Martial Law declared in New Orleans Was: RE: Katrina could inundate New Orleans

["Hannigan, Martin" <hannigan () verisign com>]

Breaking news..Apparently a 200 foot section of levee broke
last night and is gradually burying the city. Martial Law has
been declared in the area as well.

Overnight Levee Break:

http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050830/NEWS05/50830005


Martial Law:

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2005/08/breaking-news-martial-law-declared-in.php



--
Martin Hannigan                         (c) 617-388-2663
VeriSign, Inc.                          (w) 703-948-7018
Network Engineer IV                       Operations & Infrastructure
hannigan () verisign com



> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog () merit edu [mailto:owner-nanog () merit edu]On Behalf Of
> Matthew Kaufman
> Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 11:47 AM
> To: nanog () merit edu
> Subject: RE: Katrina could inundate New Orleans
>
>
>
> Dave Stewart:
> > Y'know... I do have to wonder whether Internet access is 
> > nearly as important as power and communications (traditional 
> > comms, such as the PTSN).
> >
> > Granted, it'll be interesting to see how things shake out - 
> > but I just can't buy that getting the Internet working 
> > should/will be a really high priority.
>
> Back when I was running ISPs, we had several county and city Emergency
> Operations Centers as customers... Either on T1 or frame 
> relay for their
> primary service, or as their "backup" dial-on-demand ISDN 
> provider. These
> connections were how the EOC got river gauge data for planning flood
> evacuations (at the time, no other source other than having 
> the numbers read
> off from the state-level agency office over the phone if they 
> weren't too
> busy), USGS earthquake epicenter (also available over EDIS) 
> and shake map
> (Internet only) data, weather service radar and satellite 
> images (backup was
> TV broadcasts, if still on the air), and in some counties, 
> the only access
> to the hospital emergency room status tracking system used for
> multi-casualty incidents... While there's more private data 
> networks online
> now, there's also more Internet-available data that the EOCs 
> would like to
> have access to, I'm sure (I know that some cities are using
> Internet-connected webcams to do security monitoring, look at 
> shorelines,
> etc.) 
>
> In many incident scenarios (and a few actual incidents), the 
> priority was
> that the radio system stayed up, then Internet access, *then* 
> PSTN (and
> having cellphone access to people in the field to supplement the radio
> system was more important than landline calls to anywhere 
> else). And power,
> of course, is easily generated locally, so not a big priority at all.
>
> Interestingly, almost none of the agencies told sales what 
> the connection
> was going to be used for... Only when engineering made a 
> followup inquiry
> would we learn that, yes, in an emergency, they'd like theirs 
> fixed first
> please, and yes, they'd need first dibs on the backup power 
> if we didn't
> have enough to run everything.
>
> Matthew Kaufman
> matthew () eeph com