Urgent Warning Proved Prescient - New York Times
September 7, 2005
Urgent Warning Proved Prescient
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Among a steady string of warnings delivered in recent years to New Orleans that they could be devastated by a great hurricane, one of the last was also one of the most chilling.
'Hurricane Katrina. A most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength,' was the headline on the National Weather Service bulletin on Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina struck.
'Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer,' the alert went on.
It read like the kind of hastily typed dispatch one might expect from a meteorologist facing the storm of a lifetime and trying to ensure that leaders and citizens heeded warnings and moved to safety before all communications failed.
Yet it was mostly written years in advance, with just a few last-minute adjustments by the staff at the New Orleans office to reflect specific local conditions, federal weather agency officials said yesterday.
The goal of having the descriptions preprogrammed into computers is to save time for the local meteorologists whose job was both to encourage residents to stay safe and to track evolving conditions, said Walt Zaleski, the Weather Service warning coordination program manager in the regional headquarters.
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Urgent Warning Proved Prescient
By THE NEW YORK TIMES
Among a steady string of warnings delivered in recent years to New Orleans that they could be devastated by a great hurricane, one of the last was also one of the most chilling.
'Hurricane Katrina. A most powerful hurricane with unprecedented strength,' was the headline on the National Weather Service bulletin on Aug. 28, the day before Hurricane Katrina struck.
'Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks, perhaps longer,' the alert went on.
It read like the kind of hastily typed dispatch one might expect from a meteorologist facing the storm of a lifetime and trying to ensure that leaders and citizens heeded warnings and moved to safety before all communications failed.
Yet it was mostly written years in advance, with just a few last-minute adjustments by the staff at the New Orleans office to reflect specific local conditions, federal weather agency officials said yesterday.
The goal of having the descriptions preprogrammed into computers is to save time for the local meteorologists whose job was both to encourage residents to stay safe and to track evolving conditions, said Walt Zaleski, the Weather Service warning coordination program manager in the regional headquarters.
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on Wednesday, September 07, 2005 at 18:10.
