Please tell me I-10 won't be Bush II's "Highway of Death."

[barbaraann]

I'm looking at the WWL streaming video and traffic is backed up to downtown N.O. Can everyone get out?

[Silverhair]

1. I used to live in New Orleans. Evacuation very difficult.

New Orleans is SURROUNDED by water and swamp. The ONLY ways out are over bridges, or through swamp. If ALL lanes were to be made outbound only, there would be ONLY 22 lanes available. It has been that way since the 1970's.

Most of New Orleans will not be able to get out. The city is lower than sea level.

Much of the question depends on the exact angle the storm hits N.O. from. If a super storm (This one has sustained winds of 175 as I type. It qualifies.) ever travels up the Mississippi river and hit N.O. it will be amazing devastation. (Storm surge comes up the river while the winds push lake Ponchartrain south into N.O.) FEMA calls it a "project storm".

This one looks like come up from the South to hit N.O. Still very bad, but not a worse case.

[HereSince1628]

5. It is heart-breaking to be sitting here on a beautiful day

and imagining the frustration and anxiety of people trying to get away from this storm.

There is nothing more I can do right now. I sent all the money I can immediately spare to the Red Cross.

[gennifer6]

2. They have approx. 16-18 hours till land fall I hear...

[barbaraann]

3. and darkness will slow the evacuation.

n/t

[greekspeak]

4. Cities of that size have lots of roads going out in different directions

Are people using them? I would think the safest thing to do now would be to get on a road out of town that goes to the north or northwest or west toward Little Rock or Dallas, Texarkana, etc.

[karlrschneider]

6. There are too many trying to go west, I-10 is a long parking lot that way

and there really are not that many roads...N.O. isn't Atlanta, it's surrounded by water on 3 1/2 sides, basically.

[Endangered Specie]

9. New Orleans is a big exception, IIRC there are 3 ways out

I-10 East, I-10 West and the Causeway. thats about it.

[XOKCowboy]

12. Mapquest New Orleans

There are only 3 highways leading out of the city and all of them are very limited access highways since they all go over swamps or over Lake Ponchatrain. Once you're on them, you can't get off. If a car stalls in one lane it'll make the backups even worse.

I was there in March and as I was driving out of town I got into a backup of over 20 miles of bumper to bumper traffic because they had one lane closed for construction. This was on a sunny Tuesday afternoon with normal traffic.

[HadItUpToHere]

7. Why don't they turn the inbound lanes into OUTBOUND???

if it's a MANDATORY evac- there shouldn't be any reason for people to be headed INTO town...watching the bumper-to-bumper outbound lanes, and completely empty inbound lanes reminds me of the scenes from the movie "Independence Day" (and i wondered the same thing about using the inbound lanes as outbound when i saw that movie).

[barbaraann]

10. That's what I was thinking, too.

n/t

[Endangered Specie]

11. I believe they have Contraflow in effect until 4pm central.

[Cleita]

8. Wouldn't this be about now that the National Guard would

be enlisted to help evacuate the residents? But, they are in Iraq getting killed instead, aren't they. Good planning Mr. Bush.

[barbaraann]

13. I heard the word gridlock with regard to one highway.

Didn't catch where... (on WWL)