
DANIEL ZWERDLING: So basically the part of New Orleans that most people in the United States and around the world think of as New Orleans would disappear under water.
JOE SUHAYDA:: That's right. During the worst of the storm, most of this area would be covered by 15 to 20 feet of water.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Do you expect this kind of hurricane and this kind of flooding to hit New Orleans in our lifetime?
JOE SUHUYDA: Well, there-- I would say the probability is yes. In terms of past experience, we've had three storms that were near-misses that could've done at least something close to this.
WALTER MAESTRI: A couple of days ago we actually had an exercise where we brought a fictitious Category Five hurricane--
DANIEL ZWERDLING: The worst.
WALTER MAESTRI: --the absolute worst, into the metropolitan area
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Walter Maestri is basically the czar of public emergencies in Jefferson Parish. It's the biggest suburb in the region.
WALTER MAESTRI: Well, when the exercise was completed it was evident that we were going to lose a lot of people we changed the name of the storm from Delaney to K-Y-A-G-B... kiss your ass goodbye... because anybody who was here as that Category Five storm came across... was gone.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: The American Red Cross lists the worst natural disasters that might strike America. They worry about earthquakes in California, and tropical storms in Florida. But they say the biggest catastrophe could be a hurricane hitting New Orleans.
WALTER MAESTRI: New Orleans is, if you think about it, it's a soup bowl. Think of a soup bowl. And the soup bowl-- the high edges of the soup bowl-- is the Mississippi River. It's amazing to say, but the highest elevation in the city of New Orleans is at the Mississippi River.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Maestri says, imagine what happens if a hurricane like Andrew comes raging up from the Gulf:
WALTER MAESTRI: The hurricane is spinning counter-clockwise. It's been pushing in front of it water from the Gulf of Mexico for days. It's now got a wall of water in front of it some 30, 40 feet high. As it approaches the levies of the-- the-- that surround the city, it tops those levees. As the storm continues to pass over. Now Lake Ponchetrain, that water from Lake Ponchartrain is now pushed on to that - those population which has been fleeing from the western side and everybody's caught in the middle. The bowl now completely fills. And we've now got the entire community underwater some 20, 30 feet underwater. Everything is lost.
DANIEL ZWERDLING: Remember the levees which the Army built, to hold smaller floods out of the bowl? Maestri says now those levees would doom the city. Because they'd trap the water in.
WALTER MAESTRI: It's going to look like a massive shipwreck. There's going to be-- there's going to be, you know-- everything that that the water has carried in is going to be there. Alligators, moccasins, you know every kind of rodent that you could think of.
All of your sewage treatment plants are under water. And of course the material is flowing free in the community. Disease becomes a distinct possibility now. The petrochemicals that are produced all up and down the Mississippi River --much of that has floated into this bowl. I mean this has become, you know, the biggest toxic waste dump in the world now. Is the city of New Orleans because of what has happened.
Major graphics flaw threatens Windows PCs
Published: September 14, 2004, 1:24 PM PDT
By Robert Lemos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Microsoft published on Tuesday a patch for a major security flaw in its software's handling of the JPEG graphics format and urged customers to use a new tool to locate the many applications that are vulnerable.
The critical flaw has to do with how Microsoft's operating systems and other software process the widely used JPEG image format and could let attackers create an image file that would run a malicious program on a victim's computer as soon as the file was viewed. Because the software giant's Internet Explorer browser is vulnerable, Windows users could fall prey to an attack just by browsing to an untrusted Web site.
A member of the audience pulls a demonstrator's hair as he forces her out of an auditorium where President Bush was addressing a crowd of supporters at Byers Choice in Colmar, Pa. Thursday Sept. 9, 2004. (AP Photo/Jacqueline Larma)
Talk to the Animals
If we could talk to the animals, just imagine it
Chatting to a chimp in chimpanzee
Imagine talking to a tiger, chatting to a cheetah
What a neat achievement that would be
If we could talk to the animals, learn their languages
Maybe take an animal degree
We'd study elephant and eagle, buffalo and beagle
Alligator, guinea pig, and flea
We would converse in polar bear and python
And we could curse in fluent kangaroo
If people asked us, "Can you speak in rhinoceros?"
We'd say, "Of courserous, can't you?"
If we conferred with our furry friends, man to animal
Think of all the things we could discuss
If we could walk with the animals, talk with the animals
Grunt and squeak and squawk with the animals
And they could squeak and squawk and speak and talk to us

Eight horses were killed and more than a half dozen homes burned Friday as gusty winds fanned several wildfires across Northern California.
In Vacaville, 32 miles southwest of Sacramento, a 30-acre grassfire destroyed a farmhouse and several barns, killing eight horses. And a fire in nearby Davis jumped a highway, burned two homes and injured three people.
A wildfire in Calaveras County near Burson quickly spread to 1,500 acres in just a few hours, destroying four houses, numerous other buildings and forcing evacuations, said Kristine Ferreira of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Another blaze, near Anderson Springs in Sonoma County, burned through 75 acres before the wind gusts died down and fire fighters were able to start bringing it under control.
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