Volcanic Ash Heading Towards North America 338
chocomilko writes "St. John's International Airport, the easternmost airport in Canada, has begun canceling flights due to worries of ash from Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, leaving travelers stranded after the weekend's Juno awards festival. Early reports stated that there was a 30% chance ash would reach the island by early Monday; Air Canada has issued an all-day travel advisory. A thick blanket of fog currently covering the city isn't helping matters, either."
Affects on Europe (Score:5, Informative)
Ireland's airspace as well as Englands, France, Germany, Finland etc all closed at present and has been since before the weekend, lots of people stuck in other countrys unable to get home and are trying any means available to try and get home. US/Canada will really feel it if the same thing happens. ....and people think we're not all connected in the world :)
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..., lots of people stuck in other countrys unable to get home and are trying any means available to try and get home.
Exactly. Heard what John Cleese [brisbanetimes.com.au] did?
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah heard that, these people had to buy bikes in order to board a ferry in france
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2010/0418/breaking15.html?via=mr [irishtimes.com]
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Now the real question is, did he pay the kid to give away its bike, or mug it?
In Belgium we get daily news about the grounded planes. People not being able to get back have gotten taxies from Poland to Belgium (1000km), are stuck for a week in Asia and consider a 7day-train ride back and all sorts of simular absurdities. It's been days and the people aren't refunded or offered alternative (like hotels to stay until
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:4, Insightful)
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Thing is the just had to buy a bike to board the ferry, they weren't allowed on board without a bike.....they then got rid of them once they got to the other side.
One business man bought a childs bike second hand just so he could board....idiotic rules for the ferry company to have.
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Re:Affects on Europe (Score:5, Funny)
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So in short if you can become some sort of superhero and convert yourself to a liquad or rock like state you can get around the US via training very efficiently?
Good to know :)
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:4, Interesting)
It's gotten significantly better over the last 5-6 years. George W Bush actually did something quite useful for Amtrak, by changing the rules to allow Amtrak to sue CSX, Norfolk Southern, etc when they violated their contracts with Amtrak (which of course they used to do regularly because there was no penalty for doing so). Once that rule changed, most trains began to run on schedule or close to it.
And for those who've never done it, it's a fairly pleasant way to travel. I'd recommend spending the extra on a sleeper room if you're going for 24+ hours, but the traveling part is thoroughly pleasant, basically lounging around, chatting with folks you meet, enjoying the view, stuff like that.
Re:Affects on Europe (Score:5, Interesting)
The US train system is excellent if you are coal...
Not so much. I know what you mean - coal plants rely on the railroad system for the delivery of coal, and as a natural consequence, the railroad system is tailored for delivering coal. But, nevertheless, the coal plant owners are not happy with the US railroad system, and it is far from "excellent" to them.
Coal plants are completely hostage to whomever owns the railroad that goes up to their plant. For some plants, the last 10 miles or so is owned by a different railroad company than the one that provides most of the shipping, and the owner of that "last mile" has absolutely no competition in delivering coal to that one plant. And naturally, they charge an enormous premium, as compared to plants that receive their coal from other railways or other delivery methods (barge, or even trucking).
The US train system is like any other network infrastructure, including the internet - a robust "last mile" is just as important as a robust "backbone." And competition at each segment is a good thing, but rare because such capital-heavy infrastructure is extremely prone to consolidation, monopolies, and rent-seeking - all of which lead to stagnation, and all of which need to be regulated for the public (and economic!) good. In some ways, this might be one explanation as to why the airline industry is doing better than passenger trains - they rely on a completely different (almost "peer to peer," as in, airport to airport) infrastructure that allows competition; and despite the heavy capital investment required, its much harder to exclusively own part of the network and lock out competition.
This is all based on some readings I did in college on the American energy infrastructure. I don't still have those books, so I don't guarantee the accuracy of everything said here, but, consider this article [findarticles.com] a citation.
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From Nor Cal to So Cal by train takes somewhere between 20-24 hours (Sacramento to Grand Central LA). Most of that is by BUS. It costs more than a ticket on Southwest Airlines from the nearest Airport.
The last mile is not the problem. The problem is the backbone is slow, has too many slow points, stops every 20 miles to pick up new people.
So, why would anyone take a train(unless they have a fear of flying)?
To make the train make sense, they'd have to start letting people drive their cars onto the train, and
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You meant "Effects"..way to go
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You realize the U.S. possesses three of the world's nine known supervolcanos [tripod.com] right? In particular, Yellowstone park will eventually cover half the U.S. in three feet of ash and debris. Have a nice day. :)
That just sucks ash... eh? (Score:4, Funny)
SIGH (Score:2, Funny)
Who laughed? (Score:2, Informative)
If we in the US have this problem, it's means renting a car to get home and all the hassles with dealing with that - our passenger rail is a complete joke outside of the North East corridor.
Re:Who laughed? (Score:5, Funny)
We have passenger rail outside the northeast. You just rent a car, drive 90 miles to the depot, arrive near your destination, rent another car to drive 90 miles to your home. What could be easier? ;)
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We have passenger rail outside the northeast. You just rent a car, drive 90 miles to the depot, arrive near your destination, rent another car to drive 90 miles to your home. What could be easier? ;)
You forgot the one hour plus lay overs like in Atlanta and other parts while the freight trains roll past and you wait for a connecting train.
I guess it beats walking.
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Or you know you could just get a cheap one way car rental from any of our many nation wide chains and use our highways which btw are some of the best in the world. You could leave when you want stop and rest when you like, stop any place that looks interesting etc etc. Download a book on tape to your MP3 player and hit the pavement man. When it comes to long distance interstate travel and you have time to do anything other than fly the car on a US highway beats any train, bus, subway, etc hands down!
Re:Who laughed? (Score:4, Informative)
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You forgot the one hour plus lay overs like in Atlanta and other parts while the freight trains roll past and you wait for a connecting train.
But thanks to all the delays in arrivals and departures, sometimes you only have a 3 minute layover to get from concourse A to concourse D, whereupon you can wait 45 minutes on the plane waiting to take off, enjoying the aromatic plane fumes. This is one reason that I now drive to Atlanta (5 hours) instead of fly, that and the TSA delays and hassles. Actually, I dri
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I'm in the midwest, though. We're use to dust clouds from the farmers prepping their fields. My car stays clean for about 2 hours after I wash it before it has a thin lair of dust covering it. I was smart this time and bought a dust colored vehicle.
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
I think we here in the US have had that experience not too long ago. Not to be overly grim here, but the week after 9/11, there were no planes flying in the skies above the US. Not hearing the planes landing and taking off at a near-by major airport nor seeing them high in the sky flying into other airports in the region was pretty odd.
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Interesting)
What is so odd to me is that many Europeans thought that Americans were laughing at them because the volcano interupted their air travel. I don't know anyone who thought that was funny at all. Do Europeans really think that we are that petty?
Re:SIGH (Score:4, Interesting)
What made you think that we here in the Olde Worlde thought you would be laughing about our ashy situation? I have not heard anything even remotely resembling such an accusation. Nothing in the media, nothing from 'real people', zilch, nada, niente, nichts...
Re:SIGH (Score:4, Informative)
Finally. All Canucks & Americans who laughed at us Europeans now get to experience how nice it is: no hassle, quiet skies, no contrails, stay-at-home and work -- or be stranded in interesting cities at your bosses' expenses !
Maybe that's related, somehow?
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Finally. All Canucks & Americans who laughed at us Europeans now get to experience how nice it is: no hassle, quiet skies, no contrails, stay-at-home and work -- or be stranded in interesting cities at your bosses' expenses !
We remember that all too well from nine and a half years ago. - 2001/09/11
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Or maybe they will do their homework and instead of having a knee-jerk reaction actually measure the ash density and determine if it's dangerous or not
I'm guessing the dangerous area is about 1/10 of what the British VAAG is saying
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
All aircraft engine manufacturers call for zero ash. I'm guessing that they figured that was the easiest thing to do as opposed to doing actual testing. Since it's never been tested properly, I wouldn't blame the governments for following the written specifications. I also doubt that any engine company is going to be willing to take on the lilability of publishing updated specifications allowing some ash.
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What's interesting is that airliners face similar conditions in the Middle East, that is, very fine SiO2 particles. And they go there every day and cope with it.
And the requirement for zero ash is fine, what's not fine is putting a blanket over all Europe saying 'there may be ash there'
Re:SIGH (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, the danger isn't that planes will fall out of the sky or somesuch because they've encountered some ash. The problem comes from the glass/ash mixture having a rather big effect on engines and airframes' wear-and-tear. Flying thru the ash plume probably causes 10 or more times the normal wear on engines. However, the maintenance schedules are rather inflexible on planes.
Net result? The flights won't be dangerous now. They'll be in a couple weeks/months, when you have 90% of your airplane fleet that has engine problems early, the civil aviation inspectors can't inspect them all, and the average european company becomes no more reliable than the lowliest north-african charter plane company.
Sure, they could replace all those engines earlier. If they can find some outside of the counterfeit market at reasonable prices, that is.
(short: Resuming flights before we can figure out the length of the emergency is short-term good, long-term bad)
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Flying through dense enough ash clouds can cause significant problems. British Airways flight 9 from London to New Zealand is just one example.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Airways_Flight_9 [wikipedia.org]
And it can affect more than just the engines. In the above cited incident, the windscreen was sandblasted to the point that it was nearly impossible to see out through it.
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I don't think anybody's laughing, except the slashdot moderators.
Spellcheck fail (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Spellcheck fail (Score:5, Funny)
And back on topic, the Brit. Navy is actually sending two warships over to the US to pick up people. I think that's pretty impressive.
That's what you say now. Just wait until you hear about the "passengers" having to swab the poop deck and service the engines. Worst.cruise.ever!
Re:Spellcheck fail (Score:4, Funny)
nice sig, but , 8)Fixed that for you ... there, fixed that for you
Re:Spellcheck fail (Score:5, Funny)
And back on topic, the Brit. Navy is actually sending two warships over to the US to pick up people. I think that's pretty impressive.
After all the news about the Tea Party rallies, I'm pretty nervous about the Brits sending over warships...
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Why? Afraid you won't have enough tea?
Come to think of it, you better have enough or that could start a war!
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And back on topic, the Brit. Navy is actually sending two warships over to the US to pick up people. I think that's pretty impressive.
"Pick up people" - yeah, right. Prepare boarding parties! Man the cannons!
bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:5, Funny)
This was overheard in London:
The English Banker to the Icelandic representative for Kaupthing Bank:
We said we wanted CASH... not ash!
Re:bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:5, Funny)
Longer version:
--
Dear Iceland,
We said "send CASH".
Yours sincerely,
United Kingdom
--
Dear United Kingdom,
You should have stopped to consider that there is no letter "C" in the
Icelandic alphabet [wikipedia.org] before issuing your demand.
With best,
Iceland
--
Re:bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:4, Funny)
Dear Iceland,
We said "send HASH".
Yours sincerely,
The Netherlands
Re:bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:5, Funny)
76D08CAB8B28C5F447D47519454F0D94
Yours sincerely,
The Netherlands
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Re:bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:4, Funny)
No C? What a load of silly bunts.
Re:bankers take on the grounded flights (Score:5, Funny)
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It is a completely understandable mistake. The Icelandic alphabet does not have the letter c.
follow up joke: (Score:2, Funny)
the iceland economy, that died in 2008, stipulated in its last wishes that its ashes be spread over europe
A word of advice (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A word of advice (Score:5, Funny)
This is Canada. The "Sorry" and the frowny face are actually dictated by law.
Re:A word of advice (Score:5, Funny)
And don't forget the 'Desolé' since everything has to be in french. I assume they should draw a frowny face with a french hat and a cigarette as well...
Re:A word of advice (Score:5, Funny)
And don't forget the 'Desolé' since everything has to be in french. I assume they should draw a frowny face with a french hat and a cigarette as well...
Q:-(_...
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Also, the hand-drawn "Sorry" with a sad face next to each flight number will start to take on a somewhat patronising tone.
Patronizing? Really? I can't see how that would be patronizing at all. But then again, I'm a Canadian, and I'd just find that being apologetic in a friendly tone.
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What do you mean by "being apologetic in a friendly tone"? Is there any other way?
Signed, another Canadian.
I'm Tired of Living in Harmony with Nature (Score:5, Funny)
How 'bout you?
Bet you're feeling real good about driving that Prius designed to be oh-so-gentle on Mother Gaia, ain'tcha?
Meanwhile, the belch from one unpronounceable volcano wipes out the cumulative effort from all of mankind over the past hundred years to purify the water and soil, and dwarfs all of our species' feeble, amateurish efforts to pollute them in the first place.
Gimme a rainforest, a chainsaw, and a case of Red Bull. It's Payback Time!
Re:I'm Tired of Living in Harmony with Nature (Score:5, Interesting)
How 'bout you?
Bet you're feeling real good about driving that Prius designed to be oh-so-gentle on Mother Gaia, ain'tcha?
Meanwhile, the belch from one unpronounceable volcano wipes out the cumulative effort from all of mankind over the past hundred years to purify the water and soil, and dwarfs all of our species' feeble, amateurish efforts to pollute them in the first place.
Gimme a rainforest, a chainsaw, and a case of Red Bull. It's Payback Time!
Bollocks. You overestimate the volcano. The cancelled planes would have belched out 14 times [informatio...utiful.net] more CO2 and SO2 than one pesky little volcano. Nature? Feeble, I say, bah!
Re:I'm Tired of Living in Harmony with Nature (Score:5, Informative)
Even the comments for that link indicate that others think it is bogus, as it doesn't account for methane (a MAJOR greenhouse gas that volcanos emit) and other gases, and it has already been corrected many times. While interesting, you would have to be insane to use that data for anything important, like all Slashdot links.
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Meanwhile, the belch from one unpronounceable volcano wipes out the cumulative effort from all of mankind over the past hundred years to purify the water and soil
In the first place, it was around 1970 before anybody seemed to care about the environment. Perhaps other countries started to care before then, but not long before then. Nixon signed the first US environmental legislation in 1970, forty years ago. The previous 150 years saw mankind spew more pollution than had been spewed in the previous history o
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Its going to get much worse... (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like Katla's getting ready to blow too
http://scienceray.com/earth-sciences/locals-believe-katla-volcano-in-iceland-near-eyjafjallajokull-will-erupt-in-seven-days/ [scienceray.com]
ant
Re:Its going to get much worse... (Score:5, Funny)
First they run the country down and go bankrupt, then they set the place on fire... I'm wondering if this is somekind of insurance fraud?
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mmm hot thanks!
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There's no evidence in that article other than historical patterns. As far as I've been able to determine from numerous sources, there is no sign of increased earthquake activity or inflation of the mountain at Katla yet (due to injection of magma at depth beneath it), and those processes will precede any significant eruption there just as it did at Eyjafjallajokull. It will not be a surprise. There's an extensive seismometer, GPS, and tiltmeter network around both these mountains (Eyjafjallajokull and
st. john's weather is scizophrenic (Score:2)
driving into st. johns from mainland newfoundland (st. johns is on a peninsula) you experience, in the span of about 15 minutes time: downpour of hard rain, then blissful sunshine, then deep fog, then heavy snow, then overcast clouds
the deeper observation is that weather is so fickle in the north atlantic latitudes, that the wind can and will shift back and forth from canada/ europe plenty of times throughout the weeks that this volcanoe blows
the downside is that you never know what will be canceled when or
Maple Leaf = North America? (Score:2, Informative)
Or is it simply that the title of the story should have been "Volcanic Ash Heading Towards New Foundland, Canada"?
Re:Maple Leaf = North America? (Score:4, Informative)
While you're at it (Score:2)
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There is a graphic of a tire there as well, and I am offended.
Since when does North America have a monopoly on tires? They don't. I was born in rural Angola, Africa and we even had tires there. When I was in Japan I saw tires. And in Iraq. And France and Italy and Belgium and Brasil and New Zealand. So how then can anyone place a graphic of a tire next to a story with "North America" in the title, as if tires are solely possessed by North America?
This is an obvious infringement of my rights.
Canadian Tire (Score:3, Funny)
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sounds like you're wheely tired of getting tread on. But don't worry, what goes around, comes around.
Maple Leaf FTW (Score:3, Funny)
Canada - leading the world in being just north of the USA.
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Since when is the Maple Leaf the symbol of North America? Does it have something to do with the value of the dollar? The country with the highest valued dollar has its flag tagged as North American symbol? Or is it simply that the title of the story should have been "Volcanic Ash Heading Towards New Foundland, Canada"?
Are you completely unaware of how interconnected our two countries are? If the ash cloud is heading towards North America, it would have the potential of disrupting more than just flights to Europe. Air freight could be affected. If the cloud were to spread over to Alaska, say goodbye to Fedex packages from Asia which all come in from Anchorage, Alaska. Sure, they could eventually redirect through Hawaii and into Sea Tac but that could take some time.
Are you sure about that? (Score:4, Funny)
Jet stream doesn't go that way. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Jet stream doesn't go that way. (Score:5, Informative)
On the bright side.... (Score:5, Funny)
Doesn't anyone read the @#%#@$ article?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting Animation of Dispersal (Score:5, Interesting)
No planes, trains and automobiles (Score:2, Interesting)
At the risk of looking dumb... (Score:2)
Wouldn't the ash from an Icelandic volcano reach Alaska long before St. John, and then only after going halfway around the planet over Northern Europe and Russia?
Pronunciation (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I'm having fun with the pronunciation [upenn.edu]. Especially since every Icelander seems to have their own way of saying it. I'm going with eya-love-a-jock-itch.
Take off and nuke them from orbit (Score:2)
It's the only way to be sure.
Just don't try to take off from the UK, western Europe, or (soon) Eastern Canada.
You're kidding, right? (Score:5, Informative)
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Tell that to Mt. Tambora [wikipedia.org].
(ok, he had some help)
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"Stopping flights, all over Europe? [guardian.co.uk] Pull the other one, mate."
It's an International Railway Conspiracy.
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That's why we call his sort "denialists" - they'll angrily deny anything that conflicts with their world-view.
Quite distinct from skeptics.
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Re:UK MET-OFFICE (Score:5, Insightful)
What about the Norwegian air ambulance helicopter, the Finnish airforce jets, and the MET office aircraft that did fly up there and did come back with measurable effects on their aircraft?
Or were they conveniently ignored because that doesn't fit well into an attempt to blame the met office?
Oh, and besides:
"During all those next days this first data-set never got adapted, updated with actual data or even checked again."
[citation needed]
I can't see any evidence anywhere whatsoever for the above quote, only evidence to the contrary- i.e. that continuous satellite data is being used (and not just by the met office), and also that the met office has as mentioned above sent aircraft up to test the effects too.
Re:How long till the Tea partiers blame Obama? (Score:5, Insightful)
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
Re:How long till the Tea partiers blame Obama? (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of like everyone blamed Bush for anything that happened in the previous 8 years? Including a few hurricanes?
No one blamed bush for Hurricane Katrina. Just for sitting on his ass when it hit, for appointing unqualified and flagrantly incompetent butt-buddies, excuse me, political henchmen to run FEMA, and for deliberately underfunding and eviscerating FEMA and nearly every other non-military federal agency in order to deliberately make them incapable of carrying out their mandate. Which worked brilliantly in his war against "big government", until we actually needed that government to rescue tens of thousands of people.
Then we got our act together, at many times the expense, and with many times the casualties, than it would have entailed if a competent president had appointed a competent leader of FEMA, and not gutted the agency of funds and logistical support.
And yes, everyone (except the hard-core right) quite correctly blames him for that. And the illegal war he started, and the financial implosion that was a direct result of Republican lassaiz-faire bank regulation (and which the Republicans are trying to continue today by filibustering any meaningful bank reform).
It's bad enough they do these things and then try to make us feel bad for pointing out the error of their ways. It's even more disburbing how utterly incapable of learning from their mistakes, and correcting their ways, these idealogues are. They'd rather be stubbornly wrong regardless of the evidence, than have a hint of flip-flopping on an issue(what most of the rest of us would call "correcting a mistake")
Regardless of whether or not the head of FEMA was qualified, what is FEMA's purpose? They are an "emergency" management agency. Louisiana and the city of New Orleans asked them to wait to come down.
The mayor of New Orleans and the governor of Louisiana should take most or all of the blame for damages and injuries incurred during that hurricane. Hurricanes happen. New Orleans is below sea level. Katrina was a hurricane. It was heading towards New Orleans. And yet no one ordered an evacuation of the city until the storm was just hours away?
Likewise, why were out-of-state contractors hired to work on the cleanup and rebuilding? Excluding folks like myself who volunteered to go work there with aid teams like the Red Cross, Samaritan's Purse, etc, why were local folks not hired? Sure, some of them were unqualified to build bridges. But how qualified do you ave to be to take a shovel and muck-out a building?
News Flash(es) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:News Flash(es) (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, that link won't help. The ash from an eruption can travel great distances, and the direction changes with the wind.
You're better of consulting your local http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_Ash_Advisory_Centre [wikipedia.org]
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I thought fluoride was good for the teeth ;-)
(Don't look up the fluoride conspiracy theories)