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littlebitca:
Drowning New Orleans: "A major hurricane could swamp New Orleans under 20 feet of water, killing thousands. Human activities along the Mississippi River have dramatically increased the risk, and now only massive reengineering of southeastern Louisiana can save the city. [...] Large hurricanes come close every year. In 1965 Hurricane Betsy put parts of the city under eight feet of water. In 1992 monstrous Hurricane Andrew missed the city by only 100 miles. In 1998 Hurricane Georges veered east at the last moment but still caused billions of dollars of damage. A direct hit is inevitable."
The date of the article? October 2001.
From atalantapendrag: Cancer Cluster or Coincidence?scott_lynch is my hero:
It might cross your mind, at some point in the next few days, to write something about how "stupid" the people trapped in the disaster zones have been, or how "lazy" they must be to not have escaped sooner, or how they "deserved what they got" for choosing to live somewhere on the Gulf Coast, within direct reach of hurricanes.
My suggestion is this-- sit on your fucking hands. Sit on them until those sentiments no longer make your typing fingers itch.
[...]
Look, if you get caught in a natural disaster, it's your own damn fault for one primary reason-- having been born somewhere on the surface of this fucking planet. Circumstance is chasing us all down, slowly but surely. There's an expiration date stamped on all of us. Empathy, sympathy, and respect all stem from recognition of this. And there's nothing cheaper, nothing less considerate, nothing more full of witless sound and fury, than sitting in comfort and safety and taunting the drowned, the displaced, the diseased, the lost, and the destitute for not being the Awesome Hurricane Warrior you would have been in their place.
Have some common fucking courtesy. Some day, I guarantee, you will find yourself in a situation where you will need the life- or health-saving assistance of others, and there's a good chance some of them might regard you as stupid, or lazy, or foolish, or all three, because of it.
Major companies -- including Home Depot and Ford -- pledge millions to hurricane relief efforts. "Corporations are contributing millions of dollars in relief aid to help cope with the destruction left by Hurricane Katrina. The following is a list of companies that have taken steps to provide aid to those in need of funds, food and medicine following Monday's storm..."
Fats Domino found in New Orleans: "The musician's niece, Checquoline Davis, posted a plea on Craigslist.com for information on her missing relatives, writing that Domino and his wife, Rosemary, and their children and grandchildren "didn't get out" of their New Orleans home. Her plea was one of thousands seeking information on missing friends and family on the site."
interdictor: "This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested."I cannot confirm the Superdome "chemical plant" explosion you guys are reporting. When Bravo Team becomes functional this morning, we're going to do a Medium Range Recon Patrol around our section of the CBD. We need to access the area for potential human threats, situational threats (burning buildings, etc.), flooding, potential evac routes, military and civilian authority presence, etc.
We bring the camera with us everywhere we go, whether it's to empty fuel into the tank or perform personal hygiene.
Everyone has secondary responsibilities. Crystal, for instance, has the secondary responsibility of organizing physical assets. Sigmund's secondary responsibility is photography. Donny's secondary responsibility is inter-team communication. My secondary responsibility is first aid. And so on.
"Destroying FEMA":
In the days to come, as the nation and the people along the Gulf Coast work to cope with the disastrous aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we will be reminded anew, how important it is to have a federal agency capable of dealing with natural catastrophes of this sort. This is an immense human tragedy, one that will work hardship on millions of people. It is beyond the capabilities of state and local government to deal with. It requires a national response.
Which makes it all the more difficult to understand why, at this moment, the country's premier agency for dealing with such events -- FEMA -- is being, in effect, systematically downgraded and all but dismantled by the Department of Homeland Security.
Bodies, gunfire and chaos in New Orleans' streets
By Mark Babineck
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Rotting bodies littered New Orleans' streets on Thursday and troops headed in to control looting and violence, as thousands of desperate survivors of Hurricane Katrina pleaded to be evacuated from the flooded city, or even just fed.
The historic jazz city became a playground for armed looters, and sporadic gunfire hampered chaotic and widely criticized rescue efforts.
The mayhem in New Orleans, after Katrina's attack on the U.S. Gulf Coast on Monday, resembled a refugee crisis in a Third World hot spot. There was a television report that a sniper opened fire on rescue workers as they tried to evacuate sick patients from a flooded hospital.
Bodies lay in the streets and attackers armed with axes and steel pipes stripped hospitals of medicine. Authorities said they feared thousands of people were dead but they could still only guess at the death toll. One victim was left abandoned in a wheelchair with just a sheet covering the corpse.
New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded for urgent help in getting evacuees to safety. "This is a desperate SOS," he said in a statement.
Nagin said between 15,000 and 20,000 survivors were still stranded outside the city's convention center and, with supplies rapidly running out, there were no signs of the buses that had been promised to take them to decent shelter.
"We need ground transportation to get the evacuees out. We need to get them to shelter, get them to food, get them to a safer environment," Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco said.
Military reinforcements descended in helicopters, and armored personnel carriers patrolled Canal Street, which borders New Orleans' legendary French Quarter district of bars and fleshpots.
Senior Pentagon officials said the National Guard force on the storm-ravaged Gulf coast would be raised to 30,000, and 3,000 regular Army soldiers may also be sent in to tackle armed gangs that have looted stores across New Orleans.
"We will not tolerate lawlessness, or violence, or interference with the evacuation," Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said. "I'm satisfied that we have ... more than enough forces there and on the way."
The boost would bring to nearly 50,000 the number of part-time Guard and active-duty military personnel committed to the biggest domestic relief and security effort in U.S. history after Monday's onslaught by killer Hurricane Katrina.
MAYHEM
On the ground there was no sign of the mayhem being brought under control. Gunshots rang out and fires flared as looters broke into stores, houses, hospitals and office buildings -- some in search of food, others looking for anything of value.
Violence broke out in pockets of New Orleans among the wandering crowds grown hungry, thirsty and desperate to escape the flooded city and 90-degree (32 C) temperatures.
"We want help," people chanted outside the convention center."
In Washington and in the region, officials were peppered with questions about the pace of the relief operation, and some Democrats accused President Bush of acting too slowly.
Bush, who returned early to Washington on Wednesday from his Texas vacation, urged patience.
He said Katrina will represent a temporary setback for the U.S. economy and the energy sector. But he said gasoline would be hard to find in places, warned companies not to overcharge, and urged Americans to conserve. "Don't buy gas if you don't need it," he said. He will travel to the coastal area on Friday.
Members of the U.S. Congress cut short their summer break and were expected soon to approve an initial emergency aid package for Katrina victims. A government official said Bush would ask for an initial $10.5 billion.
Federal disaster declarations covered 90,000 square miles along the U.S. Gulf Coast, an area roughly the size of Great Britain. As many as 400,000 people had been forced to leave their homes.
Thousands waited hours or waded through floodwaters to seek rides out of New Orleans. Buses began shipping survivors from the Superdome 350 miles west to another stadium, the Astrodome in Houston, but not as quickly as hoped.
Two New Orleans hospitals were pillaged by robbers who used axes, guns and metal pipes to steal pain killers and medicine, according to a pilot flying relief operations into New Orleans.
Power and water were off and supplies were exhausted. Critically ill patients were dying one by one without oxygen, insulin and intravenous fluids, the pilot said.
Looting and tension eased in Biloxi, Mississippi, as troops arrived and the Salvation Army began serving 1,200 meals a day at a canteen set up beside the charity's demolished building.
MOB RULE
Some of those left hungry and homeless after Katrina shattered the Mississippi coast with a 30-foot (9-meter) wall of water volunteered to help serve, and food lines were orderly.
"The mob could begin to rule in a few days if these people do not get more food and water," said August Pillsbury, who was in charge of the canteen.
Search crews probed the rubble of collapsed buildings with tiny heat-sensing robots to find the living and cadaver dogs to find the dead. They were still pulling out survivors, and leaving behind many of the corpses trapped under debris.
A million people fled the New Orleans area before Katrina hit but tens of thousands of others were unable to get out.
The floodwaters started to drop on Thursday in New Orleans, which is mostly below sea level and was deluged by water from Lake Pontchartrain after levees broke.
But most of the city was still under about 8 feet (2.4 metres) of water, and officials estimated it could take a month to get the water out. Bush has said recovery could take years.
Some in Mississippi and Louisiana were frustrated with relief efforts.
"Many people didn't have the financial means to get out," said Alan LeBreton, 41, the superintendent of an apartment on Biloxi's seaside road, now in ruins. "That's a crime and people are angry about it."
The Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper said in an editorial emergency supplies "simply are not getting here fast enough."
Nationally, retail gasoline prices soared to new records amid concern about supplies. They vaulted to well over $3 a gallon in most parts of the country and nearly $4 in some areas.
The hurricane cut a swath through a region responsible for about a quarter of the nation's oil and gas output. Several refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast remained shut and the Bush administration loaned oil from the nation's strategic reserves to offset the losses.
New Orleans in Anarchy With Fights, Rapes
By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans descended into anarchy Thursday, as corpses lay abandoned in street medians, fights and fires broke out and storm survivors battled for seats on the buses that would carry them away from the chaos. The tired and hungry seethed, saying they had been forsaken. "This is a desperate SOS," mayor Ray Nagin said."We are out here like pure animals," the Rev. Issac Clark said outside the New Orleans Convention Center, where he and other evacuees had been waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.
"I'm not sure I'm going to get out of here alive," said tourist Larry Mitzel of Saskatoon, Canada, who handed a reporter his business card in case he goes missing. "I'm scared of riots. I'm scared of the locals. We might get caught in the crossfire."
Four days after Hurricane Katrina roared in with a devastating blow that inflicted potentially thousands of deaths, the frustration, fear and anger mounted, despite the promise of 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting, plans for a $10 billion recovery bill in Congress and a government relief effort President Bush called the biggest in U.S. history.
New Orleans' top emergency management official called that effort a "national disgrace" and questioned when reinforcements would actually reach the increasingly lawless city.
About 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans convention center grew increasingly hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead. Police Chief Eddie Compass said he sent in 88 officers to quell the situation at the building, but they were quickly driven back by an angry mob.
"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Mayor Ray Nagin gave the refugees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find. But the bedlam made that difficult.
"This is a desperate SOS," Nagin said in a statement. "Right now we are out of resources at the convention center and don't anticipate enough buses."
At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," 47-year-old Daniel Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair.
"You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people," he added. "You can go overseas with the military, but you can't get them down here."
The street outside the center, above the floodwaters, smelled of urine and feces, and was choked with dirty diapers, old bottles and garbage.
"They've been teasing us with buses for four days," Edwards said. "They're telling us they're going to come get us one day, and then they don't show up."
Every so often, an armored state police vehicle cruised in front of the convention center with four or five officers in riot gear with automatic weapons. But there was no sign of help from the National Guard.
At one point the crowd began to chant "We want help! We want help!" Later, a woman, screaming, went on the front steps of the convention center and led the crowd in reciting the 23rd Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd ..."
"We are out here like pure animals," the Issac Clark said.
"We've got people dying out here — two babies have died, a woman died, a man died," said Helen Cheek. "We haven't had no food, we haven't had no water, we haven't had nothing. They just brought us here and dropped us."
Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell — it's every man for himself.'"
"This is just insanity," she said. "We have no food, no water ... all these trucks and buses go by and they do nothing but wave."
At the hot and stinking Superdome, where 30,000 were being evacuated by bus to the Houston Astrodome, fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses.
After a traffic jam kept buses from arriving for nearly four hours, a near-riot broke out in the scramble to get on the buses that finally did show up, with a group of refugees breaking through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen.
One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle, police Capt. Ernie Demmo said. The man was arrested.
Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. An ambulance service airlifting the sick and injured out of the Superdome suspended flights as too dangerous after it was reported that a bullet was fired at a military helicopter.
"If they're just taking us anywhere, just anywhere, I say praise God," said refugee John Phillip. "Nothing could be worse than what we've been through."
By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. National Guard Capt. John Pollard said evacuees from around the city poured into the Superdome and swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.
As he watched a line snaking for blocks through ankle-deep waters, New Orleans' emergency operations chief Terry Ebbert blamed the inadequate response on the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"This is not a FEMA operation. I haven't seen a single FEMA guy," he said. He added: "We can send massive amounts of aid to tsunami victims, but we can't bail out the city of New Orleans."
FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out.
A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings — and not all the crimes were driven by greed.
When some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"
Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.
"I'm a Christian. I feel bad going in there," he said.
Earl Baker carried toothpaste, toothbrushes and deodorant. "Look, I'm only getting necessities," he said. "All of this is personal hygiene. I ain't getting nothing to get drunk or high with."
While floodwaters in the city appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that protects this below-sea-level city.
Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain, state Transportation Secretary Johnny Bradberry said. He said contractors had completed building a rock road to let heavy equipment roll to the area by midnight.
The next step called for using about 250 concrete road barriers to seal the gap.
In Washington, the White House said Bush will tour the devastated Gulf Coast region on Friday and has asked his father, former President George H.W. Bush, and former President Clinton to lead a private fund-raising campaign for victims.
The president urged a crackdown on the lawlessness.
"I think there ought to be zero tolerance of people breaking the law during an emergency such as this — whether it be looting, or price gouging at the gasoline pump, or taking advantage of charitable giving or insurance fraud," Bush said. "And I've made that clear to our attorney general. The citizens ought to be working together."
Donald Dudley, a 55-year-old New Orleans seafood merchant, complained that when he and other hungry refugees broke into the kitchen of the convention center and tried to prepare food, the National Guard chased them away.
"They pulled guns and told us we had to leave that kitchen or they would blow our damn brains out," he said. "We don't want their help. Give us some vehicles and we'll get ourselves out of here!"
Newspapers surprised at superpower 'humbled' by Hurricane Katrina
LONDON (AFP) - Newspapers expressed surprise at the sight of the US superpower "humbled" as it tries to cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina that swept over the states of the Gulf coast.
"The sight of a superpower humbled is in itself humbling," the Daily Telegraph wrote in an editorial.
"In Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama over the past four days, the United States has been struggling to provide the basic necessities of life - food, water and medicine - to the victims of Hurricane Katrina," it said.
"Take New Orleans alone. The breached levees remain unrepaired. About 20,000 refugees have been living in appalling squalor in the Superdome sports stadium," it said.
"Young men have not only been looting with impunity but firing on National Guardsmen. And the authorities still have no idea how many people may have died," the conservative daily said.
"The forces of nature have smashed the fabric of society beyond recognition," it commented.
"Individualism is one of America's many adornments. But it can hamper efficiency as competing voices wrangle over who should be responsible, or to blame, for what," it said.
"The challenge facing (US President George W.) Bush is to harness the native 'can-do' spirit to a co-ordinated rescue plan masterminded by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security.
The Daily Mail newspaper echoed the same theme in its editorial entitled "The humbling of a superpower."
"Here is a superpower that can crush at will a tinpot dictatorship - but then becomes so bogged down in the grisly aftermath of war that it finds itself unable to respond to anything like adequately to the plight of tens of thousands of its own citizens engulfed by a natural calamity," it said.
"President Bush, his ratings already in free-fall, could pay a high price indeed for his military folly," it said.
Marooned doctors plead 'Please help us'
Doctors at two desperately crippled hospitals in New Orleans called The Associated Press Thursday morning pleading for rescue, saying they were nearly out of food and power and had been forced to move patients to higher floors to escape looters.
(See the video report of a sniper attack at Charity Hospital -- 1:06)
Explosions Fill New Orleans Sky With Smoke
By ALLEN G. BREED, Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS - An explosion jolted residents awake early Friday, illuminating the pre-dawn sky with red and orange flames over a city where corpses rotted along flooded sidewalks and bands of armed thugs thwarted fitful rescue efforts.
Congress was rushing through a $10.5 billion aid package, the Pentagon promised 1,400 National Guardsmen a day to stop the looting and President Bush planned to visit the region Friday. But city officials were seething with anger about what they called a slow federal response following Hurricane Katrina.
"They don't have a clue what's going on down there," Mayor Ray Nagin told WWL-AM Thursday night.
"They flew down here one time two days after the doggone event was over with TV cameras, AP reporters, all kind of goddamn — excuse my French everybody in America, but I am pissed."
At 4:35 a.m. Friday, an explosion rocked a chemical storage facility near the Mississippi River east of the French Quarter, said Lt. Michael Francis of the Harbor Police. A series of smaller blasts followed and then acrid, black smoke that could be seen even in the dark. The vibrations were felt all the way downtown.
Francis did not have any other information about the explosions and did not know if there were any casualties. At least two police boats could be seen at the scene and a hazardous material team was on route.
It was the opening strike in yet another day of sadly deteriorating conditions since Katrina slammed ashore Monday morning.
Thursday saw thousands being evacuated by bus to Houston from the hot and stinking Superdome. Fistfights and fires erupted amid a seething sea of tense, suffering people who waited in a lines that stretched a half-mile to board yellow school buses. The looting continued.
Gov. Kathleen Blanco called the looters "hoodlums" and issued a warning to lawbreakers: Hundreds of National Guard troops hardened on the battlefield in Iraq have landed in New Orleans.
"They have M-16s and they're locked and loaded," she said. "These troops know how to shoot and kill, and they are more than willing to do so, and I expect they will."
At the Superdome, group of refugees broke through a line of heavily armed National Guardsmen in a scramble to get on to the buses.
Nearby, about 15,000 to 20,000 people who had taken shelter at New Orleans Convention Center grew ever more hostile after waiting for buses for days amid the filth and the dead.
Police Chief Eddie Compass said there was such a crush around a squad of 88 officers that they retreated when they went in to check out reports of assaults.
"We have individuals who are getting raped, we have individuals who are getting beaten," Compass said. "Tourists are walking in that direction and they are getting preyed upon."
By Thursday evening, 11 hours after the military began evacuating the Superdome, the arena held 10,000 more people than it did at dawn. Evacuees from across the city swelled the crowd to about 30,000 because they believed the arena was the best place to get a ride out of town.
Some of those among the mostly poor crowd had been in the dome for four days without air conditioning, working toilets or a place to bathe. One military policeman was shot in the leg as he and a man scuffled for the MP's rifle. The man was arrested.
By late Thursday, the flow of refugees to the Houston Astrodome was temporarily halted with a population of 11,325, less than half the estimated 23,000 people expected.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that Dallas would host 25,000 more refugees at Reunion Arena and 25,000 others would relocate to a San Antonio warehouse at KellyUSA, a city-owned complex that once was home to an Air Force base. Houston estimated as many as 55,000 people who fled the hurricane were staying in area hotels.
While floodwaters in New Orleans appeared to stabilize, efforts continued to plug three breaches that had opened up in the levee system that was designed to protect this below-sea-level city.
Helicopters dropped sandbags into the breach and pilings were being pounded into the mouth of the canal Thursday to close its connection to Lake Pontchartrain.
At least seven bodies were scattered outside the convention center, a makeshift staging area for those rescued from rooftops, attics and highways. The sidewalks were packed with people without food, water or medical care, and with no sign of law enforcement.
A military helicopter tried to land at the convention center several times to drop off food and water. But the rushing crowd forced the choppers to back off. Troopers then tossed the supplies to the crowd from 10 feet off the ground and flew away.
"There's a lot of very sick people — elderly ones, infirm ones — who can't stand this heat, and there's a lot of children who don't have water and basic necessities to survive on," said Daniel Edwards, 47, outside the center. "We need to eat, or drink water at the very least."
An old man in a chaise lounge lay dead in a grassy median as hungry babies wailed around him. Around the corner, an elderly woman lay dead in her wheelchair, covered up by a blanket, and another body lay beside her wrapped in a sheet.
"I don't treat my dog like that," Edwards said as he pointed at the woman in the wheelchair. "You can do everything for other countries, but you can't do nothing for your own people."
FEMA director Michael Brown said the agency just learned about the situation at the convention center Thursday and quickly scrambled to provide food, water and medical care and remove the corpses.
The slow response frustrated Nagin: "I have no idea what they're doing but I will tell you this: God is looking down on all this and if they're not doing everything in their power to save people, they are going to pay the price because every day that we delay, people are dying and they're dying by the hundreds."
In hopes of defusing the situation at the convention center, Nagin gave the evacuees permission to march across a bridge to the city's unflooded west bank for whatever relief they could find.
A day after Nagin took 1,500 police officers off search-and-rescue duty to try to restore order in the streets, there were continued reports of looting, shootings, gunfire and carjackings.
Tourist Debbie Durso of Washington, Mich., said she asked a police officer for assistance and his response was, "'Go to hell — it's every man for himself.'"
FEMA officials said some operations had to be suspended in areas where gunfire has broken out, but they are working overtime to feed people and restore order.
Outside a looted Rite-Aid drugstore, some people were anxious to show they needed what they were taking. A gray-haired man who would not give his name pulled up his T-shirt to show a surgery scar and explained that he needs pads for incontinence.
"I'm a Christian," he said. "I feel bad going in there."
Hospitals struggled to evacuate critically ill patients who were dying for lack of oxygen, insulin or intravenous fluids. But when some hospitals try to airlift patients, Coast Guard Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesan said, "there are people just taking potshots at police and at helicopters, telling them, `You better come get my family.'"
To make matters worse, the chief of the Louisiana State Police said he heard of numerous instances of New Orleans police officers — many of whom from flooded areas — turning in their badges.
"They indicated that they had lost everything and didn't feel that it was worth them going back to take fire from looters and losing their lives," Col. Henry Whitehorn said.
Mississippi's confirmed death toll from Katrina rose to 126 on Thursday as more rescue teams spread out into a sea of rubble to search for the living, their efforts complicated at one point by the threat of a thunderstorm.
All along the 90-mile coast, other emergency workers performed the grisly task of retrieving corpses, some of them lying on streets and amid the ruins of obliterated homes that stretch back blocks from the beach.
Gov. Haley Barbour said he knows people are tired, hungry, dirty and scared — particularly in areas hardest hit by Katrina. He said the state faces a long and expensive recovery process.
"I will say, sometimes I'm scared, too," Barbour said during a briefing in Jackson, Miss. "But we are going to hitch up our britches. We're going to get this done."
Housing for Refugees
callmecayce: "I don't know if you've gotten this one, but http://moveon.org just emailed me about this their housing site. This is what (part of) the email said..."This morning, we've launched an emergency national housing drive to connect your empty beds with hurricane victims who desperately need a place to wait out the storm. You can post your offer of housing (a spare room, extra bed, even a decent couch) and search for available housing online at: http://www.hurricanehousing.org.From
stepliana: To Our StudentsMore colleges and universities willing to help from
Our thoughts and prayers are with those who are affected by Hurricane Katrina. Randolph-Macon Woman's College has a long history of responsiveness in times of crisis. We are ready to help.
If you know of women students who were planning to attend a 4 year institution in the area of the hurricane and are now without a college home, Randolph-Macon Woman's College will guarantee admission, and will provide generous financial assistance to help them maintain their educational progress. As you know our semester began on Monday, August 28 -- we urge interested women to contact Pat LeDonne, Director of Admission, at 434-947-8100 by Monday, September 5, 2005 regarding emergency enrollment at R-MWC.
Sincerely,
Kathleen Bowman
President
Randolph-Macon Woman's College
_lady_narcissa_ (I can't believe I almost missed this comment somehow).More housing help: http://www.katrinahome.com.
The Houston SPCA is taking in the pets of refugees arriving in the Houston area:
Due to the hit from Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region, the Louisiana SPCA moved all animals out of their shelter to the Houston SPCA. We are now accepting animals from those who are staying in Houston Area Shelters. For those needing shelter for their pets, please call our hotline at 713-802-0555.
Monetary donations are needed to help us care for the over 260 extra animals in our shelter and to help us help the Louisiana SPCA respond to the needs of the animals still in the area.
Hurricane Katrina resources from
lederhosen and more from zarq. Late addition: Snopes tackles Katrina. Interesting note: the ones I've read so far have turned out to be true.
Gas prices gone mad. $6.07 per gallon? Is it for real? Photograph shows a satellite view of Hurricane Katrina? Latent racism in the reporting of goings on in New Orleans? Differently-captioned photographs of New Orleans-area looters create controversy. Various rumors about the effect of Hurricane Katrina on gasoline supplies and prices. We examine a number of "how to protect your home against a hurricane" fallacies, including the notion that opening a window will help equalize air pressure inside the home.
That's all for now, because I'm afraid I'll exhaust LJ's single entry capacity.
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