Possible bio-hazzard in New Orleans...? by chrisisall

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Possible bio-hazzard in New Orleans...?

POSTED BY: CHRISISALL
UPDATED: Monday, September 12, 2005 21:18
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Monday, September 12, 2005 1:34 PM

Ruxton posed this:
I questioned why there seemed to be a movement to forcibly evacuate New Orleans at gunpoint, and wondered if there might be something very nasty but unmentioned lurking now under the water, that isn't being discussed. The next day I found this:
http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000588.html,

which is a discussion of biological labs in the Mew Orleans area:

"Summary: At the very least, there are two Level-3 biolabs in New Orleans and a cluster of three in nearby Covington. They have been working with anthrax, mousepox, HIV, plague, etc. There are surely other labs in the city."

C: This seemed to merrit more discussion...

Manticore-virus-infected Chrisisall

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Monday, September 12, 2005 3:09 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

The link would be a good start for a reporter looking for a story, as it states, but has too many "what ifs" in it to count as real news. Maybe when someone gets a look at those labs and sees what's really going on...

If it was me, I'd be more concerned about the various refineries, chemical plants, and manufacturies that use toxic chemicals safely in normal business, which may now be leaking into the water.

There's also probably more risk of disease from natural sources, such as contaminated water. Cases of cholera have already been reported.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, September 12, 2005 3:21 PM

CHRISISALL

I would agree; it's a world of trouble from many directions.

Chrisisall

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Monday, September 12, 2005 3:32 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
I would agree; it's a world of trouble from many directions.

Chrisisall

And a difficult tradeoff. It's more convenient and economical to have refineries near the offshore oil rigs in the Gulf, and chemical and manufacturing plants near a port, but when the big winds come, they're gonna get hit. They'd probably have stood a category 3 storm, but Katrina was outside the envelope.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Monday, September 12, 2005 3:45 PM

SEVENPERCENT

Which leads to the inevitable obvious question, when it's safe to go back, is it really safe to go back? When they restore water and electricity, people will want to go back to their homes, but will it be safe to let them (and once basic services are restored, how do you stop them, short of declaring the whole place a quarantine zone)?
Here not too far from my neck of the woods (STL MO), for those that remember, there was a huge fiasco for years over dioxin levels in a local community. Made local headlines for years as they tried to clean it up, people got sued, politicians got outed, etc. And that from just a tiny little town! NO is a major industrial location; who knows how long it'll take to get that stuff out of the soil, out of water/chemical soaked homes, etc.
Assuming the worst, that's hundreds of thousands of people displaced near-permanently from their homes; at best, extra time needed in shelters or halfway houses while they test sludge for toxic materials. This is probably the one thing I can agree on that is absolutely no one's fault, the only problem is, I couldn't begin to tell you how to fix it. This has the potential to make the disaster ugly in an epic way (not that it isn't on its way already).

------------------------------------------
He looked bigger when I couldn't see him.

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Monday, September 12, 2005 4:28 PM

GINOBIFFARONI

I read someplace that there was a few toxic landfills under what was residental areas....

they were filled over in the days the laws were grey and never cleaned up...

and now alot of that crap is likely coming up

Don't think they give a shit

I'm with Signy and Rue

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Monday, September 12, 2005 9:18 PM

SOUPCATCHER

Just from an outsiders perspective I would guess there would have to be some soil reclaimation going on and I can't imagine a worse location to do that in than New Orleans (high water table, etc). This might be similar to what happens when rail lines are sold off (just in terms of diesel and oil seeping into the soil - in the case of railroads over decades, here just a month but much higher concentrations). When they shut down our local railroad yard and turned the land into commercial they dug down around thirty feet as part of the reclaimation process and had to treat all that dirt (or just ship it somewhere else and bring in fresh stuff, I'm not sure what option they used - I'll have to ask my dad since he worked at that yard for years). And that was just to get it zoned as commercial. I would hope that the requirements would be higher for residential. I have a vague memory of a spiel by a consulting firm hired to do a construction project in Portland and the vast majority of the expense on the project came from reclaiming a section of old rail line.

The only good thing about the whole situation is that, at least for the oil, it's all on top.

Not sure if that speculation helps any

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