of the riverboat Kate Adams, which was featured in the film Uncle Tom’s Cabin … and met its demise in Memphis.
I hate to be a wet rag, and far be it from me to get in the way of the biggest spurts of nationalistic jingoism since VJ day, but am I the only one who has some nagging doubts about the “official story” of bin Laden’s demise at the hands of Navy Seals?
The first red flag is that not even the government can get the “official story” straight, having to issue, by now, at least two modifications to what we were originally told, first by John Brennan, the National Security Advisor, and then by Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. First we were told our villain’s wife was killed during the assault because she was being used as a human shield. Turns out that wasn’t true. The woman involved was neither his wife nor was she killed.
Then we were told bin Laden was armed when he was confronted and was killed in a firefight. Not true either. He was, we’re now told, unarmed but “resisted apprehension.” How do you resist being captured and/or shot by a bunch of commandos who are armed to the teeth if you don’t have a way of doing so in kind—-by holding up your hand and saying, “stop in the name of Allah?” And, the bin Laden son who was killed in the raid was also, as it turns out, misidentified in the first versions.
The gaps and inconsistencies in the story would be easier to explain if the story was being told under battlefield conditions, of from various sources, but that’s not the case here. This is the White House we’re dealing with here, supposedly one of the most practiced sources of information in the civilized world. And let’s not forget, because by now we’ve all seen the images of senior White House officials in mesmerized attention to what they were seeing, this entire incident was being watched by those officials, supposedly in “real-time.”
Then, there’s the whole thing about proving to the world that it really was bin Laden who was dispatched. I’m sure I’m not the only one who raised an eyebrow at the “trust us, we’ve killed bin Laden” announcement. It doesn’t do much for the credibility of the claim, either, that he was whisked away and “buried at sea” a matter of hours after he was shot. How come? We’re told it was to avoid creating a shrine if he was buried conventionally, yet we weren’t concerned about that with Saddam Hussein. The first version of the story indicated his body was placed in a metal casket for that “burial,” but later versions indicate his body was wrapped in a sheet of some kind and slipped off the deck of the ship it was taken to. Which is it? And, how does professing concern with burying bin Laden in accordance with Islamic principles square with shooting him, unarmed as we now know he was, execution-style. Is that consistent with Islamic principles?
The story also includes the claim that bin Laden’s identity was verified by DNA tests. How come? Was visual verification not enough? It’s not like this man’s pictures haven’t been the most visible in the history of the universe for the last ten years. Contrary to popular belief about dark-skinned ethnic or racial groups, all Arabs don’t look alike. And, how come the DNA test was accomplished so quickly, and under less than ideal conditions? Is there a DNA lab in the backwater known as Islamabad, or on board the ship his body was taken to? DNA testing is highly complex, requires specialized expertise, and, the last time I checked (about twenty minutes ago as I wrote this), takes more than a few hours to accomplish. It involves separating the DNA itself from other material, purifying and fragmenting it, and then subjecting it to a technique called “PCR” (polymerase chain reaction), all of which takes time. In fact, most of the DNA labs with information sites on the Web indicate the minimum time for a DNA test to be conducted is three to five days.
Also, for DNA to be verified, there has to be a control sample to compare it to. In other words, the government would have to have DNA from a known relative of bin Laden’s to be able to verify the DNA sample they took from him as being his family’s. Where did they get that sample, and how did they know, for sure, it was from a verified bin Laden relative? And, how do they know, even with DNA testing, it was Osama bin Laden’s DNA, and not that of one of his 50 (yes, 50) brothers and sisters.
Now the White House is weighing whether or not to release pictures they supposedly have of bin Laden’s body. Why is there any question about whether or not to do this? They claim the pictures are gruesome. Well, of course they are, but isn’t that the point? Everything about this man during his lifetime was gruesome; September 11th was gruesome. Whose feelings are we worried about here? Al Quaeda’s? It’s not like Islam has the same prohibition on publishing the likeness of its terrorists as it does on its deities, is it, or like if we play nice with the terrorists they won’t try to strike us again. And, just as an aside, what’s up with helicopters that fail at exactly the wrong time, like one of them reportedly did during this operation? Remember when that happened during the failed Iranian hostage rescue in 1980? That was the reverse of a jingoism-inspiring episode if there ever was one.
Look, I’m not touting some half-baked conspiracy theory here, I promise. This isn’t about whether there was more than one gunman on the grassy knoll in Dallas, or whether the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition, and it certainly isn’t about whether we really landed on the moon or whether Obama’s long form birth certificate is a fake. By the same token, I’m naturally suspicious of the “official version” of a story, but especially when the government that issues it can’t get it straight.
Does our government ever lie to us? Does a bear shit in the woods? I still haven’t gotten past (and neither has his family) the big lie the government told us about the demise of Pat Tillman, or, for that matter, about weapons of mass destruction. Our government lies to us all the time. I’m not suggesting Obama lied when he made the statement he did to the country in his nationally-televised address on Sunday night. I’m just saying there are some things about the story that, at least so far, raise more questions than they answer.