1. So Google Maps is outdated, huh? It’s showing pre-storm images? Wow. That’s some serious investigative reporting, Times-Pic. I mean, it’s not like anyone at the New Orleans Metroblog clocked that shit, like, a year ago or anything.
2. Here’s an interesting idea from our flood-focused friends in the land of mayonnaise and french fries:
MAASBOMMEL, the Netherlands, March 29 — Anne van der Molen lives on the edge of the River Maas, by definition an insecure spot in a country constantly trying to keep water at bay. But she is ready for the next flood.
Excited, even. “We haven’t floated,” she said of her house, “but we’re looking forward to floating.”
Her two-bedroom, two-story house, which cost about $420,000, is not a houseboat, and not a floating house of the sort common across the world. It is amphibious: resting on land but built to rise with the water level. It sits on a hollow concrete foundation and is attached to six iron posts sunk into the lake bottom. Should the river swell, as it often does in the rain, the house will float up as much as 18 feet, held in place by two horizontal mooring posts that connect it to the neighboring house, and then float back down as the water subsides….
Of course, given the limited abilities of New Orleans’ contractors, we’d probably be better off just using water wings and twist-ties, but it’s a nice idea.
UPDATE: Apparently, someone’s listening.
sturtle [dot] com 