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Aug. 28, 2005 - Art Bell

03:10:48

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Art Bell - Hurricane Katrina Live Coverage (5-hr special)

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01:25:32

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've taken you in talk radio, with talk radio, through a number of these kinds of large national impact events.
		And make no mistake, this is a national impact.
		It feels nice and safe, I guess, to be here in the desert right now, but it will impact all of us.
		What happens to a city, one of our major cities in this country, will ultimately impact everybody in the nation, those people a lot more, and we'll talk about some of the ways that it will impact them and some of the ways that it will impact you.
		Now, I wonder a lot of times, you know, in talk radio, what do you do when something like this proportion happens?
		And I think the answer is your job.
		You take calls from people in the affected area.
		You talk with people who might have information about this sort of thing.
		I realize that in the long run, there's really no way that we can compete with those who have people on the spot, in the eye, as it were.
		And they do.
		So many networks now, from the Weather Channel to CNN to Fox to, I guess, everybody with concerns in the media in that area has people down there virtually in the eye of the storm.
		I was on Matt Drudge a little bit earlier tonight, in the hour prior to this program, and sort of jokingly, but not so jokingly, really, said that, you know, the anchors who are down there holding onto the lampposts and taking short flights off the ground for the camera, I suppose they convey a sense of the amount of danger there is to be in this storm.
		But beyond that, it's mostly about ratings.
		I mean, really, it's mostly about ratings.
		I don't think anybody...
		And ratings equal money.
		It's a business.
		The media is a business.
		That's why you have the kind of media that you have today that sends reporters down to the eye of the storm hanging on the lamppost.
		So somebody ought to say it.
		It's all about the ratings.
		I mentioned that on the Matt Rod show.
		And a lot more.
		I also said something that I want to say to you right now.
		And that is that, yes, of course, there's an eerie resemblance to the book that we wrote, Coming Global Superstorm, in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
		There's an eerie kind of chilling moment for myself, and I'm sure for Whitley, who, by the way, will be on later.
		You saw in that motion picture in New York inundated by water, and that's what they're talking about with respect to New Orleans.
		Latest info on the storm.
		It's, of course, still a category five storm-packing winds of 160 miles an hour.
		160 miles an hour, my God.
		It's moving north-northwest at 10 miles an hour.
		It is presently about 160 miles south-southeast of New Orleans itself.
		The impacts are already beginning.
		It's at 27.8 north and 89.4 west.
		Once again, 27.8 north and 89.4 west.
		I have been watching the media now, not just today, but for days prior to this event, and I knew, I damn well knew, that when this hurricane got into the Gulf, we were going to have some kind of tragic occurrence.
		They're not talking too much about it, and most of the meteorologists scoff at the global warming explanation, but that's what's happening here, folks.
		But the globe is getting warmer.
		The water is getting warmer.
		They're barely mentioning it, though they have certainly.
		The temperatures in the Gulf are going into the 90s.
unidentified		That water is in the 90s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And when you have a situation like that, you have the fuel for a hurricane.
		Hurricanes are like big air conditioners for our planet.
		And they try to take that energy, and it is energy, and they try and convert it.
		They try to do what an air conditioner does and convert it.
		So you could think of them as sort of rolling air conditioners for the planet.
		And then, of course, you can think of them in many other ways as well.
		So we'll do a variety of things this night.
		In a moment, we're going to talk if we're able to.
		Now, all of this is, you know, particularly with people in the area, it depends on whether we can actually get to them.
		Mark Suttiff, I hope that's how we pronounce it, is an interesting gentleman.
		In 1995, after graduating from college, Mark Suttiff began his career in hurricane awareness reporting and research.
		His work revolves around using field experience and documentation of hurricanes to help the public better understand what they're up against.
		Using a combination of remotely operated weather stations, streaming video units, and a mobile command communications vehicle, and by the way, folks, we've got links to all of what we're talking about right now on the website.
		Mark and his team of five are able to safely observe, report, and research hurricanes as they affect the U.S. The data, video, and still pictures that Mark and his team collect are used in a wide variety of awareness campaigns, lectures, conferences, worldwide TV, and media outlets, even within the U.S. government, NOAA, for example, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Federal Aviation Administration.
		2005 has seen the dawn of a new era for Mark and his team as they broadcast unprecedented video and data from even the worst hurricanes using wireless internet to literally put PC users right into the heart of the storm.
		Mark lives in North Carolina with the rest of his team strategically located in Florida, Virginia, And the Carolinas in a moment with a little bit of luck.
		Mark will be right here.
unidentified		Mark will be right here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, as luck would have it, of course, and I told you that it may well go this way.
		Mark Sutta's line is busy at the moment, so we'll try to continue to get through to him.
		In the meantime, I guess I want to start the program like this.
		I want to hear from you.
		I want to hear from people who are in the affected area, and oh, gone, it's a big area.
		It's really a large area of the southeast U.S. And ultimately, of course, this hurricane will continue and will affect many of you right up to Tennessee and right up the eastern seaboard.
		So here's what I propose.
		I propose, number one, that all of our phone lines, and I'm going to tell you what some of these phone line numbers are in a moment, will be open only for those of you in the affected area.
		And so if you have a cell phone, if you're able to get through, let me give you our telephone numbers here now.
		And if you are in the affected area, if you have been evacuated from your home in New Orleans, or you have evacuated, and everybody is concentrating on New Orleans, because, of course, it's headed straight for, appears to be, headed straight for New Orleans, but the area of impact is gigantic.
		Here are the numbers to reach me.
		First time callers at area code 775-727-1222.
		And I'm putting you all on your honor to only use these numbers if you are in an affected area, and if you would like to tell us what's going on.
		How you feel.
		That's the human side of this story, and it's the one that we can tell, I think, most appropriately with talk radio, by the way.
		Again, 775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line, area code 775-727-1295.
		Area code 775-727-1295.
		East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		That's 1-800-825-5033.
		And finally, west of the Rockies, the number is 1-800-618-8255.
		1-800-618-8255.
		So we'd like to hear from people in the affected area.
		We'll fill a little time with that.
		Try to get hold of Mark Suddeth in the meantime.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Good evening, morning, whatever.
unidentified		Hey, how's it going?
		My name's Scott.
		I'm from New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Scott.
		You're from New Orleans.
		Where are you now?
unidentified		Actually, I'm in my living room right now with a good friend of mine I've known for about 35 years.
		We're going to try to ride it out.
		There's one other family on the street.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God, you're in New Orleans and you're going to stay?
unidentified		I'm on a suburb, in the suburb, actually, called Harrahan.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was your first name again, please?
unidentified		Scott.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Scott.
		Okay, Scott.
		I've done a lot of world travel, but I've never been to New Orleans.
		I've never been to your area.
		Tell me about where you are with respect to the area of New Orleans.
unidentified		Okay, right across, we're actually maybe two miles away from the Huey P. Long Bridge, which is the, as I understand it, the only rail crossing south of Chattanooga, I think, Tennessee, of the Mississippi River.
		So we're not too far from that.
		Right across the river from us is Algiers.
		A naval support activity.
		Excuse me.
		That's kind of been in the news lately.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why in the world?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why in the world have you stayed?
unidentified		My parents opted to stay.
		My dad did anyway.
		My mom was actually on her way out with one of the people that lived down the street from them.
		And they got as far as Kinner.
		It was about maybe 4 o'clock.
		And Kirfew was going to end up being 5 or 6 p.m.
		So they actually had to turn around and come back home.
		Their neighbor, which actually live a mile away from me exactly, from my driveway to their driveway.
		Their neighbor is a guy who's a contractor.
		And he had to come back too, so at least there's somebody there to look after them.
		There's only one of the family on the street here, and me and my buddy, and that's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are your expectations as you see this monster headed toward you?
		I'm wondering what your...
		You're live, yes.
unidentified		You're live.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just turn your radio off, please.
unidentified		Okay, yeah, radio off, dude.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's got to be off.
unidentified		Right, the friend I'm with is actually the guy who turned me on to you and said you played on 1350 down here.
		What is that, WSN?
		Yeah, and I think H70.
		And 870.
		Okay, well, anyway, yeah, it's one of those interesting things.
		We were discussing conservative versus liberal, just about everything.
		We decided to stay because, of course, my parents decided to stay.
		I want to make sure that if anything is in need after the storm, we'd at least be here.
		A good friend of mine from way, way back, used to live right across the highway from us.
		He's down to Texas for a couple years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, again, what are your expectations?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're talking about New Orleans being buried, worst case scenario, under 20 or 30 feet of water.
unidentified		Exactly.
		Well, that's just one of those things that you have to deal with when you live down here.
		And when you can't get out, because we weren't going to get stuck in gridlock.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know there's a lot of gridlock out there, but there's a reason to do it.
unidentified		I think it may be safer in the house than in the car.
		Well, we got the boat in the front yard.
		Right, and we got a boat.
		We got a boat moored, so just in case we, you know, we got a boat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good idea.
unidentified		And we got all our camping supplies.
		We were both in the military, you know, using Coast Guard.
		I was in the Navy for eight years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A boat sounds like a really good idea.
unidentified		Yeah, boat is choice.
		And I have five dogs, too.
		No neighbors, I mean, no shelters around here would Take pets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, I've wondered about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have four cats, and if I had to evacuate, I couldn't leave my cats behind.
unidentified		Right.
unidentified		And I'm thinking about all the poor people who left their animals here and are going to come back to drown pets.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God, that's right.
unidentified		In a worst-case scenario, I'm thinking, you know, maybe it won't be so bad, but then again, you pray and you keep your powder dry, so we pray and we hope for the best.
unidentified		You know, we don't want anybody to get fillet by using.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I hope your powder stays dry, buddy.
unidentified		Amen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much, sir.
		Thank you very much for the call, and take care.
		Godspeed.
		You're going to need it.
		I can't imagine why anybody would stay there.
		Can you?
		I don't know if you've seen any of the graphics that they've been popping up for us to see about New Orleans, but the way New Orleans is built, it is a bowl that's potentially, under the worst case scenario, going to fill up.
		The pumps are not going to be able to handle it.
		New Orleans is going to be a river 20 or 30 feet of water.
		How does anybody make the decision to stay under those circumstances?
		Even pets, I mean, that's almost...
		Now, I'm a strange person about animals.
		Maybe not so strange.
		Maybe there are many others like me.
		But to me, they are my children.
		To my wife, they are our children.
		we really really care about them and well i don't think I don't think I could walk away knowing there is almost a sure chance that my pet is going to die, is going to drown.
		I just...
		Let me try our guest right now.
		I understand his phone may be clear.
		We'll see if he's there.
		This is Talk Radio on the Run, something we do a lot around here.
		So let's see what we get.
		Let's give it a try.
		And here we go.
		Maybe.
		Mark?
		The ring is good.
		It was busy.
		Rings are good.
unidentified		Hello, this is Mark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark, hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is Art Bell.
unidentified		Hey, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And your phone was busy.
unidentified		Busy.
		Oh, that's not good.
		Nobody was on the phone with me, though.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's weird.
		That is strange.
		Well, that's the hurricane.
		We'll blame it on that.
		And it's going to be blamed for lots of things, I guess.
		All right.
		First of all, Mark, I read something about you.
		I read a little bio, but I want to understand exactly why you're down there.
		Well, first of all, you're where.
		You're in Gulfport?
unidentified		Yes, I'm in Gulfport, Mississippi, where things are going downhill quickly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		About 80 miles east of New Orleans?
unidentified		Something like that.
unidentified		Yeah, roughly 80 miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		80 miles east of New Orleans.
		All right.
		Why are you there?
		You have some sort of automated stations that you place at certain points trying to find out about hurricanes.
		Tell me about this.
		What do you do?
unidentified		Well, we're trying to do that tonight.
		So far with the first one, I'm going to be honest with you.
		We didn't have any success.
		Something went wrong.
		We had to set it up.
		It's automatic.
		It's recording, but it's not transmitting.
		We have two more opportunities to put another two of them out there and have them transmit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wait, Mark, what are them?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Describe these things you're talking about.
unidentified		They are automated weather stations, and they have the ability to record the wind, the air pressure.
		They have cameras to record into VCRs, digital recording as well, so that we can basically replace people with these automated, remotely operated recording units to do like a storm chaser would, except I don't think the storm chaser should be down there during this one.
		It's going to be kind of lethal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I've been wondering exactly the same thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear somebody whispering to you.
unidentified		Sorry.
unidentified		Whispering to my partner.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		Tell your partner he can talk to you in the brakes.
		Yes, sir.
		So the first machine that you tried to deploy went belly up.
		It's apparently recording, but not transmitting, is that right?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And the whole idea of these is to be sort of like robots, have eyes and to transmit live to the Internet, correct?
unidentified		Right.
		It's the live and kicking, but something happened and it's not transmitting to the Internet.
		We have two more opportunities.
		We'll be getting ready to set up in just a little bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
		What about you right now in Gulfport?
		Are you in some kind of vehicle now or what?
unidentified		Yes, Art.
		I'm in a modified Chevy Tahoe.
		I modified it.
		It has its own weather station on it, its own streaming webcam live right now with audio.
		I should say streaming video, not a webcam.
		And that's going as we speak.
		So it's like a mobile command center, a mobile communication center, a mobile weather station, and it has all of our equipment in here, and we're all soaking wet right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're sending a stream to the internet right now, is that correct?
unidentified		We are indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the audience can potentially see what you're seeing right now in Gulfport?
unidentified		Yes, the site, I had to set it up as a subscriber-based site because you can imagine if 100,000 people try to hit streaming video, the bandwidth will be beyond my capability to pay for.
		And the site is called HurricaneliveNet.com.
		And folks can sign up for the rest of this year and all of next year as we experiment and learn what we're doing.
		And hopefully we can learn from the feedback from people that sign up.
		But yes, Art, right now, there is a live video transmission.
		A good friend of yours named Paul.
		He's been watching it out there in Nevada for a while as I've done my testing, in fact.
		And he has been interacting with me.
		I can talk to Paul through the streaming video because of its audio.
		And then Paul can send me text messages to let me know, for example, that you're trying to reach me.
		Yes.
		Get off the phone.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Art wants you.
		Yes.
		So, Indeed, Paul Bowman runs Air Internet here in town, and that's how I connected with you.
		Again, I think the way to cover this tonight is just to talk to all of you, and we're going to do that in addition to some others.
		Headline, just breaking news.
		I want to thank Ramona, by the way, for keeping me up on all of this.
		Headline, oil soars to record as Hurricane Katrina shuts U.S. production.
		Crude oil soared to a record above, brace yourself, folks, $70 a barrel in New York after Hurricane Katrina forced companies, including Exxon, Mobile Corporation, Chevron Corporation, and others to shut operations down in the Gulf of Mexico.
		Oil had its biggest gain in 29 months as Katrina may become the strongest storm to hit the Gulf Coast since 1969.
		So beware out there, and I'm sure with the rise in the price of a barrel of oil to $70, you're going to see it at the pump almost immediately.
		We'll be back with Mark in a moment.
		By the way, everybody, we're going to do this kind of ad hoc this morning, and I don't know how long I'm going to be with you.
		I may stay with you well past the official ending of the program, which means that those affiliates that carry the show into replay will simply be carrying us live instead.
		I haven't made up my mind about that yet, but I believe it was a Pik Yoon whose headline down there was simply regarding New Orleans.
		It just said in big, bold black letters, ground zero.
		And if the worst case scenarios are realized, and my God, CNN just ran a crawl on the bottom that said eye wall waves have been measured now at 60 feet.
		60 feet near the eye wall.
		Can you imagine that?
		I can't.
		Mark, welcome back.
unidentified		Hey, I'm right here.
		Thank you.
		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark Suttith, is that the way your name is pronounced?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark Sutteth, is that correct?
unidentified		That's right.
		Just like Skip Sutteth, the actor who used to be on Third Watch.
		That's my cousin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Oh, I'll be darned.
		All right, Mark.
		If you would, what are your conditions right now?
unidentified		Right now, we had a wind gust to 63 miles per hour here in Gulfport down at the Erie Pier, right on the Gulf of Mexico.
		The air pressure is 1001.8 millibars, and the air temperature is 76.7 with light rain.
		I can't get any more detail than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, no, that's very good.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very good indeed.
unidentified		And that's live from our truck right here, Art.
unidentified		That's a very good weather station right here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
		Can you tell me about where the hurricane is right now and what is the latest regarding its movement?
		A lot of times, as these hurricanes get very close to shore, they sort of take a little jog one way or the other.
		And I guess it could be crucial for New Orleans.
		Is that true?
unidentified		That's right.
		This is the most crucial time coming up from New Orleans, the next several hours as to whether or not this will take a jog more towards New Orleans or more towards the east and impact right over where I am in Gulfport.
		As it looks right now, it is still on a heading east of New Orleans where the I itself would not pass directly over New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Mark, what would that mean for New Orleans?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If it continued and stayed on the track it's on right now, what would they expect in New Orleans?
unidentified		They would expect winds in excess of 100 miles per hour sustained for a long time, several hours, driving rain.
		They will hear things breaking.
		The power will go out.
		There will be this enormous power flashes around.
		It'll look very much like some of those deadly lasers in the War of the Worlds movie.
		And the sound is very similar to that, thankfully, though we're not being attacked by aliens, although people are going to think that it is unearthly because it is an incredible experience to go through the core of a major hurricane, much less a Category 5 hurricane, the worst of them all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Also, before hitting land, many times hurricanes either do a quick strengthening or a quick weakening.
		Sometimes that happens.
		Are you seeing any of that?
unidentified		There are some subtle indications that it won't.
		Well, let me answer your question directly.
		I don't see any indications that it'll do any quick strengthening or quick weakening, but it may do some weakening prior to landfall because as its massive circulation goes over land, it draws in some drier continental air.
		And any changes in the dew point of the air, the humidity, can make this very fragile but very powerful force of nature change within just a couple of hours.
		And we're actually, as much as I'm fascinated by these natural events, I'm really hoping that it'll weaken actually dramatically so that we do not get this doomsday scenario from Mississippi and Louisiana that's been painted before us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark, I wonder if you can explain this to me.
		I've been watching the coverage very carefully, and they explained about eye wall reorganization, that every now and then a hurricane lets its eye wall become ragged or that becomes the case, and then it reorganizes and becomes a very tight eye once again.
		What is that process?
		When it does that, what's going on?
unidentified		That is a very difficult thing to describe, an eye wall replacement cycle.
		I do not know much about that, and neither does the National Hurricane Center or the Hurricane Research Division, believe it or not.
		And they will mention that in their discussions, that we don't understand the what's called thermodynamic process of what's going on In the eye wall of a hurricane, that sometimes an outer eye wall will form and contract, choking off the energy to the inner eye wall, weakening the hurricane, and we don't know why.
		They just don't know why yet.
		There is not somebody yet that I know of who can say it's because of X, Y, and Z. Gotcha.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry to have asked that kind of apparently impossible to answer question.
		Well, it came because I was watching a discussion of the eye wall replacement, and then also a discussion of what you just talked about, that there can become an outer eye wall that's even bigger.
		It's sort of good news and bad news.
		The old eye wall is much weaker, but then now there's this new outer eye wall with even winds that extend, hurricane winds that go out much farther.
		Is that correct?
unidentified		That's right.
		Absolutely.
		And these fluctuations can change in a matter of hours.
		Let me give you an example.
		Hurricane Charlie that I was in last year near Punta Gorda, Florida, in this very vehicle that I'm talking to you from now.
		It was a small hurricane, and it sort of developed a dry ring around its core or its eye wall.
		They call it a moat.
		And it literally dried out in the hurricane's core there.
		And a very small, donut-shaped inner eye wall developed.
		Only five miles across was the eye.
		And just like a skater pulling in her arms, the smaller her radius is there, the conservation of angular momentum, the faster she spins.
		And Charlie spun up very quickly to a lethal category 4 and passed right over this Chevy Tahoe that I'm talking to you from right now.
		We measured 132 mile per hour wind before the anemometer was pelted by rocks from the highway that we were on and ultimately destroyed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God.
		I'm seeing news that three residents breaking in for just a moment of New Orleans.
		A nursing home died during evacuations that are going on.
		So it's already begun.
		This is going to be a very deadly storm in Florida and now already in Louisiana.
		It has the potential.
		I mean, just before I talk to you, Mark, I talked to a fellow who is in New Orleans, and he's going to stay.
		Now, I can't imagine making that decision knowing what I've seen on television about the structure of New Orleans.
		This appears to be the worst case scenario coming true.
		Do you see it as worst case or might some miracle still occur?
unidentified		Well, there's always a chance for a miracle to occur.
		As long as I'm seeing it more east of New Orleans, that core, that inner core, the radius of maximum winds is the worst part of the hurricane.
		It's where the pressure gradient is the tightest.
		The air pressure is lowest right in the center.
		It's like somebody pulled a plug on the atmosphere and all the air is trying to rush to get out.
		And as long as that'll stay enough away from New Orleans to either the east, and I don't think it's going to happen to the west, I mean, it'd have to hit Morgan City to go to the west, and that doesn't look likely at all right now.
		So we are really hoping for an eastward shove to spare New Orleans, but what spares New Orleans devastates the Gulfport, those areas, maybe even Mobile Bay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark, when are we going to know?
unidentified		Oh, boy, we're going to know.
		We're going to know, I think, when the center of this hurricane begins to cross near Venice in the southern end there of Louisiana, on the toe of Louisiana.
		But even then, Art, we may not know because we thought we knew a few hours before Charlie was supposed to hit Tampa Bay.
		We thought we knew it was going to do that, we being everybody who tracks it.
		Right.
		And a 15 or so degree change in angle, and it hit Punta Gorda, changing their lives forever.
		So it's not over till it's over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but I meant time-wise.
		I've got 1048 West Coast time right now.
		There's going to be a time between now and 5 o'clock Pacific time, I imagine, when you're going to say, okay, here's where it's hitting.
		What time is that likely to be?
		If you had to guess.
unidentified		I think by 8 o'clock in the morning Eastern time, we're going to know if it's really going to go over to New Orleans or split between Gulfport and New Orleans.
		But it's still going to be bad in New Orleans.
		Maybe just not the worst case scenario.
		It's that fine of a line.
		We're really dancing on a razor's edge here as to what the track, just a few degrees east of north, can save a world of hurt for the Crescent City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If it becomes the worst case, I take it that you also have seen on television descriptions of what might occur in New Orleans, the 20 or 30 feet of water that New Orleans could be left with.
		If that did happen, Mark, and again, I may be asking you a question way out of your field, would that be the end of New Orleans?
		I mean, with all this awful mixture that would occur of everything in a city like that, it would be the end of it for a while if the worst case scenario happened.
unidentified		You're going to have, like you said, a terrible mixture, and it would be the end of it for a while.
		You're going to have huge economic impact to the United States.
		It is very difficult to comprehend what could happen.
		There are some in FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers whose job is to try to comprehend with computer models and different types of simulations for storm surge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know they're actually doing those models, Mark, right now.
		Actually doing them right now, trying to decide if some buildings in New Orleans will stand or fall.
		We've heard information there might be 200 mile per hour wind gusts.
		They don't know a lot about that.
		We've heard that just a few moments ago that they have 60-foot waves around the eye wall.
		That seems, I can't even imagine that.
unidentified		Six-story building there.
		It's very frightening.
		And let me give you another perspective On it.
		High-rise buildings, typically 300 to 500 feet high, you can tack on a category up there for the wind speed.
		I have learned that by going to the National Hurricane Conference year after year for several years.
		A little side note: the National Hurricane Conference for this year for 2005 was held in none other than New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the winds are worse as you go up by quite a measure, correct?
unidentified		Yes, I usually say by one category.
unidentified		So if it hits as a four, then winds at some of those tall buildings in New Orleans could be easily at a category five strength up above, and that will send glass and debris and air conditioning units down into the streets below.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They call it vertical evacuation, Mark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you be comfortable in a high-rise building with something like this headed toward you?
unidentified		No, not at all.
		That's why I'm not in New Orleans.
		I would not have any place to go except up.
		And if I survived the trauma of this terrible event with all the noise that's coming, if indeed, of course, they get the core of this hurricane, then it would just be nightmarish.
		And I don't know if I could ever recover.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What made you decide on Gulfport, Mississippi, where you are now?
unidentified		That I have lateral movement, that I can go east or west with a fairly quick drop of a hat, if you will, using Interstate 10.
		If I'm in New Orleans and it starts to flood or a levee goes, oh, I don't even want to talk about a levee going.
		I mean, goodness, if a levee goes, you only have seconds until it's over.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Again, Mark, I may be asking you questions you're not equipped to answer.
		But for those people remaining in New Orleans, and I don't know what the number is right now.
		I was hearing numbers like around 100,000.
		Do you have any idea how many people might still be there?
unidentified		They said from some of the news reports that I heard that about 75% of New Orleans evacuated, which is an extraordinary number.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But the population of New Orleans being what?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		600,000, 700,000 in the city?
unidentified		I believe so.
		That's a very good estimate for sure.
		There's some 30,000 to 50,000 people.
		However, again, from what I'm seeing on the local news channels down here, at least 30,000 people who have taken shelter inside the Superdome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the supposed shelter of last resort.
		Can I ask you, do you know anything about the Superdome?
		For example, I've heard that they can't use the lower portions of it because they could conceivably flood.
		So I wonder how many people they can actually hold there.
unidentified		Well, I saw the news footage that everybody was playing down on the field.
		And maybe they'll move them up later.
		But the footage I saw, there was kids playing right there on the football field.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's early, I suppose, yeah.
unidentified		Early, sure.
unidentified		And the Superdome, you know, maybe one thing it has going for it wind-wise, it is shaped like an upside-down bowl.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
unidentified		And that has to be to its benefit.
unidentified		And if the water will just not breach it and cause just horrific loss of human life, I don't think they'd put people in the superdome as a refuge of last resort if they thought that it could actually flood enough to kill everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That it's certainly been designed to withstand that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But even at that, if the worst case scenario came, they would be virtually trapped in the superdome.
unidentified		Yes, for days.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For at least, yeah, days or weeks.
unidentified		It just keeps getting worse the more we talk about it.
		That's why so many people I've seen on the news, national news stories, are just crying because it's just terrible.
		If this comes to pass as it looks right now, it'll definitely dwarf.
		This is not a bold statement.
		It'll dwarf what we went through with September 11th in terms of loss of life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mark, the temperatures in the Gulf, the water in the 90s that's feeding this godforsaken storm, how unusual is it for the Gulf waters to be at 85 and then well into even the 90-degree mark and better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That seems awfully hot, isn't it?
unidentified		Yes, it's very unusual.
		We typically see waters in the mid-80s in the Gulf of Mexico.
		Even off the coast of North Carolina where I live, the water temperature is 30 degrees Celsius.
		They're getting very close to 86, 87 degrees Fahrenheit.
		And that is well above normal.
		Most of the Atlantic basin is very much above normal right now, temperature-wise on the sea surface.
		And also, the deeper that water is warm, the more upper oceanic heat content is available for these lethal hurricanes.
		And the Gulf of Mexico has areas of very high upper oceanic heat content.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how much of a percentage of the growth of this storm do you think can be attributed to the unusually warm, even almost hot, waters in the Gulf?
unidentified		A good deal of it.
unidentified		Hurricanes are a product of the heat and the latent heat and the humidity and the moisture in the air.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		But it's also a product of a very well-set up environment that the hurricane itself extends up to 200 millibars in the atmosphere above 30,000 feet or so.
		Cyclonic circulation up to around 30,000 feet, maybe more.
		And then at the top of that is a large, warm, anti-cyclonic flow of air spreading all of the heat sucked in at the surface out into the stratosphere with just completely unimaginable energy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you hold through the break, Mark?
unidentified		Yes, and then after the break, we have to get to work once again, but we'd love to chat with you once we get these other two units set up.
		Yes, sir.
		I'll be right here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on then through the break.
		And in addition, rolling that video live on the internet, that is a subscription service, but he's got another free website, and we've got a Link on the Coast to Coast AM website right now for that.
		It will tell you more about it in a moment.
		Latest 1 a.m. advisory, that Central Time Advisory, places this horrid monster, Katrina, 135 miles south-southeast of New Orleans.
		Winds remain at 160 miles per hour.
		Now, again, this is the latest advisory, still at 160, moving north-northwest at 10 miles per hour.
		That puts it at 28.1 west and 89.6 north, west and north, I guess that's right, right?
		28.1 and 89.6.
		Pressure is 910 millibars.
		That's up a little bit.
		Now, they're saying the I is going to come ashore between Venice and Grand Isle should it continue as it is right now.
		The I wall is presently about 90 miles now south-southwest of the mouth of the Mississippi.
		Mark, welcome back.
unidentified		Hey, Art, good to be here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I won't take up much more of your time at all, Mark, but those are the latest figures.
		They're talking about it coming ashore, the eye, between Venice and Grand Isle, should it continue as it is at the moment.
		What does that mean?
		What's that going to mean for New Orleans?
		I mean, if it comes in between Venice and Grand Isle.
unidentified		If it moves due north from there without any east trajectory, it could bring that core right over Lake Poncertrain where they will have north to northwest winds over 100 miles per hour.
		The good news, though, real quick, though, is it is down to 160.
		We need every little bit we can get, and we'll take it.
		But if it does continue the way it is, I mean, I'm looking at a radar shot live right now.
		It's only seven minutes old, so it's relatively live from the National Weather Service, and I can just see the eye wall, and it is due south.
		The eye wall appears to be due south of Grand Isle and the toe of Louisiana.
		So if it moves straight north and did not have any east component at all.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's got a little bit of, I believe it's got a little bit of west component.
unidentified		Correct, north, north, west.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		North, northwest.
unidentified		So it's still looking very bad for New Orleans.
		It is still looking very bad.
		We're going to really hope for that eastern jog to begin at any point.
		And eastern means just getting it from north, northwest to north.
		That'll help a lot, but it'll devastate.
		Don't take this to think that, oh, it'll be great.
		It will devastate Mississippi.
		And where I am, I'm at 89.1.
		And the center of this is at 89.6.
		The center, the center of the eye is at 89.6.
		The core extends out to 89.1.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		What I want to do, Mark, if I can, is to have you on again, perhaps later in the show.
		I know you're not going anywhere, right?
unidentified		I am going to stay here in the Gulfport, set up these next two units, and I'm going to stay in the hotel and hunker down when that core gets here well away from the water so we can eliminate that Mark is going to drown because that's not going to happen.
		Now I have to hide from the wind, place my Tahoe in a safe location, most likely on the leeward side of a building, and then just wait it out when the sun comes up.
		And all of this will hopefully stream from our Tahoe right here as it happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah, I want to plug that for you.
		You've got a free site, right?
		I believe we've got a link up on coasttacoastaem.com right now.
		So you've got a free site up there, correct?
unidentified		Yes, I've been working with two great companies, if I may mention them, Lowe's Home Improvement Stores and Sprint, to sponsor my hurricane awareness and public information work, which is mostly through hurricanetrack.com, just like it sounds, hurricane T-R-A-C-K.com.
		And over the last five years, I have helped, through the support from Lowe's Home Improvement Stores and Sprint, hundreds of thousands of people through the internet with my work telling people why hurricanes are as bad as they are because I go through them, not just in North Carolina where I live, but in Florida and Texas and now Louisiana.
		Who better to talk about how to run their own radio show than Art Bell, right?
		Who better to talk about hurricanes than Mark Sutteth, at least in terms of what to expect?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, Mark.
		We'll get back to you as the show continues and as the eye gets closer.
		Thank you very much.
unidentified		Thanks a lot for having me and wish us all luck down here.
unidentified		I think we're going to need it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Godspeed, buddy.
		Take care.
		We'll talk to you later on in the show.
		And can you imagine that?
		He's in Gulfport.
		There's really no way, as I mentioned earlier, so frequently, these hurricanes take unaccountable last-minute jogs.
		Now, maybe it's the way the landmass begins to affect the hurricane as it comes ashore.
		Maybe it's the sudden change in barometric pressure.
		Who knows?
		You know, even the weather guys don't really know the intimate details of what drives these monsters.
		We are here to observe and comment, and that is what we shall do in a moment.
		I'm going to try or attempt to talk to a very old friend of mine whose name is Lynn Whitlake.
		I interviewed him one time previously on this program.
		He lives in New Orleans many, many years ago now.
		Lynn and I were together in the United States Air Force stationed at Amarillo Air Force Base.
		And like young fools, we chased tornadoes in a Volkswagen and took footage and sold it to local TV stations and that kind of thing.
		So as you can see, my fascination with storms is very deep indeed.
		Lynn is in Lake Charles, mostly out of harm's way, according to the track we see right now.
		But we'll try and get hold of Lynn, who I want to say, he grew up to be a weatherman.
		That's a path he took while I went into broadcasting.
		Really, he did too.
		Reporting the weather is certainly, I suppose, broadcasting, isn't it?
		So we'll try and get Lynn on the phone in a moment.
		As you might imagine, we are all about Hurricane Katrina this night and this morning across the nation, paying attention to it.
		And now, as I mentioned, a very old friend of mine, his name is Lynn Whitlick.
		He works for one of our affiliates here on Coast, K-A-O-K, in Lake Charles, Louisiana.
		Hi.
		Lynn, hey, buddy.
unidentified		How are you doing, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm okay.
		And far safer and nice and dry here in the desert.
		You're in Lake Charles, is that correct?
unidentified		I'm kind of on the sidelines watching this show tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm sure happy not to be in the path of.
unidentified		Oh, most certainly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Lynn.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, everybody or now the audience knows that you and I in the Air Force, how long ago now, Lynn?
unidentified		Well, that was vintage 1962, 63, right into this.
		That would be, what, 42, 43 years ago?
		Oh, we were young and dumb.
		In many ways.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		We chased tornadoes, sometimes all the way up into Oklahoma in a little Volkswagen to take film.
		Anyway, it was sort of a hobby.
unidentified		We were doing storm chasing before there was such a terminology.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		You and I did it.
		You were more of the maniacal suspect in doing this than was I at the time, but I loved it.
		I admitted I loved it.
		And we're lucky we didn't get killed, Lynn.
unidentified		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, so here comes this monster hurricane.
		We were talking on the phone earlier when I asked you to be on with me about the temperatures in the Gulf.
		You know, it's sort of in passing mentioned in some of the television coverage.
		But there are astounding temperatures in the Gulf.
		The water is the engine that drives and builds these monsters.
		To what degree is that true, Lynn?
unidentified		Well, this is because, see, hurricane doesn't run off of water.
		It runs off of water vapor.
		And the warmer the water temperature, the more readily the water evaporates into the atmosphere.
		And it's the water vapor that provides the energy to the hurricane.
		And once, as an example, you get a hurricane such as this, this massive storm we have now, to pass over the water, it'll get upwelled quite a bit and the water temperature will drop considerably.
		Then if we have additional hurricanes over that same area later on this season, they will probably not be anything like what we're experiencing out there right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, this hurricane is absorbing the real hot stuff.
unidentified		And also turning over the water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
unidentified		Some lower depth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So would it be fair, Lynn, to think of hurricanes as kind of giant air conditioners for the planet?
unidentified		Well, yes, that's it.
		They're kind of like a heat engine, that it allows the heat from the lower levels to escape into the upper levels, definitely.
		That's certainly one way of thinking about it, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
		When the people at the National Weather Service or NOAA are asked whether any part of this can be attributed to global warming, forget the argument now about whether man's hand or a natural cycle of nature is upon us, whatever it is.
		It does seem as though everything's getting warmer.
		water, the air, we're getting all these new records all the time, and the Gulf is...
unidentified		Well, water temperature here off the south Louisiana coast off of Cameron here has been running 90, 91 degrees recently.
		And I don't remember that ever happening since I've lived here in about 30 years now.
		Generally speaking, we peak out in the mid-80s during the summertime.
		And 87, 88 would be considered very unusual.
		And I do not ever remember, and it may have happened, and I just didn't see it, but I don't ever remember seeing 90-degree water temperatures before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So then, is it really fair that somebody from NOAA, for example, would laugh and shake their head no way when asked whether global warming might be a factor in what's going on here?
unidentified		Well, I don't know.
		I'm kind of neutral on that subject.
		All I can tell you is what we see happening, you know, that there's certainly a cycle which is going on right now.
		That's certainly part of it.
		It could be contributed by, I guess, a combination of the two, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		On the current track, I assume you're watching it very carefully, Lynn.
		Sure am.
		On a scale of 1 to 10, how poor does it look for the city of New Orleans now?
unidentified		Well, right now, as close as this thing is in, a slight jog this way or that way could make a lot of difference.
unidentified		And sometimes these hurricanes do tend to make a slight jog as they cross the coast.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was talking about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that the effect of land on the hurricane?
unidentified		And the friction of the land will cause it to jog one way or the other.
		But the massive size of this hurricane, the hurricane force winds extend out 100 miles, and even tropical storm force winds 200 miles.
		This slight jog this way or that way is not going to make that much difference as far as the damage, wind damage goes.
		It'll have more to do with how the water comes into New Orleans.
		And you just have to wait and see what happens.
		I mean, there's no one that can actually pinpoint it to that degree.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know they're doing computer modeling to see what buildings might or might not hold up under certain conditions.
unidentified		Things like TV towers and radio towers and things like this.
unidentified		These will come down, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's quite true.
		So local broadcast facilities probably will go away.
		I would imagine there's some sort of emergency broadcasting facilities that are ready to be set up.
		I have no idea, but I would think that.
		You do the weather on one of our affiliates, K-A-O-K, in Lake Charles.
		A radio weatherman, Lynn, is kind of unusual.
unidentified		Yes.
		Well, actually, I started in television here many years ago, and then the guy who owned the TV station sold it and bought a radio station.
		We're actually part of a group in Cumulus, and KALK is one of the radio stations I broadcast on.
		Actually, the mother flagship station is KYKZ.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of TV stations, of course, have weathermen, but you're actually the only radio weather guy, and that is your full-time job, right?
unidentified		It is.
		There are not many of us, you know, and I'm kind of like you.
		I work out of my house here.
		That's where the weather center is set up.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		And you provide, what, hourly?
		What is your current schedule?
		Have you retired as you've aged, as we both have?
unidentified		No.
		No, I'm still doing it full-time, Art.
		I'm not in semi-retirement yet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isaac.
unidentified		I don't know how much longer I'll go like this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What does full-time mean for you?
unidentified		We run a normal schedule from 7 o'clock in the morning to 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
		And then, of course, besides this, whenever something's going on, such as the case today, we just go whenever we're needed.
		Plus, bulletins and special advisories that come up during the hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know many people in Lake Charles know you very well, and they depend on you, Lynn, for, I don't know, good reporting, I guess, of the weather.
		It can get really rough down there in situations like this.
		So they probably depend on you to tell them what's happening with this hurricane, right?
unidentified		Yes.
		We've been following this along since actually it was Tropical Depression No. 10 to begin with, if you remember.
		And that failed, and then it reclosed off, and they renamed it Tropical Depression No. 11 before it became Katrina, which, of course, tracked across Miami.
		And then do you notice how people reacted when this thing went through Miami?
		They thought, oh, my goodness, this was only supposed to be a one.
		And everybody had this tremendous reaction to this storm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They weren't ready.
unidentified		No, definitely not.
		They were not expecting what they got.
		But just pretend, just imagine what would have happened if Hurricane Andrew, a category 5 storm, had tracked just a little further north because it tracked just south of Miami.
		Then they could have made the comparison.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Didn't this tropical depression, it was so weird as it went across Florida, everybody thought it would immediately poop out, but either it maintained its strength as it crossed Florida, southern Florida, or it even built up a little bit over the marshy lands.
unidentified		Well, that's part of the deal there.
		I mean, for all practical purposes, the Everglades is water, you know, and that's where it tracks across.
		And I don't know what the water temperature is on the Everglades, but because of its shallow nature, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if the water temperature is 95 to 100 degrees out there.
		So that's one reason it didn't lose any more strength than it did.
		It did, for a short time, for several hours, drop down into tropical storm strength.
		And then, of course, immediately upon emerging out on the southwestern side of the peninsula, began to regain strength again.
		And from there, it's all history.
		You know the rest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Help me out with something here, Lynn.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm going to ask what may be some dumb questions, okay, about hurricanes.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One of the things I noticed is that during the day with this hurricane, it seems to have sort of held its status quo.
		And the big jumps in the building, like from category three to category five, occurred almost in the blink of an eye in the overnight hours.
		And I always thought the sun being out, adding energy would cause more building to occur during the day, but no, it occurred at night.
		I don't get it.
unidentified		No, this is relative to this eye replacement cycle that you were talking to Mark Sutta about.
		That's what resulted in that change in intensity there.
		Whenever it goes through one of these cycles, the storm tends to weaken somewhat.
		And it went through this entire cycle.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And then strengthened.
unidentified		Yes, immediately.
		Yes.
		Once the cycle was complete and that eye cleared up, when you begin to see that well-defined hole from the satellite picture, that's when it suddenly increased.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you heard me ask Mark about the whole eye replacement thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have anything to offer in that category?
unidentified		I really don't.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You either, huh?
		So it's one of the, what, science's great mysteries?
		We don't understand the process of...
		Apparently, that's why they didn't ask the people at NOAA.
		It may even be above their pay grade right now.
		In other words, nobody knows about this sort of thing.
		Should we hope for an eye replacement phase to begin, I don't know, within the next number of hours?
unidentified		It could.
		They've discussed this possibility.
		It could happen at almost any time.
		And just have to, like I say, wait and see.
		There's not that much more time before it's going to reach the coast.
		I was noticing on the observations last hour, there are 100 mile-an-hour gusts at the mouth of the Mississippi River already.
		Already?
		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		100 miles an hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my goodness.
unidentified		Oh, my God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Once again, my old friend, Lynn Whitlake, and I think that maybe Lynn, you're known by a different name there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that correct?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		so that everybody there understands who they're hearing, if you don't mind.
		The name you use on air is...
		Rob Robin?
		Okay, I think that's very important.
unidentified		A lot of people probably say, I know that guy's voice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So Rob Robin is the name you know in Lake Charles.
		All right, listen, we can't talk about the eye wall replacement because even you and even the people at NOAA apparently don't know about that.
		What do we have to look forward to after this?
		The rest of this hurricane Season, Lynn.
		What does it look like to you?
unidentified		Well, I know this hasn't been advertised too much because of Katrina, but it looks like there's another hot prospect.
		What is it, 800, 900 miles or so east of the Lesser Antilles, trying to close off into a depression?
		It may have done so.
		I already haven't looked at the latest tropical weather outlook.
		I could do that actually here while I'm talking to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, be my guest.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All eyes right now, naturally, and of course.
unidentified		See if it's done it yet, because like I say, everything's been so much focused on, let's see, okay.
		An area of low pressure associated with tropical wave gradually becoming better, organized about 275 miles southeast of the Cape Verde Island system, has the potential to become a tropical depression over the next day or so.
		That's one of them.
		Another one, an ill-defined area of low pressure is located about 590 miles northeast of the northern Leeward Islands.
		Shower activity associated with this system is poorly organized, and upper-level winds are not favorable for tropical cyclone formation.
		So we've got one out there in the infamous Cape Verde area that might be our next friend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Is this going to be the story from now on?
		That's an impossible question for you to answer.
		But I mean, is it going to get worse and worse?
		Are these years of hurricanes going to be more and more violent?
		Is that what you're going to do?
unidentified		Well, they tend to go in cycles of, you know, like 20 to 30 years.
		And we have been in one of these cycles since about 1995 when there seems to be more, greater number of hurricanes developing on the average every year.
		There are some off years when you have an El Niño or El Niño, rather, you have strong westerly winds aloft across the tropics, which tends to shear off these tropical systems, many of them, before they can develop.
		But mostly, when we're in this cycle we're in now, we'll tend to see more on the average every year hurricanes, which has been the case for about the last 10 years.
		So maybe another 20 years, we can look for a break.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Another 20 years.
		Okay, I'll keep that in mind.
		In the meantime, I'm watching the track right now on CNN, and even I can see at this point that if it were to continue on its current track, it would virtually, it seems to me, that's just me talking now, but it would pass virtually right over New Orleans.
unidentified		Yeah, they have it like in line to go right over Lake Poncentrain if it works out the way it is now.
		But again, it's a little jog this way, a little jog that way at the last minute could change that, you know.
		But it's still going, no matter how you cut it, I mean, if you're dealing with winds, what will probably be 120, 130 miles an hour by the time it gets that far inland, you're talking about a disaster, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, suppose it does go over the lake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is...
unidentified		Well, it depends how, you know, it depends how the wind...
		Another angle, it'll bring water from off the Gulf into the lake, and then as it goes by, push it down into the city.
		You've got the river on one side.
		I noticed that people were talking about the dikes being, or the levee being breached or broken.
		The water will come right up over it.
		I mean, it'll just simply blow the water right up over it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right over it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		It just depends.
		We'll just have to watch and wait and see how it all evolves.
		Too close to call.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you heard any recent news on the number of people remaining in New Orleans?
unidentified		Before we started our conversation, I think I heard something on CN about 100,000 people, something like that.
		But I've heard other figures of 250,000.
		So I don't really know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is kind of an event unprecedented, I think, in all of our history that a hurricane of this size would head directly toward New Orleans.
		It's just the nightmare scenario of them all.
		Exactly.
unidentified		Exactly.
		It's something you don't even want to think about.
		I just keep my fingers crossed that something happens here and they come out okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you study the weather, you really studied the weather very closely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there any serious experiments being done anywhere in the world that you know of to alter the course of hurricanes, to affect hurricanes in any way at all?
unidentified		I haven't heard anything since those old silver iodide experiments they did back, wait, what was it, the 50s, you know, seeing the clouds and all this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, of course.
unidentified		I haven't heard of anything, you know, recently.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You would think going on somewhere, considering the amount of monetary damage and lost lives and all the rest of it, that would be some kind of high priority.
		And since those old days of, you know, dropping stuff in the clouds, there'd be something new.
		But you say no.
unidentified		Well, that doesn't mean there's nothing going on that I've heard of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		That's right.
		Well, you're way west in Lake Charles.
		I take it that really, large as it is, this hurricane is not going to affect you at all, or will there be minor effects where you are or what?
unidentified		There'll be minor effects.
		I can step outside right now, and normally at this time of night, it's perfectly calm.
		There's a definite northeasterly breeze blowing about 5-10 miles an hour.
		And we've got this high cirrus shield over us with occasional middle clouds from rained-out spiral bands coming out of the system, trying to move into our area.
		But see on this side, we've got this dry flow coming down from the north.
		And as the spiral rain bands approach us, they tend to diminish.
		And it makes it a little tricky trying to forecast the probability of rain for tomorrow.
		So I've stuck a 50-50 chance in some of the rain bands will reach us.
		But we shouldn't see any significant weather this far west, anything more than some gusty winds and maybe some showers.
		That would be about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're saying this is about a one in 500-year event.
unidentified		Yeah, but the minute you say that, the minute you say that, next year there'll be another one just like it somewhere, you know?
		It's just happenstance.
		This particular storm happened to move into this particular area.
		I mean, it could be another, like I say, if Andrew, if Andrew would have come inland just a little bit north of where it did back in 1992, you would have been talking about another catastrophe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lynn, I know your passion for the weather.
		And it's obviously as strong as it ever was during the days that you and I risked our lives chasing tornadoes, but obviously your passion is as great as it ever was.
		So maybe this question is good for you.
		Shouldn't we know more by now with modern science and modern everything, Lynn?
unidentified		Well, they are, you know, they're working as fast as they can.
		You've got research scientists working, you know, every aspect of the weather, you know.
		But you can only know what you can know.
		I mean, you can only discover what you discover, and it just takes time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're talking about a foot of rain and 28-foot storm surge.
		That's on CNN right now.
		28-foot storm surge.
unidentified		Immediately to the right of where the eye wall makes landfall, right.
unidentified		That's where it'll be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does it...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If the eye wall...
unidentified		Yeah, the right side.
		The northeastern quadrant.
		Anything from 12 o'clock to 3 o'clock.
		Do you follow what I'm saying?
		Can we put a clock on the...
		Yeah, that northeastern quadrant is the most dangerous quadrant.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		For wind?
unidentified		Well, for the whole thing, for tornadoes or the storm surge, because you're on the right side of the counterclockwise revolving wind field, so that pushes the water on up.
		If you actually get on the other side of it, a water sometimes will drop down, actually, a little bit.
		And then, of course, there's the, like I say, the danger of tornadoes embedded in the rain bands, mostly the outer rain bands, and they're under tornado watch right now throughout that whole area to add insult to injury.
		It's just how the system or the system is built that ends up like that.
		If you're going to get hit by a hurricane, it's best to be out to the west of it than it is an equal distance to the east of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you're way to the west of it, and good for you.
		What are you going to do?
		Are you going to try and get a little bit of sleep before the day of reporting begins for you?
		You begin normally reporting on the radio about the weather when?
unidentified		At 7 o'clock in the morning, yes.
unidentified		But I get up about 5 o'clock to start assimilating information, you know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		So you've got to get up actually shortly, and I'm going to let you go, Lynn.
		And thank you.
		Just thanks a million times, buddy.
		And I will never, ever in my life forget the times we spent together.
unidentified		And I won't either, especially when we started radio together.
unidentified		I was on that bootleg radio station at Tamarolo Air Force Base.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, you started in the business.
		That's right.
		That's exactly right.
		I remember leaving that barracks-built radio station on many a day to chase some kind of eye wall or another with Lynn here, hoping for footage, hoping to see a tornado.
		And so that's our past, folks.
		We were kind of crazy.
		Lynn, thank you for being here.
unidentified		Well, thank you for calling, Art.
unidentified		I've enjoyed it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have a good night, buddy.
		That's a very, very old friend of mine, Lynn Whitlake, and I thought he ought to have a comment on this, as I'm going to let Whitley Streeber do shortly.
		In the meantime, I want to stress again, we're going to take calls as this show progresses, and we're going to take more and more calls from the audience.
		And I would like all of you, if you would, to exercise a little bit of discipline because we want to hear from people in the affected area only, people who have evacuated only.
		That kind of thing is what we want to have on the air.
		And that's about what I think talk radio can effectively do is exactly that.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		I just missed talking with Rob there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
unidentified		I didn't know that when I was in college, they used to write the college paper about him chasing tornadoes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, we did some crazy things, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're actually in Lake Charles also?
unidentified		I'm in Lake Charles also, and I was wanting to get some information about the Louisiana Offshore Oil Court, which is one of the biggest offshore oil ports in the world, just south of New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would imagine everything's closed, isn't it?
		In other words, everything would be shut down.
		The oil rigs out there have shut down.
		I just had a story that oil went rocketing over $70 a barrel.
unidentified		Gas prices are up 20 cents in Chicago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you say 20 cents?
unidentified		On the market.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Since when?
unidentified		Since this evening, it was on the hourly news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Up 20 cents.
unidentified		Per gallon, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At the pump.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At the pump in Chicago.
unidentified		No, that's when the pumpers are buying it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I see.
unidentified		Okay.
		New Orleans had the lowest price for gas, oddly enough, at $2.45 a gallon.
		And that won't last long.
		The interstate was clogged today.
		Yes.
		But that Louisiana offshore oil port was not built to sustain this kind of hurricane.
		It was built to sustain 143 mile-an-hour winds.
		And the fees are right at, I think they said they had 65-foot seas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And it's not built for that either.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, what they actually said was they had 65-foot waves around the eye wall.
unidentified		And this will, it's not built for that.
		That would take years to rebuild.
		And it's about half the Gulf of Mexico's production goes through there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good Lord.
		All right.
		Well, thank you very, very much.
		I appreciate the call.
		And again, I suppose from that point of view, it is hitting us at an absolutely awful time, isn't it?
		Just when we're beginning to bend, not perhaps yet broken with regard to oil and gas prices, something like this comes along.
		Actually, the least of our worries, though, right now, a city, a city, a very important city to the U.S., New Orleans, its fate is literally in the air.
		Its fate at this hour is literally in the air.
		We could lose an old landmark city.
		I've never been there.
		The people who have love New Orleans, and to actually lose a city is unthinkable.
		To have a Situation where 20 or 30 feet of water could be covering one of our major cities where a million 200,000 people or a million people at least have left and will have nothing to come back to.
		All of this is almost unthinkable.
		What could happen to those who remain?
		Also unthinkable.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard Line, are you there?
		Going once?
		Going twice?
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you are there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I almost hung up on you, dear.
unidentified		I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Okay.
		No, I'm in Baker, Louisiana.
		I live in New Orleans.
		I love the city.
		It's such a beautiful city.
		And we're just all just devastated.
		We're not sure what's going to happen.
		It's looking really scary.
		And with a lot of hurricanes that come in, not a lot of people always get worried because it's always iffy.
		But now that the meteorologists are saying it's for sure, leave, get out.
		It happens so quick.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You say you're in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Give me your location one more time, please.
unidentified		Baker.
unidentified		It's outside of Baton Rouge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Outside of Baton Rouge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And how are you likely to be affected there?
unidentified		Well, you know, I'm really, I'm not quite sure because we're getting a little bit of rain, and we've been told that it really shouldn't affect us that badly here.
		I mean, New Orleans is a bull, and it's a lot closer to the coast.
		So, I mean, we think we're okay here.
		So we've decided to stay, and I still have friends that have decided to stay in New Orleans, actually.
		So the number that you gave at 100,000 to 250, I would say the max, really, because I just have, I mean, I have a lot of friends that have evacuated, but I still have a couple of things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A couple who have remained.
		Of those that remained, what in the world?
		I mean, what is their reasoning to stay knowing it's that bold?
unidentified		A lot of people have ridden out hurricanes for years and years.
		And, you know, a little damage or a lot, but still nothing devastating.
		And I think people just stick to that even as bad as it gets.
		Some people actually know the danger and say, yeah, we'll probably lose the roof of our house.
		Like, why are you staying?
		Honestly, I don't know.
		I, in the past, have, with Ivan and Lily and Isidore, I stayed because if, which I know it's silly, but I mean, if they say it might hit or it might get to a three, you know, then for whatever reason, it's just such a hassle to pack up and move the traffic.
		And of course it's all worth it.
		Of course it is.
		But, you know, it costs so much money, these trips, to take quote-unquote vacations, you know, but then, I mean, and it's miserable.
		And you're in the car for hours and you spend so much extra money and, you know, you come back and nothing happened.
		You know, a lot of people after, I don't know which one, a couple years ago, nothing happened, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There is that, I suppose.
		You're right.
		I understand, thank you, the psychology of what you're talking about, that you've been very scared before.
		The authorities have said, you've got to get out of here, you've got to evacuate, and people have done so.
		Category 4, the top of the scale is 155 miles an hour, and that's where we are right now.
		The hurricane is at 155 miles an hour.
		That puts it at the very top of Cat 4, one mile per hour more, and it's back to a category 5.
		So while it sounds good, it's not quite as good as it sounds, in that it's still every bit as powerful.
		So I guess if you want to be optimistic, and I would like to be, because this truly is the worst case scenario approaching New Orleans, everybody's nightmare, at least it's a movement in a favorable direction, if not really meaningful in terms of less damage.
		It certainly is movement in a slightly favorable direction, and that's a wonderful thing.
		Pressure is 910 millibars.
		It's located at 28.2 north, 89.6 west.
		And it still would appear as though New Orleans will take the brunt of the storm.
		If it continues as is right now, New Orleans is just dead in the sites.
		Now, the levees, the water, the size of this storm surge, all of that remaining incredibly dangerous and probably going to breach several of the protections that New Orleans has.
		Nevertheless, at this hour, able to report to you an obvious slight improvement and sort of a little bit of a hopeful sign, dropping to the very top of the cat four or category four on the Sepphorse-Simpson scale for hurricanes.
		Right back, and when we do get back, it's an obvious duh.
		Whitley Streeber is a very good and old friend of mine.
		Together, we wrote a book called The Coming Global Superstorm, as I know you're aware, which became the movie the day after tomorrow.
		So seeing what we're seeing manifest right now in the Gulf of Mexico is, believe me, for the both of us, a very eerie feeling.
		So appropriately, in a moment, Whitley Strieber.
		The End Again, one more person to sort of officially chat with here, Whitley Strieber, in a moment.
		Then we're going to begin taking calls.
		And when we do, it's only going to be from people either with incredibly important information or people in the affected areas.
		Those remaining in New Orleans, those evacuating from New Orleans, and that would be many, many of you out there.
		And I think that's what talk radio can do.
		Just one quick note.
		Victor from San Diego says Global Consciousness Project Art is going nuts.
		Sounds like a Geiger counter on steroids with frequent whistles thrown in.
		For those of you who have been monitoring that, I have two things to say.
		One, I'm certainly not surprised that it's going berserk.
		But two, and this should stop the questions that are inevitably going to come.
		No, I would never in a million years consider doing any sort of consciousness experiment in the middle of a situation of this sort.
		I just, it's the the worst case scenario in my mind for toying with that power.
		And very bad timing.
		So I'm simply not going to do it.
		Don't ask.
		You know, I made this decision actually now, years ago, a couple of years ago, and I'm not going to toy with it any further.
		I recognize it's real.
		I recognize its power.
		And I am not going to toy with something of this magnitude.
		That said, here comes Whitley Striber, author of The Coming Global Superstorm, co-author with myself, and, of course, many, many other books.
		And Whitley and I have talked about this sort of thing since we got together.
		Whitley, welcome to the program.
unidentified		Well, it's good to be here, Ert.
unidentified		And there is one thing that we can do, which is pray.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of course.
unidentified		And which my website's newsletter sent out a request to everyone who takes that newsletter this evening to please do so.
		I have seen the power of prayer in my wife's situation last fall.
		And so I know the Coast audience is good at this, so do try.
		And it's not an experiment.
		Hopefully, maybe we'll get it down to a category three if all goes well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, prayer is in order.
		Absolutely in order.
		Indeed, it is.
		And frankly, at this moment, that's about all that's left, Whitley, is prayer going to happen.
unidentified		Well, it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's going to happen is going to happen.
		It's right there.
		So, Whitley, you and I have written a lot about climate, climate change, rapid climate change.
unidentified		And this is part of it.
		It is exactly the sort of thing that I was afraid and you were afraid would start to happen.
		And it is happening.
		And the National Weather Service is saying this is only the beginning for this year, that there are going to likely be even stronger storms or more storms between now and the end of the season, which probably won't come until mid or late October.
		So we could be back on the air in a few weeks with another storm.
		Hopefully we won't be.
		Unfortunately, in New Orleans, the situation there is almost unimaginable if this does not drop back to the point where the storm surge is under 15 feet.
		And if the levees are breached, right now, they are looking at estimates predicting 60 to 80 percent of the city's houses destroyed by the wind.
		And with flood damage, in addition to that, homeless American city, a million people without homes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you say 60 to 80% of the buildings?
unidentified		Of the houses.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just destroyed?
unidentified		Yeah.
		The houses in New Orleans are, I don't know how long it's been since you've been there, but it's...
		Oh, well, I love New Orleans.
		I've been going there since I was a boy, and I must admit that I don't have much memory of the times I went there in college because I tended to go there during Mardi Gras.
		Anyone who's done that will understand what I'm talking about.
		But I did have a lot of fun that I do know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure.
unidentified		And we were just in New Orleans in last September and having a wonderful time.
		But it's an old city, and the center of the city is not built to withstand this kind of weather at all.
		The older homes, the big old trees will go down.
		The graveyards are not deeply dug.
		And the result is that the coffins are going to come out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I had heard Whitley that in New Orleans a lot of people were actually buried above ground.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that true?
unidentified		That's correct.
		Yeah.
		You're going to have, in addition to the fact that there is a big chemical industry, a gasoline fractioning industry around New Orleans.
		So this water, if a massive flood occurs, is going to be toxic and filled with corpses.
		I mean, it's just not a, it's unimaginable.
		I mean, you talk about a disaster of biblical proportions.
		This has been something that planners in the Army Corps of Engineers have been worrying about and concerned about through the past two administrations.
		The result, next year, the Corps of Engineers budget for New Orleans is going to be slashed by $71 million and planning or study to figure out how to plan for the storm that's happening tonight is being shelved.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Shelved.
		I wonder if the city of New Orleans is threatening with being shelved itself.
		I mean, if there was, for example, 30 feet of water, if that horrible thing occurred and there was 30 feet of water covering everything, you're right.
		It would be this toxic, absolute toxic soup that I suppose potentially could make New Orleans, not to mention getting the water out, but even if you did, uninhabitable for I don't know how long.
unidentified		Well, for a very long time, and maybe permanently.
		The problem being that if what's left behind after it's pumped out is too toxic, it might become impossible to live there anymore.
		And that could happen.
		If this stays the way it is, going in there with 150-plus mile-an-hour winds, you're going to see a storm surge that will substantially breach the levee system.
		And this scenario in some form, Hopefully, not the worst one we're talking about right now, will unfold.
		It will happen.
		Hopefully, if it drops down to a category three and you start to look at 130 mile-an-hour winds, 140 mile-an-hour winds, perhaps not with the thing beginning to break up, maybe it won't happen that way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would sure have to start breaking up quickly.
		You know, I'm watching, as I'm sure everybody is, some television.
		I've got CNN, and the pictures that they're still showing, the radar photographs they're showing of the storm, show the eye wall extremely still well-defined.
unidentified		Well-defined and big.
		The other thing is that along with the slight decrease in storm intensity came a decrease in storm speed.
		And that means only one thing, that it may increase again in intensity, especially as dawn comes.
		The reason the storm is like this, and we started on Unknown Country a couple of days ago, three days ago, four days ago, warning that this was likely to be a very serious storm because we could see the way it was tracking in the Atlantic.
		It was almost certainly going to cross Florida and come intact into the Gulf of Mexico.
		From now on, any time a tropical storm comes into the Gulf of Mexico intact in the absence of a powerful high moving down from the north in the continental United States, there's tremendous danger for a simple reason.
		Right now, as we speak, the Gulf waters are this is the second warmest season on record for Gulf water.
		And it is like a pressure cooker, that Gulf, because the water is very warm.
		There is a tremendous problem of sea life decline, of precipitate decline of sea life in the Gulf.
		The Gulf is becoming a time bomb, and not a time bomb, and it's blowing off right now.
		And we're going to see this again and again and again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me stop you and ask you if you, going back to what you were saying, with this eye wall reforming and all the rest of it, it went through that in the early hours, not too far from dawn central time, I believe.
		Yesterday, I always thought that a hurricane would intensify when the sun was out and there was even more heat and more energy being poured into it.
		But no, this hurricane chose the mid, you know, the very early morning hours to do its intensifying.
unidentified		Well, that's usually when they do intensify.
		Why?
		Well, the reason is that the cooler air in the upper atmosphere drops lower.
		And when that happens, the warm air billowing up from below.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is more in conflict with, oh, I've got it.
unidentified		Yeah.
		And that happens during the early hours of the morning.
		And unfortunately, because the carbon dioxide and methane that's now in Earth's atmosphere in large quantities holds heat closer to the ground, heat isn't radiating into the stratosphere the way it used to.
		And this is, as a result of which, the upper atmosphere is much colder than it used to be.
		And this is why when this storm started, we were warning that it was going to happen very quickly.
		And in fact, it went from a category 3 to a category 5 to a category 4 to a category 5 very quickly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Shockingly quickly.
unidentified		10 hours faster than the original National Weather Service prediction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
unidentified		Because the stratosphere is much cooler than it has been in the past, and the lower atmosphere and the water are much warmer.
		And this is the scenario that we outlined in Superstorm.
		And it's happening before our eyes, quite frankly.
		I mean, we're going to see many gigantic hurricanes.
		I mean, this is going to become, unfortunately, the norm.
		And you're looking at a hurricane right now that if we're lucky, it won't take out a major American city.
		If we're lucky, it won't take out a major American city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that is going to take luck now, from what I can see.
unidentified		It's luck and prayer.
		That's all we've got left.
		And think of it.
		Last weekend, nobody dreamed this thing was even coming.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's true.
unidentified		Just last weekend.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely right.
unidentified		Yeah, and we've got another depression out in the Atlantic in the same area that Katrina started.
		And we can have another situation that if weather conditions don't change, and I don't know that they will, where we're looking at another one of these things coming up somewhere.
		I mean, it's totally impossible to tell where right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any location in the entire along, we have a lot of coastline in the U.S. Thousands and thousands and thousands of miles of coastline.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there any single place along all those thousands of miles of coastline that it would be more serious for a hurricane to hit than exactly where this one is hitting?
unidentified		No, because this city is below sea level.
unidentified		It's the only coastal city in this country that's below sea level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's the worst possible place that it could be.
unidentified		It's the worst scenario, and this is why experts have been urging that there be planning to understand what to do to prevent New Orleans from being destroyed by a category five.
unidentified		That planning should have been going on five, six years ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there was a man, you know, they did some interviews on CNN and elsewhere, and he's been repeating this nightmare scenario.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He's one of the planners of something or another in the city, some official guy, and he was saying, yeah, I've been screaming my lungs out about this possibility, and now here it is.
unidentified		And it's a little line item deep in the budget, and they just slashed it.
		This is, I mean, $71 million is going to gut the program That exists.
		And you'll hear them declaring an emergency and talking on the TV and the radio about how sorry they are for the poor people in New Orleans and everything else.
		No one will be talking about the fact that they slashed the budget and never did the planning that should have started years ago to save this city from this very scenario that's coming down on it like a out of curiosity, Whitley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What could they have done?
unidentified		Well, the major thing that needs to be done there is to understand what kind of water pressures the levee system can take, especially down at the mouth of the Mississippi,
		and what sort of maximum storm surges can be expected and where to put that water when it appears.
		Because it doesn't have to go across the levee and into the city.
		I mean, we're intelligent.
		We can figure out ways to get it to go other places safer.
		And that would be what it would be all about, is revision of the levee system, essentially.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would have to be, I guess, from what I'm hearing, one gigantic, very expensive revision of the levee system, because I'm hearing that this could be so bad, the water will just...
unidentified		That's right.
		That's correct.
		And yes, it would be expensive.
		But what do we, we have to make some choices here.
		We are going to see, we are in the middle of a climate change situation.
		Sudden climate change is occurring.
		It's taking place right now.
		Methane is outgassing in massive quantities in Siberia because the tundra in Siberia is melting much faster because it goes farther south than the tundra in Alaska.
		The permafrost is melting.
		We see that the great columns of cold water that used to drop down south of Greenland that were driving the Gulf Stream, there were 12 of them.
		Now there are only three and they're not moving very strongly.
		We see the Greenland glaciers are turning into torrents of water.
		We see less ice cover in the North Polar region than at any time in history.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Adjacent area is 75 mile per hour gusts, so I'm trying to stay as abreast of this as I can.
		In the meantime, we have with us at this hour Whitley Streeber, and we're just going to kind of be going in this program.
		I'm not saying when we're going to end it.
		I kind of have an option to go as I want to go.
		And I'm going to just sort of watch and decide.
		We're going to play this whole thing by ear.
		That's what talk radio does best, just sort of shoots from the hip.
		And so in a moment, we'll have Whitley back.
		We'll continue to watch the situation, give you details as we can.
		Katrina.
unidentified		Gunshot
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
		I'm Art Bell, and we're watching Katrina as it bears down on New Orleans.
		Paul from Calgary, Alberta says, hey, Art, referring to an earlier fast blaster, he's not kidding.
		The Princeton eggs are absolutely going berserk.
		Well, I'm not surprised at all by that, nor shocked in any way.
		I would imagine it to be so.
		That power is real.
		That power, I think, is established in my mind beyond any shadow of a doubt.
		But I reiterate, I don't understand this power, and therefore I'm not going to use it except to ask you to pray for a situation, a favorable outcome there.
		I think that's about as close as we can get, and it's virtually kind of the same thing, but not quite.
		Traditional prayer will be just fine.
		At any rate, Whitley, welcome back.
unidentified		Well, it's good to be back, Art.
		I wish it was under happier circumstances.
		I'm just receiving a report that Bui 4240, which is 50 miles east of the mouth of the Mississippi River, is recording waves with heights of 40 feet and more right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where again, please, is this?
unidentified		That's 50 miles east of the mouth of the Mississippi River.
unidentified		And as you know, the National Weather Service is looking at possible waves as high as 28 feet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And that could be the kind of wave that would severely overtop the levees.
unidentified		And if that storm surge is that strong, if it's above 20 feet, in fact, and significantly above 20 feet for any length of time, it's going to flood New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, here's a question for you.
		Suppose the worst scenario came true and New Orleans was inundated and uninhabitable virtually for some period of time.
		I suppose people would begin asking if it should be rebuilt in the same place again.
unidentified		Well, the question would be, could it be rebuilt?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess that would be first.
		Could it be done?
		But even beyond that, should it be done?
		You've just finished documenting a lot of changes going on in the world right now that are going to produce increasingly large storms from your point of view.
		Is that a fair statement?
unidentified		Well, that is a fair statement.
		And I think that areas that are marginal, like New Orleans, are just at risk.
		And yes, I think the question of whether or not we should absorb that population into the country or try to rebuild the city if it was an economically feasible thing to do in an engineering project that could be accomplished.
		Well, that's a decision that will have to be made If this happens, if it's that bad.
		And you know, I have to tell you, I'm such an incorrigible optimist, and I just can't believe it's going to be that bad.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Maybe everybody hopes you're right, Whitley.
unidentified		Yeah, I certainly hope I'm right, but I have to say that the reality of it is that this darn thing is already still way stronger than it needs to be to cause this to happen.
unidentified		And there is a good possibility that toward dawn it will strengthen again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's unimaginable anyway at all.
		But Woodley, if by some miracle, in God's will, New Orleans survives to be habitable and it's all okay somehow, isn't this enough of a shock and a wake-up call that after this, assuming they survive, they have to do something, you know, change the system of protection there.
		In other words, isn't this such a shock and wake-up call that they're going to have to move to change it?
unidentified		Well, the problem is this.
		Other cities, Galveston, Houston, Miami, cities along the Atlantic coast, other cities on the Gulf Coast, are all going to be clamoring for help, all of them.
		And how is a decision to be made as to which ones get it and which don't?
		Already, the administration has made a decision with regard to New Orleans, which is essentially to ignore the problem and to abandon it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess, though, I was asking, might this not be a big enough shock to cause them to rethink that?
unidentified		I think at least that they would say they will.
		But then, you know, also knowing that it's not too likely to happen again and not forgetting the fact, I guess, or they will forget the fact that I believe it was last year that Florida got hit by four hurricanes in a row.
		They won't want to spend the money.
		They won't want to spend the money.
		And, you know, there are other cities.
		I'll tell you a city that is in dire need of real planning and significant work on its seaward facings is New York City.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		New York City.
unidentified		Absolutely, because not so much Manhattan, but Brooklyn is at jeopardy.
		If a storm like this were to strike New York and Long Island, that area would be terribly damaged, category five.
		This is, I believe, only the fourth category five that has actually made landfall in the United States.
		The last one of any significance, the last category five was Hurricane Andrews.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know that that's going to be the case, Whitley.
		They did lower it to a four.
		It's at one point.
unidentified		Well, let's see what happens after in the morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You seem to be suggesting that you believe there could be a strengthening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God, how could that happen?
unidentified		Yeah, I do because I just see those very warm Gulf waters, and the only thing that's preventing us, that would prevent a strengthening is if the hurricane invested the land sufficiently overnight to where it couldn't draw enough energy to strengthen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that possible?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, we've already got a portion of the hurricane over land, right?
unidentified		Yeah, but it's slowing down.
		It's down to 12 miles an hour, and if it slows down more, the more it slows down, the more dangerous it is.
		Unless, of course, went into reverse, which is unfortunately not going to happen.
		But it slowed down from 13 miles an hour to 12 miles an hour, and we'll have to look and see what the next advisory says if it's down to 10 or 8.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that odd, actually?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't it more normal for a hurricane, as it begins to actually touch land, to speed up and traditionally up into the northeast part of the U.S.?
unidentified		Well, it's really variable.
		It depends on how it's coming ashore as to whether or not it's going to exactly what's going to happen.
		They will stop sometimes and churn for a while as they make landfall because the friction of the land surface is greater than the friction of the water against the air, the moving air, and it does tend to slow it down.
		But then what will happen is that the hurricane will literally kind of roll up the front of a high-pressure system, and they can get to going pretty fast when they do that, even over land.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Well, I've heard that there's effectively absolutely nothing affecting this hurricane.
		In other words, in terms of systems or winds that would push it or direct it in any way, it's virtually with nothing.
unidentified		No, there's a high, but it's pretty stable.
		It's not moving over the central United States and over across North Texas.
		That is not moving.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, really, is this country, with the global changes that you talked about, is America going to have to rethink how they're building cities, where they're building, where they're farming, where they're doing just about everything?
unidentified		Well, unfortunately, there's no way to predict yes is the answer.
		The problem is there's no way to predict how.
		I can assure you, if you live in Atlantic coastal areas or on the Gulf Coast, you need to think very carefully because your future may be limited in those areas.
		As far as the rest of the country is concerned, Art, there's just no way to tell.
		The main problem is going to be things like Europe is experiencing right now, just the past few days, is a phenomenal drought in southern, in Spain and Portugal, and flooding in Central and Eastern Europe almost beyond, in fact, so far outside of the records, it's never really happened like that there before.
		At the same time, A few weeks ago in Bombay, Mumbai, in India, they had 37 inches of rain in a day.
		Now, that's so much rain that cattle drowned where they stood.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're describing a situation that's worldwide.
		You're saying don't just look at this hurricane.
		Look at everything that's going on in the world and see a pattern.
unidentified		You see a definite pattern of rapidly intensifying weather activity.
unidentified		It is getting much, much more intense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it's absolutely undeniable, and I think most people would join us in observing that because it's happening before our very eyes.
		You can't very well deny it.
		But on the other hand, Whitley, you see the CNN anchors talking to the people at NOAA, and the people at NOAA, when asked about global warming, just laugh.
unidentified		Well, they have to.
unidentified		I mean, they want to keep their jobs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that would be a career-ending move, you mean?
unidentified		I don't think it would help.
unidentified		John McCain and Hillary Clinton, a Republican and Democrat, just recently, a couple of days ago, together went to Alaska and essentially came back with the news that the place is melting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's right.
		I saw the statement from Senator McCain.
		That's what he said, that essentially that Alaska is melting.
unidentified		Unfortunately, the administration has made a commitment from before, long before Bush was even in office, that this isn't happening.
		And the fact that it is happening is just too bad for them.
		I always say nature is numbers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I shouldn't laugh at it.
		I mean, you can politically say anything you want.
		Sorry, this is not happening.
		I mean, it's like, I don't know, it's like having your wife come home, find you in bed with another woman, and just telling her, you don't see this, hon. You're not seeing this.
unidentified		It's not happening.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's not happening.
unidentified		You would be making decisions under the radar of the country, and that a region as vulnerable as this should have the budgets in the areas that might help protect it cut, slashed even, is simply incredible.
		I mean, it's like throwing matches at gasoline.
		It's utterly irresponsible, and I'm sorry to see it.
		As you know, I am not a particularly political person.
		I'm an old-fashioned middle-of-the-road American.
		I'm not a Republican.
		I'm not a Democrat.
		I'm not a Liberal.
		I'm not a conservative.
		But I am practical.
		I'm real practical.
		And practical says we need to work on this because we've got a lot of people in this country who have beautiful lives in a beautiful country.
		We want to keep it that way.
		That means we have to pay attention because in nature, no matter what you may say politically, maybe what you want to believe or don't want to believe or what somebody, some idiot's telling you on the radio, and this doesn't happen to be one of them, I do know what I'm talking about.
		Two and two in nature is always four.
		It's never going to be three and three-quarters or four and an eighth, no matter what they say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I guess unless they say, no, it's three.
		That is our decision.
		Here, we're signing here that it's three.
		So there you have it.
unidentified		Then we pay the price, just like the people in New Orleans are paying the price right now.
		We pay.
		They say that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I guess I don't know what else to say, Witt.
		It's what it is.
		We're going to ride out the next several hours and see what happens.
		But either way, you brought to light sort of a, I don't know, an angering aspect of all of this that there was a study just slashed that would have looked at how this is.
unidentified		Or at least looked at how to save New Orleans from a category five.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they decided not to do it.
		Perhaps the thinking is there is really nothing that can be done.
		Could that be...
		That's not fair, huh?
unidentified		No, no, it's not true.
		The first thing, you need to see, you need to figure out which, for example, we don't even know for sure which levees are at jeopardy right now because that sort of study has not been done.
		Depending on the angle at which the hurricane approaches a city like New Orleans, or approaches this city, approaches New Orleans, certain levees, some levees will be in jeopardy of being flooded over, others will not.
		But if you had planning and you understood what the situation was, you might be able to strengthen or have strengthened already by raising their height the levees that are most likely to be breached.
		And that would help enormously.
		Enormously.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're not long-term planners.
		We're not good.
		Americans are not good at long-term planning.
		We never have been.
		We seem to operate by, I don't know, the emergency of the moment, and then we act.
		But we don't plan long-term.
		People are only here on Earth so long, and I guess that has a little to do with their thinking, Whitley.
		In other words, I'm going to be here so long, and after that, hey, we can't think like that anymore.
unidentified		You know, when the British began working on the mouth of the Thames to protect London from inundations, from ocean-going inundations from the ocean, back in the 60s.
		Back in the 60s.
		Now, if there is an enormous storm surge in that area, London will probably not be flooded because of the work that they did and have been doing.
		This is work that we should have started on.
		The planning should have started in the 70s And the work should have been completed in the 80s.
		Instead, we sit here tonight, just ready, having to pray, hoping we won't lose a major American city.
		And incidentally, a city through which one-third of the energy fuel products that we consume in this country passes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's going to be a gigantic issue.
unidentified		You are going to see gas prices go berserk next week.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That was my next question.
		That was my next question, and there's the answer.
		Next week, you'll see them going berserk.
unidentified		The futures are going to be probably uplimit all five days, which would my guess, unless it's not as bad as it looks like it will be now.
		And if that's the case, then it won't, obviously it won't get that bad.
		But right now, it just looks terrible.
		Is there any report yet, Whitley, that you're aware of about how the oil I guess no one knows how the oil platforms right now are faring right in all likelihood they're fine the platforms are shut down and evacuated there may be some damage but they are mostly modern oil platforms are engineered to take 200 mile an hour sustained winds what about the refining infrastructure not no no it's
		Very vulnerable.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
unidentified		It's vulnerable primarily because of all the piping and so forth that's exposed directly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Because getting oil is one thing, but you have to refine it to get gasoline.
		Without that, of course, prices go absolutely up and out of sight.
		You think that'll happen just because of the futures anyway?
unidentified		Well, it'll happen.
		It'll happen because of the fact that these refineries and so forth, the oil platforms need to be shut down for an indefinite period of time.
		if New Orleans is flooded in the the area becomes unviable then then there's going to be a substantial amount of production of gasoline storage and production infrastructure that's going to stop working for an unknown amount of time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, Lee, listen, we're coming to the end of this hour.
		I want to thank you for being here.
		And I'm going to take some calls.
		I'm going to try and take some calls from the affected area.
		But I really thank you for being here tonight.
		Winds remain at 155 miles an hour.
		That's about one mile an hour under category five.
		So it's an extremely dangerous hurricane.
		Moving north at this moment at 12 miles per hour.
		Again, north.
		So let's see.
		It's 110 miles south-southeast of New Orleans moving north.
		The pressure is 915 millibars.
		That's up a little bit.
		So what we're going to do now, I think, for however long we're going to do it, is to take calls.
		And if you would please, here's the way we'll line it up.
		On the first set of lines, I would like people only in the affected area.
		And by first set of lines, I mean the first-time caller line, the wildcard line, and perhaps the East of the Rockies line.
		All of those, it seems, would be appropriate for affected area callers.
		And then on the other two lines, West of the Rockies International, we will go ahead and take calls because that's what talk radio does.
		But obviously, people on those lines cannot and will not be in the affected area.
		So with all of that in mind, let us begin.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, how are you, Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm all right, sir.
unidentified		Well, I left New Orleans probably 12 hours ago, give or take, and have averaged a little less than 19 miles during this journey, an hour.
unidentified		It has really been a long trek for the last 12 hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What highway have you been on?
unidentified		Everything was very congested coming out.
		I ended up taking a back road, an old highway, airline highway outside of New Orleans, and I took I-90.
		And I'm about 220 miles outside of New Orleans now.
		And there's still a steady, there's a caravan, let's put it that way, of cars that are still constantly moving, looking for accommodation, and people aren't finding any all the way to Dallas, really.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any idea how many people you would talk to who said they were going to stay and try and ride it out?
unidentified		It's ironic that you say that.
		My business partners and very close friends, a handful of them, have decided to stay.
		I think that at first they were probably misinformed about the strength of this, and I think that that's probably common for a lot of people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, they've been slamming it on the media.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't see how you could miss it.
unidentified		Well, I think there's a lot of people from New Orleans that sort of have a poor psychology about hurricanes.
		They've stuck through many of them.
		Last year we had Ivan.
		It was a very close call.
		Many people evacuated.
		And I think that it sort of people waited a very long time and thought, you know, it's sort of like thought that this was going to escape us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The chicken little syndrome.
		The chicken little syndrome.
		In other words, they got through it before they'll get through it again, that kind of deal.
unidentified		Absolutely.
		I was planning on staying and got a phone call at 6.30 in the morning.
		And literally overnight, I think this is what happened to a lot of people in New Orleans.
		All of a sudden we woke up and it was a different storm.
		And people had to make changes very quickly.
		And I think that contributed to the congestion leaving the city.
		But some of my friends are trying to stick it out.
		They have natural gas generators that don't run off of typical gas.
		If they should last for a very long time, they're tapped into the natural gas lines in the city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm curious about something.
		What does it mean?
		I mean, when the mayor and the governor say mandatory evacuation, I understand voluntary.
		But once they say mandatory, what does that mean?
		You know, beyond.
		It means we're telling you you have to get out, but they really can't back that up, can they?
unidentified		No, they can't.
		There is in Orleans Parish, there is our neighboring parish, Jefferson Parish, there was something that was addressed by the parish president.
		He said that if he could, if he had the ability to enforce it physically, he would go door to door and ask people to leave.
		This is something that was incredibly severe.
		I know that Mayor Nagan in New Orleans tried to find a way to enforce it legally, but it just wasn't going to happen.
		The fear is also, there are 35,000 people in the Superdome, and there are a number of plazas that are situated in different levels.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me stop you just very quickly so I can be sure of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're saying there are currently 35,000 people in the Superdome?
unidentified		Yes.
		Plus or minus two or three people.
		Two or three thousand, I'm sorry.
		Wow.
		It's a significant number.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's a big number, yeah.
unidentified		Most of the people that have gone there went with insufficient ration.
		Yeah.
		And some people just went with the clothes on their back and a handbag.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's going to have to come to be a way to supply these people if the worst scenario comes true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know what they do, airdrops or something?
unidentified		I have no idea.
		I do know that National Guard has slowly made its way into parts of downtown New Orleans.
		I don't know how effective they will be when the water does come, and it sounds like it will certainly happen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, in my mind, when I hear mandatory evacuation, I think, well, okay, the National Guard is going to swarm in.
		People are going to be going, you know, National Guard going door to door, making people leave.
		But there probably wasn't time for that kind of thing, was there?
unidentified		No, there wasn't.
		At 3 o'clock, when I actually had the ability to leave the city, it was I got right on the interstate, and I sat there and a parked car for an hour before there was any flow of traffic.
		It was very difficult leaving, and some people, I think, really just thought this was going to be a very strong storm, but did not realize that there is an enormous amount of water that could breach the levee, mainly from the lake.
		And it's becoming more and more frightening.
		I've tried to get in touch with friends in New Orleans and tell them this for hours.
		I'm hearing mainly through, luckily through talk radio, that this really could be something frightening with the money.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I also wonder how many people are going to be caught on the highway.
unidentified		Well, I saw a significant number of people that don't have the ability.
		New Orleans has a high level of poverty.
		24% of people in New Orleans live in poverty, and they just don't have the ability to leave.
		And Mayor Nagan was trying to commandeer some public transportation buses.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He mentioned that buildings and vehicles could be commandeered.
unidentified		Yeah, it was, I do have to give the city of New Orleans and other parishes and police officers a lot of credit because they certainly did do as much as they can, and they worked very well with each other, moving from parish to parish.
unidentified		State troopers and government officials worked very well, and a lot of people just really woke up, and that's when the evacuation really began for, I think, a significant number of New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, I've got somebody who's fast-blasted me here, a dean in San Diego caller, and he says, you know, the United States has never before lost a city.
		That's certainly true.
		We have not lost a city in my memory.
		So he goes on to say, even if no life is lost, too late for that, I guess, what would it do to America to lose one of its biggest cities?
		That's a big one to throw at you, but what do you think it would do to America to lose one of its big cities?
unidentified		I really feel it's frightening because I think about how much life will change in New Orleans.
		This is something that many people will never recover from.
		Everything that they have will be lost.
		And their jobs, there's a lot of small business owners.
		New Orleans does not have large commerce.
		And you really start to think about that, how deeply people's lives will be affected.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you're exactly right, Color.
		Listen, thank you very much.
		I've got to scoot along, but a whole lot of things struck me.
		One of the things that struck me right between the eyes was the fact that in New Orleans right now, they'll take the cameras around.
		You'll be able to see there aren't sandbags.
		Some people, I suppose, have boarded up, but there have been no heroic efforts to sandbag.
		Pretty much people have taken what they can, their valuables, things they cannot replace in any way at all, and they've gotten in automobiles and simply left with what little they can carry.
		Sort of an attitude of, if it's going to happen, there are no sandbags.
		There's no little heroic efforts that can save this.
		It's going to be a lost city.
		And I kind of agree with the person, Jeff, who sent this, not Jeff, Dean in San Diego.
		It's a question that I would like to throw out for all of you.
		How would it affect us just psychologically to lose, actually lose an American city?
		To have an American city become uninhabitable?
		What would that do to America's psyche?
		It's a pretty interesting question.
		We'll be right back.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very briefly, let me roll over this again.
		We're asking that people call the following numbers only if you're in the affected area.
		Okay?
		We'll take your call at this point right away.
		We're going to plow into calls from all of you.
		In other words, we're going to do what talk radio does and talk to you.
		So first-time callers, area code 775-727-1222.
		Now, again, that's for people in the affected area only, as is this number, area code 775-727-1295.
		And then, of course, east of the Rockies, toll-free at 1-800-825-5033.
		A wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Good morning, Art.
		That last caller in his voice, did you hear fatigue or fear?
		Hard to tell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's an interesting question.
		Now, yeah, I'd have to think about it a little bit.
		Maybe a mixture.
unidentified		I just got a report from a friend of mine that's trying to head out of the area there, and he's still stuck on I-10 headed east.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's exactly what I was kind of trying to ask about.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how.
unidentified		He was headed to, I think, Interstate or Highway 90 going north.
unidentified		And which is, you know, Louisiana has got some of the worst roads in the country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Does it?
unidentified		Oh, it does.
		It's very un New Orleans proper is a really nice area, but when you get in the outlining areas, just like the caller said, it's very poor.
		It's very industrialized.
		In other words, they don't fix anything until it breaks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how many of these poor people are still there, weren't able to get out, didn't have any bus come by with National Guard people to pull them out.
unidentified		You've got a lot of them, and I guarantee you that, and I'm guaranteeing they're on their knees praying right now.
		Maybe some of them don't even realize what's happening.
		But look at Whitney hit on something about the energy crisis, if this was to hit New Orleans proper.
		Actually, south of New Orleans is Homa.
		You've got Morgan City.
		You've got pretty much, I know you have two refineries there.
		You may have three now.
		They may have closed one down in the past.
		But a lot of folks don't realize that when refineries, your gas trucks that come to your local gas stations, they don't go to the refineries to pick their oil up.
		Everything is piped.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My God, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm reading CNN headline news right now that the price went up three bucks already.
unidentified		Oh, come on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
		That's not the price of gas, I guess, but the price of oil futures.
		But $3.
unidentified		Well, what I was trying to say is that all the gasoline, after it's refined, is put in pipelines and sent to regional centers.
unidentified		And if anything happens with that pipeline or the refinery shuts down for even a day, maybe three days, your gas is going to go up half dollar a gallon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A half dollar gallon.
unidentified		That is immediate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're saying that about 600,000 barrels is pumped every single day.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So holy night.
unidentified		I cannot sleep right now.
unidentified		Normally I've got things I have to do tomorrow, but I could not go to bed this morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The same problem I've been having.
		In fact, I had that yesterday morning.
		The news was breaking all over the place about this.
		It was in the middle of that strengthening when, for a time, it went to 175 miles an hour, and it went to cat-five just like that, and I was glued to the coverage.
		I'm a total news junkie.
unidentified		We know Thursday when this thing came in, you know, and everybody thought this thing was going to come in between North Miami and Palm Beach.
		And this little crazy storm, a category one hurricane, took a jog south and tore up some friend of mine's places down in Homestead, Florida.
		Dumped 16 inches of rain.
		Then this thing did something they had never thought it was going to do, come across the Everglades, go south again and tear up Marathon, Florida in the Keys and get down into Kia West.
		Then it was headed slapped to Panama City, which I'm in Columbus, Georgia.
		And when Opal came up, which is a category five before it made landfall, hit Panama City and was category three, then it came up our area about 220 miles.
		And we had 60 mile-an-hour winds here in Columbus.
		And it was just terrible here.
		And these people here in Nashville, Tuesday in Nashville, and in Birmingham, they're going to probably have 75, 80 mile-an-hour winds out of this thing.
		It's just unreal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're quite right.
		I appreciate the call.
		I'm sure that's going to occur and worse.
		This, of course, is going to move as you might imagine, right toward the northeast corridor.
		It's going to go over a bunch of mountains.
		There's going to be terrible flooding and all kinds of things that are going to come of all this.
		But again, I want to go back to Dean's question of San Diego.
		I thought it's so relevant in a lot of interesting ways.
		We never have lost a city.
		We've never lost a city in the U.S. that I'm aware of.
		If we were to actually lose one of our major cities, I know it's absolutely unthinkable, but if we did, how would it affect the American psyche?
		I think there would be a very deep effect indeed.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		This is Ed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Ed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		In South Georgia.
unidentified		We're getting some feeder bands off this thing right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see.
unidentified		You know, some rain's coming up outside.
		I'm sure it's from the same storm.
		But at any rate, I just heard him say the other guy, 35,000 people in the dome.
		Yes.
		I'd heard 10,000 and then I'd heard 35,000.
		But however many people are in there right now, I used to lay the turf down in there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And you have what's inside called a micro-weather system inside the dome itself.
		Right.
		So assuming that the dome withstands the storm surge and the wind, and just, you know, these people survive that, when the power goes out, it's going to start raining inside the dome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, I've heard.
		My dad told me when I was a youngster, he worked for a company that made very large helicopters.
		At that time, it was Piaseki.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they made the big double blade helicopters, and they had hangers inside.
unidentified		They had CH-47.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
		had airline or, you know, hangars for these aircraft that were just gigantic.
		And it actually...
unidentified		It would rain inside the...
unidentified		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Lightning.
unidentified		Yes.
		When you have these little systems, one will form on one end, one will form on the other when they meet, just like on the outside.
		You've got a negative and positive charge, and you have actual lightning, man.
		I'm telling you right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it's going to be very, very uncomfortable.
unidentified		And these people, they say these people didn't even bring their food or anything like that.
unidentified		It's going to be a mess down there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think a lot of them are praying.
unidentified		And I think our prayers need to go out to them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In poverty, a lot of them in poverty, they probably didn't have much to bring.
		Exactly.
		Everybody else who had the ability, had a car, had a friend, had something, got out of the city.
unidentified		Got out somehow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I would think.
unidentified		But they do.
unidentified		I used to put the turf down, and I remember standing at one of the entrances going under the dome, you know what I'm saying?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I looked out, and I thought a sprinkler had come on inside the dome.
unidentified		Went outside, and there was a little cloud up there in the top of the dome, and it was raining.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is so odd.
unidentified		That is weird, isn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is really weird.
		And one anchor standing in front of one of those green screens, you know, with the hurricane plot behind him and everything, was trying to explain something about the hurricane.
		And the other anchor kept interrupting him, and he went berserk.
unidentified		He threw his papers down and said, if you'd let me talk.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so that shows you how high the tension is beginning to get in these news reporting organizations.
		You'd almost never see anything like that on camera, but he got pretty angry.
		And so obviously we're all under a lot of tension right now, and I would ask you to consider that also as you decide what you're going to say on the air, because it is your turn coming right up.
unidentified		Mario's Death
art bell ▲ ● ▼		God willing, it won't happen.
		But again, somehow the San Diego Fast Blaster caught me, and I've been thinking about it ever since.
		We've never lost a city.
		We've never lost a city.
		God willing, that won't happen.
		But if it did, how would it affect the American psyche?
		How would it affect America to lose a whole city?
		It's the unthinkable.
		But I guess here we are, talk radio, so we can think a little bit about it.
		The worst case scenario, if we were to lose an American city, how would that affect us?
		It surely would.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is your first name and where are you?
unidentified		My name is Mario, and I'm in Welsh, Louisiana right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, where is that?
unidentified		I'm telling between St. Charles.
		I'm sorry, I'm on a cell phone.
		Between St. Charles and Lafayette.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And the main thing is it took me 12 hours to get from New Orleans to where I'm at.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, so you're an evacuee?
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You have a home in New Orleans.
unidentified		Yes, sir, and I'm very afraid of what's going to happen to my home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I'm sure you are, and I'm sure just you've probably, although you've been driving, so you probably haven't seen much of anything, are you now in a place where you can stop and watch the media?
unidentified		Well, I'm fortunate that my wife works for a company that owns a bunch of apartment complexes, and we were able to stop at one of them that had an opening, open residence, and we were able to take it over.
		But the main thing is, is what you're saying about New Orleans is I think it will never be a dead city, is what you're saying.
		You know, it's an American city.
		We will be back.
		You know what I mean?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mario, if it was essentially destroyed, if this horrible mixture of stuff made it uninhabitable for a very long period of time, do you think the people of New Orleans would want to rebuild where it is now, or would they rebuild New Orleans in a new place?
unidentified		Just like they would in every Gulf Coast city along the Gulf Coast.
		Of course they would.
		It's a great city.
		It's a city of history and great faith and everything.
		And we're all looking for this storm that passes by.
		I mean, I've cried like three times today just thinking about what could happen to my own home.
		I'm sorry, I'm nervous and everything, but just alone, just my home and my other friends' homes and businesses that I know that home there, I'm afraid of what's going to happen to everybody there.
		And it's really heartbreaking for me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Mario, are you outside now?
unidentified		Yeah, actually, there's wind blowing in my ear right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was going to say, I can hear the wind affecting the cell phone.
unidentified		I'm sorry.
		I had to get away from the radio because you said to get away from it.
		Fine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You were.
		You did the right thing.
		All right, Mario, so you've got everything at risk back home.
unidentified		everything.
		And it's just, this is a, I don't even know where the hell I'm at, to tell you the truth.
		And it's just a heartbreaking situation.
		We don't know what we're going to go back to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are there a lot of people around you, Mario?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Are a lot of other people who stopped roughly where you stopped?
unidentified		Yeah, but they don't.
		Unfortunately for myself, because of where my wife works at, that I'm able to stay.
		I'm somewhere that other people aren't able to get to.
		It's not a regular hotel or anything.
		It's an apartment complex.
		But you should see the people alongside the road.
		The things that I saw today were just, it was a great, this was the best evacuation I've ever seen from the city.
		I've been in two others before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And this I don't think, Mario, I don't think they've ever evacuated a large American city.
unidentified		We evacuated a few times before, but not because we had to before.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gotcha.
unidentified		But this is the best one I've ever seen.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it went pretty well.
unidentified		It took us a long time to get here, but I think the reason why it took us a long time to get here is because there were quite a few rude people taking the emergency lane roads and covering those up when they shouldn't have been covered up and doing a whole lot of things that shouldn't have been done.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But still, by and large, you think it's gone well.
unidentified		Oh, man, it's gone great.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Mario, thank you very, very much for the call.
		There is an evacuee, somebody who left everything at home and just left.
		And I guess took, as you said, The deed to the house, that sort of thing.
		Hope the deed means something.
		We're watching very carefully.
		It's a category 4 storm now.
		Winds remaining, though, unfortunately, at 155 miles an hour, but downgraded to a category 4 with about 115 millibars right now.
		I think 115 millibars is correct, or 915 millibars, excuse me.
		And that is remarkably low.
		And that little fight they had on CNN that I was telling you about, he was trying to explain at the time how really low that was and what that would mean if you were actually looking at your barometer.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, I was speaking to you before and got cut off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Your first name is?
unidentified		Evie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Baker, Louisiana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Baker's not.
unidentified		It's not too far, about an hour away.
		And we're getting some rain, but not a lot.
		But basically, I haven't been able to listen to the show.
		I've been on the phone with friends, and my friends are just flipping out, and it's starting to just sink in because we're not really accepting, because we're all from New Orleans, and it's not really sinking in completely.
		And we just go to extremes.
		We're like, oh, my God, the city's going to be gone.
		And then the next thing is, oh, maybe it'll be okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did you evacuate from New Orleans to Baker?
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You did?
unidentified		Yes, I did.
		And I have friends in Houston and friends in New Orleans still and friends just all over the place, Tennessee, Florida.
		Gosh, I mean, people are just leaving.
		But every, I mean, I have one friend who is just, his whole family is there, you know, not staying there, but, you know, he just has, they have several homes there and just so much.
		They all grew up there, and he's just really, really worried.
		And a lot of fun just going to the school.
		I go to the university down there where, you know, what if our school disappears?
		You know, it's such, I mean, it's such a cultural mecca.
		It's just such a wonderful city.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then maybe our friend in San Diego has a good question for you, and that is that if we actually lost an American city, if we actually lost New Orleans, something horrible to contemplate, how would it affect America?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We've never lost a city.
unidentified		No, I know.
		And honestly, I have this, the thought of it, I think, is really what's making people break down and what's making people freak out because just to contemplate it when we don't want to.
		And I don't know, I wanted to call in to say with all of this mayhem and what you said with the anchor and everything freaking out on CNN, just for everyone, please, please to just take a moment.
		And I mean, if you pray, that's your choice.
		Or just try and envision it.
		Try and envision it going the other way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		All right.
		Thank you very much.
		Yeah, look.
		Yeah, I witnessed that fight on CNN.
		It's stress.
		People under severe stress sometimes break down a little bit.
		I mean, it just happens.
		It's human.
		And that tells you how dire this whole situation is.
		People trying to explain it.
		People trying to come up with words to convey what's happening or what might happen.
		These people are under enormous stress.
		This is one of those moments in history.
		And we've had others, haven't we?
		9-11, things that sort of tweaked the national consciousness.
		Well, this is one of those things.
		And so again, I'm not surprised that the Princeton eggs are jumping up and down like Mexican jumping beans right now.
		The consciousness of America, in fact, the world, I understand this story is really hitting hard in Great Britain, for example, and being followed very carefully around the world.
		They understand how vulnerable New Orleans is.
		They understand how strong this storm is.
		And so this story has taken immediate and almost total worldwide attention.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is your first name, hi?
unidentified		It's Sandra, and I live in Pensacola.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Sandra.
unidentified		Okay, the problem we're having, well, we're getting tropical force winds.
unidentified		Our lights are flickering off and on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, they are?
unidentified		Yeah, and some of the downtown's already flooded.
		The two main roads, the bridges, are already closed.
		The problem we're having is our gas stations have no gas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Pensacola?
unidentified		In Pensacola.
unidentified		Now, we get our gas from Louisiana and Mississippi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		We've already been told we're going to have a gas shortage.
unidentified		Now then, on top of that, as of Friday, because we thought the storm was going to come in here, some gas stations were $3.09.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
unidentified		Now then, we've got that now.
unidentified		What's it going to be like when we don't have any?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's hard to imagine what's going to happen to the price and the availability of gasoline.
unidentified		Right.
		And when Ivan hit here, it looked like a war zone.
		It looked like Iraq.
		It was that bad.
		And I can just, my heart goes out to New Orleans and to Mississippi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But at this point, you're way over in Pensacola, and you're getting feeder bands, and you're getting power that's going on and off.
unidentified		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, Sandra, thank you very, very much for the report.
		We'll continue to move through with what we do here, Talk Radio.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Good evening, Art.
unidentified		This is Brian in Bakersfield on KMZR.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Brian.
unidentified		Good evening.
		It's good to talk with you.
		And I've been trying to collect my thoughts here as best I can, listening to the calls that have been coming in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And I know that you have been and were a good friend of the late Father Malachi Martin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Indeed.
		Brian, you're going to have to yell at me.
		You're not too loud here.
		I've got you sort of pumped up as high as I can get you.
unidentified		Sorry about that.
unidentified		Is that better?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Better, yes.
unidentified		And I'm sure over the course of the conversations that you were privileged to have with Father Malachi Martin over the years, he discussed with you the aspect of temporal consequence for sin.
		There are eternal consequences for sin, ultimately, but there are also temporal consequences.
		That is, those consequences we suffer here on Earth in time.
		And one of those is the natural phenomena, the natural effects of the various actions we perform on Earth, some being good and some being deleterious.
		And we don't seem to think about this until it hits us square in the face, as it were.
		And people tend to look at themselves and look at the people around them when something bad happens, when something on a huge scale happens, and ask, is it me?
		What did I do?
		Did I cause this?
		Well, the answer is not necessarily directly, but we all play a part in our surroundings and the effects we have on each other and on ourselves.
		And I would like to take this opportunity to say, first of all, that I'm praying for New Orleans and everyone affected by the impending storm.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a lot more than just New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There are many people that are going to be affected across thousands of miles.
unidentified		Of course.
unidentified		But I am a Catholic, and the main reason I say this is that I am convinced that the Catholic faith is true, and I know that many, many people find that outrageous and incredible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Not of the Catholic faith.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, look, you're basically, this comes down to a God is angry kind of call, right?
unidentified		Well, it comes down to the reality that we're all responsible ultimately for our destiny.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So this is a result of sin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not getting that wrong, right?
unidentified		No, you're correct.
		But collectively, see, we have a hard time with the concept that we are all sinners.
		And the fact is that God many times uses one instance of justice to spare many, many other people if we take heed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sir, I'm going to agree with you that there's none that walks without sin, not on the globe right now.
		But I'm not going to cozy up to the concept of this is because of our sin, that this hurricane, this terrible tragedy may be about to hit New Orleans and whatever other damage and death it produces because of something we did.
		Not in that way, anyhow.
		On the other hand, I also don't rule out what you're saying.
		I'm not a person of great faith.
		I'm sort of a Christian.
		I know.
		I'll get a million emails.
		You can't be a sort of a Christian.
		But I still have difficulty with the concept that this is very directly a result of any sin.
		That's me right now, anyway.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes?
unidentified		This is Brenda.
		I'm sitting in my car listening to the rain out in the middle of nowhere.
		It's taking me hours to get here.
		I'm two states away, and I've worried to death about these people in the superdome.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you now, Brenda?
unidentified		I'm in Daphne, Alabama.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Daphne, Alabama.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where did you come from?
unidentified		Gulfport, Mississippi.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Gulfport, Mississippi.
unidentified		In the northeast quadrant.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		Where it would be hit really bad.
		But you think about all those people in the superdome.
		And I really feel bad for any of those people that might be listening to us now.
		But when they say if you go to the top of a two-story building, you could not possibly be safe with the surges that are coming in, 20-foot surges or so forth in that superdome below sea level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And nobody can tell me that it's sin that has caused these children sitting in the superdome sleeping right now to even have to face that kind of a threat.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't buy into that concept myself.
unidentified		No.
unidentified		But I think everybody really needs to be praying for those people right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Prayers.
unidentified		I would have taken everybody I could have out of there.
		However, the powers that be waited to the very last second, I feel, to have announced this type of emergency because he was criticized so badly last time for saying, get out.
		And it's so late, and it was so late that I could get out.
		I could barely get out when I did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So did you wait until it was mandatory?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that when you asked?
unidentified		After it was mandatory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I'm saying.
unidentified		Obligations at work, but they released me of that obligation.
		But these people in Louisiana, there's only one way in, one way out.
		And this fellow, because he was criticized so badly, he waited until there was not a chance for a lot of people to get out.
		And so many people, there were just a couple people in the car, and they were saying, take a neighbor, help somebody.
		And all these one and two people in a car, they could have taken so many people out, but everybody was just frantic by the time that announcement was made.
		They didn't have a chance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I can't imagine the political dynamics that were behind this.
		I knew that it was a very incredibly, incredibly tough call.
		They have never evacuated a city of this size, ever, in all of our history that I know of.
		And the implications of doing it alone are staggering.
		I mean, they know that a certain amount of death and destruction and a lot of things will occur when you order an evacuation of this magnitude.
		They know that.
		So it's a hard decision to make.
		And as you pointed out, there was one made before that may have brought additional pressure to bear here.
		But I sure as hell would not have wanted to be the person making that decision, would you?
unidentified		Oh, heavens, no, no.
		He really jumped the gun last time.
		I felt like I didn't think it was that much of a threat.
		Of course, I'm sitting in the sidelines saying it wasn't that bad of a threat.
		It was a bad rainstorm.
		That was it.
		This time he's on the TV 24 hours before he makes that call saying, maybe I should.
		And then they're saying, would you send people house to house to try to get all these people out that can't get out on their own?
		He just went around the question.
		He just danced right around it.
		And then you hear about people that are left in nursing homes.
		I understood that there was a nursing home that there was only one staff member left.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen to me.
unidentified		Everybody else took off.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen to me.
		We're coming up on a break.
		Do you have the ability to hold on?
unidentified		I'm going to let you go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I appreciate you.
		All right.
		I appreciate your call.
		Thank you very much.
		And that all sounds pretty dire.
		This is Coast to Coast AM, doing what we do in the middle of the night.
		I will continue now, after the break, into the fifth hour.
		Good morning, everybody.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		We're in our fifth hour of coverage, talking now with you on the telephone.
		And I'm asking that the first three lines, first time caller line, the wildcard line, and the east of the Rockies, be reserved for only people in the affected areas.
		And I mean the areas that are virtually in peril right now.
		People who have evacuated, that sort of thing.
		The other lines, you're free to call for any other associated reason.
		Here are the numbers.
		Please listen very carefully.
unidentified		To talk with Art Bell.
		Call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's a dreadful nightmare in progress right now, as this horrible hurricane, a packing wind still of 150 miles an hour at this hour, moves toward New Orleans, Louisiana, and the associated coastline north at 15 miles an hour.
		It's absolutely a bit faster.
		It's sped up a little bit.
		The pressure at 917 millibars, which is damn low.
		28.8 north, 89.6 west.
		The exact I know a lot of you plot on a map.
		And it's beginning to happen.
		The winds they expected are beginning to occur now in the area.
		So we'll just watch it.
		Obviously, it's coming ashore a little faster than they thought it would.
		Let's see, 150, make that 90 miles rather, south-southeast of New Orleans and 15 miles an hour, and you can do the math.
		But major portions of the storm are beginning to hit now.
		The network anchors I've been listening to are expressing fears that the levees in New Orleans will not hold.
		Of course, that was a fear all along.
		And I guess it's an appropriate time to say, pray, because there's nothing else to say, is there?
unidentified		pray.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As you know, on this program, we deal with a very great number of people who make predictions, whether it would be through remote viewing or whatever other extra sort of sensory method of perceiving events.
		We have a lot of those kind of guests, many of them.
		And there's only one that I know that essentially called this.
		And you're welcome to go review the tapes for yourself.
		But Evelyn Paglini, I think, called it right down the line in terms of what was coming and what now is happening.
		I assume a lot of you are with us in the overnight hours, watching the coverage, listening to us, kind of hopping and skipping around the media generally.
		That's certainly what I do.
		I'm a news junkie.
		And so I kind of hop and skip around the media to find out what I can find out.
		I'm sure you're doing the same.
		And if you're hopping and skipping over us at the moment, welcome.
		We're talking to people in the area, people who have been affected or will be by this massive hurricane.
		First time, call our line, you're on the air hike.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yeah, my name's Tom.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Tom.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm I left my home right outside of New Orleans in a little town in the suburbs called Avondale on the west bank of the river.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And been on the road about 15 hours and just getting close to en route to Beaumont.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		15 hours on the road.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're probably beginning to get just about punch drunk by now.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, I'm well in the third thermos of coffee.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I can understand.
		What do you think is going to happen?
		What do you imagine will happen to home?
unidentified		Oh.
		I'm afraid it's just going to be gone.
		You know, the way the eye of the storm is going, they're saying it's going to come right over Barretaria Bay, which is directly south of my home.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		And the levee on that side, they say it's only good for seven feet.
		And they're talking 20, 30 feet of water coming over.
		So I don't think there'll be anything left.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It does indeed look as though it's just aiming.
		It's so incredibly aiming for New Orleans.
		Several days ago, if you listen to people talk, and I don't know what the talk was like in New Orleans.
		You were there.
		Maybe you can tell me.
		But the people I talked to seemed convinced from the beginning, and I'm going back several days now, that New Orleans was flat going to get hit.
		And damned if that isn't what's happening.
unidentified		Yeah, well, to be honest with you, on Friday, I went to work, came home, I knew about the storm being down there, but the last I heard it was going to hit the handhandle of Florida.
		And I went to sleep Friday night, and I got up Saturday, did my little business around the house, turned on the TV, and category five, heading right to New Orleans.
		I was shocked.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Oh, I'm sure many were.
		I live in the overnight hours.
		It's a very good point.
		I, of course, knew about it, but a lot of people would have been just like yourself, you know, getting up at what time of day do you normally get up?
unidentified		Well, I normally get up about five in the morning.
		So even on the weekends, I get up early just out of habit.
		But I don't turn on the TV.
		The only thing, I just turn the TV on to watch the news and weather mostly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And bang.
		There it was, headed right at you.
		So what did you do?
		You just packed up and took off right then, or did you what?
unidentified		Well, actually, I was going to send the wife and the kids, and I was going to stay.
unidentified		And then, I don't know, what was it, yesterday, today, I don't know, whenever it hit 175 mile-an-hour winds, you know, before it started calming down.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		You know, and when I saw it getting that big, I decided to go, too.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, it looks like you made a good decision.
		Even at this hour, as the I approaches, it looks like you made a good decision to leave.
		That would be my take on it.
		Thank you very much for the call.
		I think anybody who evacuated ahead of this can be said at this hour.
		This hour is so close to whatever it is that's going to happen to New Orleans and to everything in the path of this hurricane.
		At this hour, it's fair to say those who evacuated, you did the right thing.
		You know, in case you were wondering, oh, I heard about it lessening a little bit, not much.
		150 mile an hour winds, and it's closing in quickly now.
		So I think everybody out there on the road tonight, everybody in hotels who left home did the right thing.
		So if there was any question in your mind about whether you did the right thing or not, this hour says you did.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, this is Dennis from Lufkin, Texas, listening to you on 1200 WOAI, San Antonio.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Of course, yes, sir.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Coming in real clear tonight, which is a strange thing.
		A blessing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A blessing indeed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there's been a lot of static on the radio lately, a lot of thunderstorms, so I'm glad you're getting us.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Okay, my aunt works at Lufkin Daily News, and she just came in from work about an hour and 17 minutes ago.
		And she said, if you need to fill up, go do it now, because by daylight, the prices of gas here in Texas are going to be $3 a gallon also.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I believe it.
		Yeah.
		I absolutely believe it.
unidentified		I guess they pretty much wrote those refineries off in that little valley there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's just, I guess, sinking in to me how much this means to have that refinery infrastructure gone or offline for a certain period of time.
		You know, we're already in a precarious situation with gas prices.
		This is just going to do the worst.
unidentified		Yeah, well, this is where everybody says in America that they'll change their driving habits at $3 a gallon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Vacations get shorter and closer or not at All yeah, that's like saying get ready for a new lifestyle because we're on the edge of that right now.
unidentified		You know, my uncle, whenever she was saying that, we got to talking about it.
		And, you know, he was cussing the oil companies.
		And I said, well, you know, there's one reason that the American oil companies could be letting the prices go up when they've always protected us before.
		You know, it'll help us explore new energy sources because now they're feasible.
		That wasn't much comfort for him, but I think that may be part of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's going to get a lot rougher before it gets better.
unidentified		Yeah, he was talking about propane.
unidentified		Propane would be better than gas about now, wouldn't it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It might seem better, indeed.
		But on the other hand, if you're talking about transportation, for example, driving, there's not much infrastructure to get you anywhere on propane right now, is there?
		Nor any other alternative fuel.
		We haven't moved that far yet.
		And I've been screaming in just bloody murder about the fact that we haven't, in America, begun to move toward these alternative sources.
		I don't know if this will do it.
		I don't know what will ultimately do it.
		I know that something will come along to cause it.
		I just don't know when.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, Dean.
unidentified		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm fine, sir.
unidentified		Good.
		Well, one thing I have to say.
		First of all, I'm on my cell phone, so bear with me here.
		But, you know, my condolences go out to all the people out there that's going through this rough time.
		It must be pretty unbelievable experience on them right now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If that's your radio in the background, turn it down right away, please.
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never, ever have your radio on when you're on talk radio, folks.
		That's a big no-no.
		All right.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		But I can't help but wonder if this could be part of maybe weather control.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean you're implying somebody intentionally doing this?
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		There's a very interesting book out there by an author that you know quite well, Dr. Nick Begis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I know him well.
unidentified		Yeah, it's the book, Angels Don't Play This Harp.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And there's some pretty interesting paragraphs in there that talk about the DOD sampled lightning and hurricane manipulation studies in Project Skyfire and Project Storm Fury.
		And there's another little paragraph in here.
		It's an editorial 1977 in Saturday Review, and it warned about weather warfare and called it a moral issue, saying if the world is in for a long spell of crippling weather, then we are fools and monsters if we don't get together for the purpose of monitoring a response as though our life depended on it, as indeed it does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, you know, I'll accept some of that.
		I think that there's research, for example, going into the possibility of something like HARP or something HARP-like affecting the weather.
		And I don't deny that I'm imagining that this experimentation is going on.
		That said, though, I don't for one second think that we're perpetrating this tragedy upon ourselves, as so many have thought with the 9-11 occurrence.
		I mean, a lot of people think that now.
		So I'm unwilling to accept that we in some way manipulated the storm to head directly toward New Orleans.
		That will be said to be naive by some, but I think that we cannot, we can barely predict, although one has to say they've done a wonderful job in predicting where this hurricane is going to go right along.
		They've had the center of the cone be the exact place.
		So, you know, kudos to the people who do that.
		Somebody else might say, sure, that's because they're controlling it.
		I'm not one of them.
		International Line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hi, I just wanted to mention that you have lost one city in history.
		The Great Chicago Fire cleaned Chicago.
		Clean was a long time ago.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's true.
unidentified		But it did take out the entire city and did rebuild.
		And my hopes are that New Orleans will be able to do the same thing.
		I'm sure the country will help.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One question, though, that I'm sure would be asked by a lot of people, sir, is the difference between Chicago and New Orleans is that New Orleans is below sea level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so to rebuild, you know, below sea level, intentionally rebuild there, it might be a pretty strong argument to move it.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm not an engineer, so I don't know.
		I mean, it's survived for many, many years prior to this.
		So one could say, well, once every couple hundred years, we'll take this gamble and let these people live their lives where they've always lived their lives, and their generations before them have lived their lives.
		And I think there's going to be a lot of strong sediment to rebuild there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you very much.
		That's a very interesting question.
		And I wonder how some of you would answer it.
		Perhaps you wouldn't want to at a dire moment like this.
		Maybe you don't want to answer a question like that, but it's an obvious one.
		If something did happen to New Orleans, how strong would the argument be to not rebuild in a place that begins below sea level, knowing the kind of fight you would have that inevitably you would have again?
		It would be a pretty strong argument, I suspect.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, hello, Art.
		This is Keith.
		I tried calling you earlier.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Keith, turn your radio off, please.
unidentified		I did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, okay.
unidentified		And I'm trying to call from Arizona because the West Coast line can't get through from here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, see, now, so I'm sorry, Keith.
		You're going to have to call the West Coast line if you want to get through.
		Let me reiterate again, all right?
		These are hard and fast rules.
		Let me give out the numbers for people in the affected areas.
		And I realize you might not have heard this, but Keith had heard it.
		Three lines I'm going to hold for people in the affected area only.
		The first-time caller line at Area Code 775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line at Area Code 775-727-1295.
		And east of the Rockies at 1-800-825-5033.
		The affected area only.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Oh, hi, sir.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Lafayette, Louisiana.
		But we left New Orleans.
		I left first across the causeway.
		Went I-12 to Baton Rouge.
		It was wonderful.
		There was no traffic.
		I was going 65 miles an hour.
		And then when I got to Lafayette, about four hours later, the causeway I-12 was a parking lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A parking lot?
unidentified		A parking lot.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that was how long ago?
unidentified		Oh, that was Saturday.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Saturday.
unidentified		Oh, yeah, we left early.
unidentified		And then my sister was here visiting from France, from Paris.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And she had to wait four hours to get a rental car.
unidentified		And when she finally got the rental car, she got in the rental car and she drove to Jackson, Mississippi, where she got the plane to Atlanta and the Air France to Paris.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's back home, yeah.
unidentified		So it was quite a deal.
		I live in an apartment, but my nephew has a beautiful home on Canal Boulevard.
		And he is distressed big time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all we can do at this point is pray.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's all that's left.
unidentified		We have.
		We pray.
		We trust in God.
		We're Catholics.
		Not that that makes us better than anybody else.
		But we are, and we've been praying.
		And the winds have come down.
		And I heard on the weather channel that it's due north, and then it's going to turn a little bit to the east.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, we'll see how that manifests.
		In fact, we're watching all of that very closely.
		They're evacuating, of course, the bottom floors of many buildings in that area.
		They are almost sure that the water level is going to come up and be a problem for people on the first floors of just about anything.
		Wild Hardline, you're on the air.
		Good morning.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Brown is the name or I had one question I wanted to ask and I wanted to hang up and I want to see who's going to answer it.
		I'm the only person in the airway spill well, Spillway that was built above New Orleans to take care of the Mississippi River in case it ever did get up like that.
		they could break it and let it run into the Lake Pontchartrain.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I do, but I'm definitely not the person who's going to be able to answer your question.
unidentified		I can hardly hear you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I said, I'm not the person who's going to be able to answer your question.
unidentified		Well, I've been waiting all night for somebody because I used to live in New Orleans for five years.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, look, what we can Do is toss your question out to the greater audience, which you have just done, and see if anybody out there has that answer.
		I detected a little bit of anger in his voice, and I'm sure there's going to be a great deal of that.
		There's a very great deal of stress.
		I understand that for a lot of people with what's going on right now.
		And the best thing that everybody can do, easy to say from here in the desert, is remain calm.
		At this point, the way it's bearing down, if you've not left, if you're there, all you can do is pray and try and remain calm because you'll make better decisions.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi, this is Michael in Norfolk, Virginia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Michael.
unidentified		Listen, you have asked a very important question here, and I don't think anybody has addressed it as seriously as it needs to be.
		What would happen if we lose a great American city like New Orleans?
		Yes.
		This question has been addressed on your program by more than one of your esteemed guests.
		One that I'm going to mention now is Sean David Morton.
		He has predicted that the city would be left uninhabitable.
		He has suggested, as have others, that we could take intelligent steps towards preparing for that.
		And I think that needs to be addressed in a panel discussion in the future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, thank you very much.
		That's kind of what we're doing right now as we're discussing it, not sorry, in a panel way, but with all of you.
		It's your turn on the lines.
		We're here in the fifth hour, and we're just sort of moving along, watching, praying, and Katrina, it's happening.
		From the High Desert, I'm Mark Bell.
		And remember, folks, I'm reserving three of these lines away for people in the affected area only.
		First-time caller at 775-727-1222.
		The wildcard line, 775-727-1295.
		And east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		Now, if you're calling on any other line, you're welcome, and we'll certainly take your comments.
		But for obvious reasons, we're trying to keep it to those in the particular affected area and get an idea as best we can from you what's going on, what it is like right now, what you're experiencing.
		We're getting to that point in the program.
		Fifth hour of the show underway.
		All right, back again in our fifth hour of talk, and the talk, of course, is about Katrina.
		And this is kind of an interesting fast blast.
		It's from Jeff in Seattle, Washington, who says, a question about rebuilding.
		It may not be if they want to rebuild, but more like whether they're allowed to rebuild.
		Insurance companies may not want to insure below sea level again, and FEMA may also have something to say about it.
		So I suppose that's worth contemplating with the worst case scenario.
		To the phones we go.
		Let's see.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, you're breaking up, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Buyville.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, you're going to have to get to a better location.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're going to have to walk a few inches or something to get that.
unidentified		I'm behind the sticks on the phone here.
		I'm on watch.
		It's going to be kind of difficult to do.
		Hey, take this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		Hold it right there.
		You're okay now.
		You say you're on a boat?
unidentified		Yeah, I'm on a riverboat.
unidentified		I'm a 25-loaded barn.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where are you actually right now?
unidentified		La Hill, Arkansas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My wife's in my repeat it again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You broke up.
unidentified		High Hill, Arkansas.
		Okay.
		Southbound.
		I'm on a pilot on a riverboat here.
		And right now, this is stressful enough job as it is.
		And now I've got to worry about if my wife and my kids are going to get out of town.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they're where?
unidentified		I don't know.
		They're somewhere on the Interstate 10.
		I'm not sure.
		What I'm hearing is that the traffic's backed up for miles.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And they were evacuating from New Orleans?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long ago, sir?
unidentified		Oh, they left, gee, early last night from Fort Ruth.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know very much about the speed of movement on the highways, but my guess would be if they really did leave then, they're probably safe by now.
unidentified		Well, I don't know.
		Last time I talked to them, they hadn't even got in.
		They were outside of Laplace.
		And now I can't get a hold of them.
		Their phones, you know, my son has a cell phone.
		I guess it's not working.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When did you last speak to them?
unidentified		Oh, gee, that was at 11 o'clock last night.
		They left at around 7, so it was five hours that they hadn't even made.
		Usually from my house to Laplace is like a, I don't know, 30-minute drive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
unidentified		So it wasn't looking good.
		I got two brothers that stayed.
		And luckily, I talked my mother into leaving.
		And my two brothers, they stayed there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you don't mind, sir, if you could tell me, what was their thinking, their rationale for staying in a situation like that?
unidentified		Well, it was more or less getting split up, and they couldn't get back together.
		My brother's cars broke down.
		My little brother don't even have a car.
		My older brother, his car was in the shops.
		Everybody, you know, the deal was, you know, you leave at a certain time.
		And so my mom left, and they're kind of stuck there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I certainly hope it all works out.
		I'm sorry to hear that it apparently was moving so slowly, and I hope others will call us and tell us what the current situation on the highway is.
		That would be a valuable call.
		If you're out there and you can describe the situation along the evacuation routes, that might be certainly worth knowing.
		Area code 775-727-1295.
		Let's go east of the Rockies.
		You're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, sir.
unidentified		Yeah, I'm right in New Orleans.
unidentified		Ironically, I'm flabbergasted by the lack of any callers from, I seem to be the first from New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, they're a little busy.
		We've, of course, heard from quite a number who have fled New Orleans, sir.
		But no, we haven't had a lot of calls from inside New Orleans, and that's you're really inside the city.
unidentified		Oh, yes, quite inside.
unidentified		Matter of fact, you might even call it mid-city, the very center.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Why didn't you leave?
unidentified		Well, it's easier said than done.
		You know, there's a combination of reasons.
		Poverty is one of them.
		No car.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And this, you know, there's no time to whine and make excuses.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of situation are you in now?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What kind of building are you in?
unidentified		I'm on the second floor of a house, you know, a house.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Second floor of a house.
unidentified		Two apartments.
		And the wolf is knocking at the windows.
		And I think if the roof doesn't come off and the creek don't rise, I just might make it.
		I mean, I'm not being flippant, but...
		Yeah, I'd like to keep the top of my head on, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's the condition like outside now?
unidentified		I would call it only blustery.
		I haven't stuck my head out, but it's just, well, it goes one little pop, you don't know what that was, part of a tree or something.
		But it's kicking up slowly.
		It's a slow gradient on up in activity.
		And I guess, let me just peak at my little battery.
		Yeah, 444 here.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Is landfall expected near New Orleans?
		CNN is saying so.
unidentified		Seven-ish, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The I is going to apparently come very, very close to New Orleans.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If not over.
unidentified		Yeah.
		Yeah, well, one of my three children called me.
		That was nice.
		And a couple of old friends called me.
		Long distance, though.
		It's just a combination of certain things along with it all in a day, a 24-hour period where it went from a relaxed thing to doing it and didn't have the wherewithal to do it.
		But I've called you before, and I'm confident that this won't be the last time I call you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I'm with you.
		And so even if it gets bad, it could be the first floor perhaps would get wet or even underwater.
		But you think you might be okay there?
unidentified		Honestly, the answer is yes.
unidentified		As silly as it sounds, I've inverted a little two-seater couch upside down onto the bed, and that'll be my cocoon.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I see, that's as high as you're going to be able to get, huh?
unidentified		Go ahead, Sigma.
		No, not up.
		Just in case the wolf pokes its nose into the window.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, indeed.
unidentified		And my little cocoon will, you know, like I say, if the roof doesn't come off and the creek don't rise, you know, over the second floor, I think I'm going to be calling you again.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We'll look forward to more calls from you.
unidentified		Yes, John from New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, John.
unidentified		I'm known.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care, buddy, and thank you.
		All right.
		He's known.
		John of New Orleans.
		All right.
		Let me give you the one that just cleared, East of the Rockies.
		Well, it's already ringing.
		And the wildcard line, of course, at area code 775-727-1295, but from the area affected only, please.
		And he's right.
		That's actually the first call from somebody from New, still in, I guess would be a better way to put it, New Orleans.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, Art.
		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		Thanks for taking my call.
		First, I want to say you're definitely the best host of this program ever.
		And what I wanted to say briefly was, I don't know if you remember, I don't remember his name, but last month you had a guest on your program that said that between August 29th and 30th there would be an evacuation of thousands of people.
		He predicted that.
		And I don't remember his name, but he was obviously 100% accurate.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, if that was in fact said, that's right on the noggin, okay.
unidentified		Yeah.
unidentified		Just wanted to remind you of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Thank you very much.
		Well, it may be a guess that George had.
		So at any rate, if somebody obviously said that, they're right on the money.
		Personally, from the interviews that I have done, I'm recalling what Evelyn Paglini said.
		And I think if you review that, as in reviewing some kind of playback of the last time, or perhaps the time prior to that, that Evelyn, yeah, it would be the time prior to that, that Evelyn Paglini was on the program.
		She certainly nailed it.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hey, Art, how's it going?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's going.
unidentified		This is Chris up here in Sherwood Park, Alberta.
		Yes, sir.
		Yeah, I can't imagine what those people are going through down there.
		I find myself to be a sensitive, and I seem to feel things, and it's just not good.
		I'm watching the news here.
		I just got off work, and it's unreal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's unreal.
		What's happening is indeed unreal.
		It looks as though the eye is just about to close on land.
		It's just now closing on land.
unidentified		It was 30 degrees Celsius up here, and I was bitching all day, and now I feel bad if I turn on the news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hear that.
		All right.
		Thank you very, very much for the call.
		First time, caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello?
		Okay, well, somebody's got their radio on.
		Going once.
		Going twice.
		Hello.
		Let's try it again.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We lost her.
		And do we have you?
		Hello there.
		Wild card line.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello.
unidentified		You can hear me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I hear you.
unidentified		I thought that was, I thought that was talking about it a minute ago.
unidentified		I had a couple of comments.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sounds like you're outside in the wind.
unidentified		Well, and I'm in Pensacola, Florida, and you can hear it.
unidentified		We're 200 miles from New Orleans.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're getting a pretty brisk breeze right now.
unidentified		Yeah, and they say it's going to get worse.
		And I had a couple of comments.
		We've been through two tropical storms and two hurricanes since September of last year.
		Someone called earlier, and they were talking about Ivan, and this city was devastating.
		And it was a category three, a high three.
		But, you know, I can only imagine what New Orleans is going through.
		And as bad as it is right now, those people, my house is still damaged.
		I mean, it's been a year and my house is still damaged from either.
		So those people, this is just beginning for them.
		And the caller who made the comment about this is because of sin and I just, I can think of nothing that I did in my life that would have caused me to have spent the last year living, and not me, but my child having to live in the situation that we're living in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just don't buy into that whole theory, ma'am.
unidentified		Oh, it's just...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Exactly what I was going to say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're here as talk radio to allow people to express those kind of beliefs, but I don't buy into it, and obviously you don't either.
unidentified		Oh, no.
		And the guilt.
		There may be people who do, but I can't make myself believe that there's anything that any woman in any city has done to cause this.
		And the other comment that I had, and it's nothing against that call, but someone had sort of criticized the mayor of New Orleans, I believe it was the mayor earlier, about not getting the word out fast enough to be able to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, not making the decision for mandatory fast enough.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		She was criticizing us.
unidentified		I know.
		And that may very well be, but at the same time, we've been through these storms.
		I've lived here for 40 years in Pensacola, and we've been through these storms over and over and over.
		And they say they're going to eat it, and they don't.
		And you pack, and it's gotten like every two months.
		We spend $150, $200 preparing for storms, and then they don't come.
		And it's almost, you're not disappointed, but it's almost like we did it again.
		But since Ivan, this city has been out of gas.
		I mean, we have, our gas lines for two or three days have been, I mean, you have to wait for gas.
		It took us losing part of our city, and we're still recovering.
		It took us to open our eyes to say, okay, we don't need somebody to tell us, get out.
		This is 175 mile an hour winds.
		No one should have to tell us to prepare.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that also is true, but thank you.
		Somebody has to tell you to prepare.
		and i can only imagine going back to the decision that had to be made uh...
		the incredible dynamics that went into that decision to order it for a mandatory evacuation of a major american city my god uh...
		to make such a decision alone is In one way of looking at it, certainly.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, East of the Rockies?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Hi.
		It's a pleasure to talk to you.
		I wish it was under happier circumstances.
		And I'll be brief.
		I'm calling from Athens, Georgia, but they're saying that we will have outer feeder bands and the possibility of isolated tornadoes here in North Georgia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I would like to say one quick thing that we hope and be prepared in the future for the people and also the little souls, the four-legged souls and the thin souls, the animals and the dogs that will need help after this disaster.
		And the best of luck to everybody.
		And I just wanted to call and say that the effects are going to be quite large.
		And we've had floods from several of the storms that we've, this deluge of rough storms we've experienced, flooding here and tornadoes and a lot of damage here in Georgia as well.
		But our hearts and prayers go out to these people down in the Gulf because they all need it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They all need it, indeed.
		Thank you very, very much.
		Yes, prayers.
		That's all there is right now is prayers, and they are a force.
		I don't think you'd find too many people who would disagree with that.
		That prayers are a force.
		It may be a force associated with that other force we're examining.
		They may, in fact, be synonymous.
		But they are a force.
		It's real.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Yes, good morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		I'm Ted here in Butte LaRose, Louisiana, on the Chappalaya River, which is the old Mississippi floodway where they built the dam.
		I wanted to answer that caller's question.
		He's comparing earlier, he was comparing apples and oranges.
		What's happening now has no bearing on whether or not there's a spillway above New Orleans, which there is.
		There's quite an extensive flood control program, but that's for in the spring whenever all the snow melts up north and comes down the Mississippi.
		And when you buy property here in Louisiana, one of the first things that you have to go in front of a lawyer, for one thing.
		And one of the first things they look right at you and they say, now you understand that before we let New Orleans flood, we will flood the entire rest of the state.
		And so you shake your head in agreement, obviously, if you want to live here and you want to own something.
		And so what's going to happen to New Orleans, it looks like I'm sitting here watching it now, is that they're going to get the backflow, they're going to get the backhand of this, thank goodness.
		And it's actually going to push water out of Lake Poncetrain over into New Orleans.
		If people could understand if you took a saucer or took a bowl and filled your bathtub up to the edge of that bowl and then put, you know, then tried to live in that bowl.
		But anyway, yeah, there is a spillway and there's an extensive flood control program, but that's not what's going on this morning.
		I just looked outside and the banana leaves are just now starting to sway a little bit, but I imagine within the next two or three hours, we're only about 70 miles west of New Orleans.
		And I imagine here in the next few hours, things are going to get pretty interesting.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty rough, yeah.
		Is it your opinion, sir, that they won't hold?
		That New Orleans will end up getting flooded?
		Is that what's about to happen?
unidentified		Oh, you know, I really don't know.
		I've spent a lot of time in New Orleans, and you stand there and you look up at those massive levees that they've built and those massive gates and everything, and you think, how could the water possibly get that high?
		But then when you sit and you look at the force that's getting ready to come down on their head in just an hour and a half or two hours from now, then you start to question, you know, maybe you start second-guessing yourself.
		I just don't really have any kind of educated opinion of whether it's going to hold or not.
		It's going to be by the skin or their teeth if it does.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, sir.
		Thank you.
		Perhaps that's the appropriate place to end it.
		For tonight, that's five hours of talk.
		We are now probably an hour, hour and a half, two hours at the most from the largest part of all this occurring.
		So I want to thank everybody involved tonight for doing what we do best, I think, on Talk Radio, and that is sort of, I don't know, I guess just let it open and let you talk about what's really happening.
		And what is really happening right now is Katrina.
		So God save those who have remained from the high desert.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		As always, it's been an honor to be here.
		See you in a couple of weeks on a Sunday every now and then.

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