Hurricane!

You can survive a while without food, but take away your water and you’re hurting - fast. This is, of course, especially the case in desert conditions. A major headache for our military is getting fresh water to troops who are in arid places. It’s also an issue in situations like hurricane Katrina, where fresh water is no where to found. But transporting water to disparate locations is very costly. Aqua Sciences has come up with a way to cut out transportation by literally grabbing the water out of the air.

FEMA strikes again, causing the Katrina victims even more distress. After Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans FEMA contracted for over $3 billion to purchase nearly 150,000 trailers as temporary homes for evacuees who had lost their homes. There is one problem with these trailers though. Formaldehyde.

Recall that, following the Christmas tsunami of 2004, and Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Jewish and Christian clerics rushed forward to blame those events on abortion, gays, secularism — all of modernism.

Like all the scam websites that went up after 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina, these bins put things in perspective for me. I’m as interested as the next guy in getting rich, but if I don’t honestly believe my work is making the world a better place, then it’s not worth doing.

I shot some video today for the class project, hanging my camera out the window while driving down Carrollton and other streets in Uptown, Broadmoor and Hollygrove. It’s to show the post-flood New Orleans, after our family of taxpayers returns to the city. I got a good mixture of fully-restored houses, restoration-in-progress houses, and a block with FEMA trailer after FEMA trailer. I have some old video that I shot the first time I came back to town, right before Hurricane Rita, that I can use to show the immediate aftermath. I also have some very depressing video that I shot in Lakeview just this past August.

The thing that struck me most is how far the coast has come in Hurricane Katrina clean up. The last time I was down there was around New Years, and most of the coast still looked like a war zone. While there are still some areas where the devastation is evident -- large structures demolished, beach-front homes in varying states of repair or demolition -- there's no more trash along the roads, and very little otherwise to tell you that a major hurricane dealt the area a harsh strike.

Former FEMA director Michael Brown attended a conference in Colorado yesterday, telling all about his disasterous experiences during Hurricane Katrina. Speaking in front of hundreds of the world’s emergency management experts, “Brownie” warned that “FEMA is a bureaucratic monstrosity destined to move slowly.”

The Nesom house burned about a month before hurricane Katrina slammed into our community and flooded the charred home. The family said, what at first seemed to be a tragic “double wammy” turned out to be the providence of God.

About a week after Hurricane Katrina, the sheriff of Forrest County, Mississippi decided that saving human lives was far more important than policies and protocols of FEMA, which had left ice and water sitting in 18-wheelers while people were dehydrating and insulin was going unrefrigerated in the steamy Mississippi heat.

Large sections of New Orleans are still in shambles and now we learn the levees are not fully ready for the next hurricane season.

More than eight months after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin outlined an evacuation plan for his city on Tuesday.

Immediately after Hurricane Katrina, our crisis was acute, our options limited, and our decisions necessarily quick. Now, with the crisis in the chronic phase, options backed by conflicting interest groups abound, resulting in cumbersome decision making and dangerously slow implementation. During the crisis, two principles contributed to survival: initiative for self-rescue and professional teamwork. As we heal our infrastructure, these principles continue to guide us.

In the wake of Katrina, he sites VoIP as a major reason that live communications could be reestablished in an emergency.

Meanwhile in the Katrina Zone, the Small Business Administration has tripled it's staff yet cut emergency loan approvals to the lowest rate in 15 years.

Seriously though, the Times Picayune and Biloxi Sun Herald have done amazing work under difficult circumstances to not only deal with the scale and scope of destruction wrought by Katrina, Rita, and Wilma, but have produced first rate journalism. They're often source material for many of my own bloggings on the ongoing rebuilding on the Gulf Coast - mostly because the national media has moved on to other stories.

I think a more constructive exercise for a consumer advocate, and something that the industry should be undertaking on its own, is a review of cat management philosophy and some reconsideration of how much it costs to bear risk. While I have no doubt that many insurers had forgotten the lessons of Hugo and Andrew, and needed a refresher course in the form of Katrina, Rita, and Wilma… I fear the past six months have seen more reaction than thoughtful action.

For those of you who don’t get HBO, Bill Maher just interviewed Harry Anderson (you might remember him from Night Court), about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Bill and Harry were discussing how the French Quarter survived the onslaught of Katrina, to which Harry said…

As Think Progress shows, Bush was closely monitoring the situation, if by “monitoring the situation” you mean playing guitar:

Head honcho at Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, admitted that they screwed up in front of a Senate panel today. This, of course, comes on the heels of the House report (Also, daily kos has some more commentary on the House report) that said how much everybody in the government - at all levels - screwed up.

He then went on a rant about Hurricane Katrina as though it were the president’s fault all the people of color were not evacuated from New Orleans. President Bush does not hate blacks. He has given more opportunities in high places of government to blacks and Latinos than any other president in our history, bar none.

Even as Bush and Cheney and the Army of the Night, aka, the corporate news media, run around America shouting that it is OK for them to spy illegally on us all, they refuse to obey Congressional demands for information, haughtily declaring that it is super top secret and nya, nya noogies.

5 - Even though we already had the busiest hurricane season in years, expect a greater one to come in 2006. And yet, many lives will be saved because of the prayer and contrition which is affecting much of Louisiana, Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. Galveston, Texas was spared the fury of Hurricane Emily, but Katrina found Louisiana unprepared. Expect San Francisco to be next, for this city has rejected the Word of God.

The winning crazy quilt block for the All that Jazz Katrina Survivor Quilt is Marty Trahan! Voting was extremely close at times as I am sure you will agree there were so many good entries. I am still surprised at the high standard and delighted as this means that both quilts will be sought after and raise good dollars hopefully. I would like to thank everyone who participated for without people doing so projects like this would not be able to be realised.

The future shape of New Orleans will be determined by water, not Washington politicians. Water, moving water, water falling from the sky, water pushed by hurricanes, water diverted, water pooled --- water will decide. Water will write a not so subtle letter to the mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana and the President and CEO of the US stating its intentions to carve it up as it sees fit. Resistance, though not futile, will be expensive. Their choice.

A Mediacom employee named Dave had a house about three doors from the beach. All that remains are the pilings on which it stood.

For example, every day, thousands of Americans are independently lifting themselves out of poverty by landing well-paying jobs and by establishing their own successful small businesses. Numerous children from troubled backgrounds who have been written off are learning skills and adopting codes of conduct that will result in their growing up to be productive, stable, and law-abiding members of society. A great many individuals -- spanning teenagers to “old folks” -- are overcoming addiction to alcohol and illegal drugs and going on to live “clean lives”. And a countless number of people who were profoundly affected by such recent natural disasters as hurricanes Katrina and Wilma are taking significant initiatives to rebuild and put their lives back together, and many have already gotten the job done.

The hurricane had hit less than 48 hrs before Vitter delivered Rove’s message. Nobody knew yet that Michael Brown was going to screw up as badly as he did. Remember, Brown did an exemplary job handling the devastation from Hurricane Charley in Florida the year before. There was no reason to automatically assume he would prove to be suddenly incompetent only twelve months later. Nor was there ever any discussion during Charlie of taking over the state’s National Guard and imposing martial law in Florida.

· I am thankful that out of all the destruction that has been visited upon this nation this year, Katrina and Rita, that my family has remained unscathed.

After Hurricane Katrina, I donated $50 to the Humane Society to help the pets that were stranded and abandoned in New Orleans. Yesterday I heard that the Humane Society filed a law suit regarding the welfare of poultry in slaughter houses. Great! The Humane Society has turned into frigging PETA! I am not going to donate any more money to them. We already have enough over-the-top flakes at PETA, we don’t need another whacko organization!

We are trying to raise $5,100 for post production expenses. This amount would get us a fine-cut suitable for festivals and public showings. I cannot stress the importance of producing this film. Our feature will focus on the local groups such as Common Grounds and outside volunteers such as the people from Veterans For Peace. What makes this film worthy of donating to is the large audience that will have their eyes opened to the current problems facing the residents of todays New Orleans and the groups helping those people.

I "mucked" today -- and it sucked! (But not for the reasons you might think - read on) Imagine a house that, at one time had 4 to 5 feet of standing water, not to mention now in it's ninth week with no power or water - think about what nine weeks with no power can do to the contents of a refrigerator and freezer. As one of the guys said tonight, "I smelled smells that no one should ever have to smell." The standing water was now gone, but the dampness was there, and the mold was growing up the walls. The mattresses and upholstered furniture were still soaked, and the dresser drawers were stuck closed, but full of water! Standard operating procedure with the refrigerators is to duct tape them closed - very well - and then haul them out. And you have no idea how heavy a soaking wet sofa bed is. First we carried everything out to the side of the road. You just pile the stuff up and eventually FEMA comes and picks it up.

From the experience of others, we knew to not open the doors to the refrigerator. Refrigerators simply cannot be saved. The smell of the liquid that seeped out the shut doors confirmed this wisdom. While we were there, refrigerators were the hottest-selling item in New Orleans, and will be for some time.

The one million people from New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast suddenly tossed out of their jobs by Hurricane Katrina are now fanning out across the South and the rest of the country looking for work. In San Francisco, a few have been hired to scab on striking health care workers. Others can hope for work rebuilding the highways and buildings leveled by the storm and flooding. But most were low-wage workers in the casino and tourism industries, filling jobs that will not exist until the region is rebuilt. Before the hurricane hit, nearly a fourth of New Orleans residents lived below the poverty line.

This evening I visited wwltv.com to get an inside update into what is going on in the crippled city of New Orleans. Shocked…Shocked…Evictions can commence as soon as a judge quits stalling…parking tickets are now being issued once again… and the amount of homeless is safely hovering at around a quarter million…

That awfully nice man, Trent Reznor, he of Nine Inch Nails fame, is auctioning several autographed guitars on eBay. They’ve all been used on stage during the last tour and are in various states of disrepair having been, well, all but destroyed during his on stage antics. All money raised is being donated towards the Hurricane Katrina relief fund.

Here you have people who have known nothing but poverty. I understand why they'd indulge themselves (hell, it'd be like Christmas to some), but the fact is that this wasn't "fun money". It was given to them to help them survive and to get back on their feet. Some, of course, are taking full advantage of the situation and doing just that, but others are just content to sit back, get drunk in front of the Wal-Mart or the bus stop, and let the government keep taking care of them.

WEBSTER SAY'S A REFUGEE IS ONE WHO FLEES FOR SAFTY, ESCAPES TO A FOREIGN COUNTRY. WELL LET THE TRUTH BE TOLD WE DIDN'T FLEE FROM AFRICA TO BE SAFE, INSTEAD WE WERE STOLEN FROM OUR COUNTRY AND BROUGHT HERE AS SLAVES, DURING "NINE-ELEVEN" IN YOUR TIME OF TROUBLE ALL OF A SUDDEN WE BECAME YOUR AFRICAN-AMERICAN BROTHER'S, BUT WHEN HURRICANE KATRINA HIT, THE MOMENT YOU SPLIT YOUR LIPS, THAT'S WHEN IT CAME TO ME, GOD OPENED MY THIRD EYE AND ALLOWED ME TO SEE, THAT TO YOU WE'RE NOT AMERICAN, JUST REFUGEE, AND YES I DO TAKE IT PERSONALLY.

Yet Capek says the photos don’t do the destruction justice. “It was much, much worse than Hurricane Isabel,” he says. “With Isabel, trees were snapped and torn down. With Katrina, trees were completely relocated.”

Paul opined that the martial law provisions now being promoted by the Bush administration were a direct response to people's unwillingness to relinquish their firearms, as was seen in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.

Readers, I need your help. I just received an e-mail from Hurricane Katrina relief volunteer Nora Craig. She’s a small-business owner in Franklin, N.J., who led the effort for her city to “adopt” the devastated town of Lumberton, Miss. She has heard from another small town in need of help and is sending out an S.O.S.:

As many know Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi essentially got wiped out by Katrina. This is the story of how one Air Force Officer managed a job he never thought he would have, that of "Shelter Commander" during the hurricane. It makes for a good read.

Because Katrina was unprecedented -- none of the disasters referenced resulted in so many thousands of people being displaced due to flooding -- the federal govenment's planning to deal with a situation like that was lacking. The job of FEMA and Homeland Security should be to prepare for the unprecedented and not just base its performance on past disasters.

HUNDREDS of tons of British food aid shipped to America for starving Hurricane Katrina survivors is to be burned.

Everyone has heard about the devastating impact that Hurricane Katrina has had on Mississippi, Louisiana, and the rest of the Gulf Coast. I feel extremely bad and have so much compassion for those who had to go through the hurricane. I have seen first hand the devastation caused by a hurricane, I went through Hurricane Charley a little over a year ago. It was a hard time for me and my family with both of my grandmothers houses being uninhabitable, and many other family members house extremely damaged. It is so wonderful to see how the country is pulling together to help those who have been effected by this horrific event.

There’s an interesting tidbit buried in this CNN.com article. Apparently doctors are concerned that they won’t be able to handle the increase of accidental injuries that will occur as people return to New Orleans and try to clean up.

But the story about the flight to Atlanta is another example of a pretty relaxed attitude by the people at the top of the FEMA food chain. Bush stays on his political campaigning vacation, and Chertoff flies off to Atlanta, leaving everything up to the clearly incapable Brown in New Orleans. It’s obvious from the reporting of the 2004 hurricane season that Brown was managed quite closely by the White House to prevent any embarrassments in the election run-up, so this was his first time on his own.

Last year she had moved to Pensacola Florida, two weeks later Hurricane Ivan struck.

She moved to Tennessee, a month later, they had a big ice storm.

She moved down here two months ago, you know what happened, Hurricane Katrina.

Way cool. I was curious about shipping conditions in the lower Mississippi following Katrina, and stumbled across this by following my mouse. It will make a good subject for a post for next week’s CoHR.

Word from Florida suggests that much of the damage wreaked by Hurricane Ivan last year has not yet been repaired. I will be very surprised if New Orleans is restored to normality within the next decade. The only good thing is that Bush and Cheney will be long retired by then. Maybe their successors will realise that they must take the initiative when a disaster occurs but before the drama becomes a tragedy.

It’s been touching, if a bit humbling, to hear about the offers of aid from around the world which have been pouring in to this country in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

There have been many voices, including that of House Speaker Dennis Hastert, saying that New Orleans isn’t worth rebuilding, that the region is too disaster-prone to be worth the usual investment in disaster relief from the federal government. That’s balderdash. It is true that New Orleans is mostly below sea level and kept above water by levies. However, only three truly major storms have hit New Orleans in the past 60 years — the ‘47 hurricane, Hurricane Betsy in ‘65, and Hurricane Katrina in ‘05. That’s not a track record which shows an extreme predisposition to catastrophy. Southern California and Florida are far, far more expensive in terms of disaster relief (probably even on a per-capita basis). New Orleans simply isn’t the albatross around America’s neck that some people want to portray it as.

Meanwhile Tom Delay has blamed Democrats at the local level. Preisident Bush had the chutzpah of announcing that HE will lead an investigation into what happened. And what if he finds he’s to blame? Unlikely. Meanwhile with the costs of the catastrophe not estimated at l00 BILLION and growing, the NY Times reports: “Hurricane Katrina is about to blow a hole in the federal budget, and it is already jeopardizing President Bush's plans for tax cuts and reducing the deficit.”

I’ve been half joking for the past week that New Orleans is the new Venice. But I don’t think its such a bad idea at all. New Orleans has always been a niche city anyway. Why not rebuild with water in mind? Build up everything, and then intentionally flood the city. No need for tricky levees. No need to worry about when the next big one will hit. There would never be a great flood again. We can have Mardi Gras on the water. A city of canals would give even more character to a metropolis filled with it already.

This message was noticed three days ago by Scott Stanfield, on the latest NOAA imagery released on the web on September 1, and posted by Jeff Atwood in his blog.

A 500-year flood hit New Orleans. Its emergency stations (hospitals, schools) were underwater. How the hell do you plan for that? Incredibly, 44 percent blame Bush. Even more incredibly, this is reported under the headline, "Hurricane Preparedness Is Faulted; Fewer Blame Bush for Problems." We accept that 44 percent blame Bush for everything all the time. When do we get back to being united?

There was a large difference in the amount of time that it took President Bush to reach the area that was destoryed by Katrina when you put it in perspective to Hurricane Ivan that went through florida last year that damaged areas close to Jeb Bush (Governor of Florida and President Bush’s brother). It took President Bush ONE day to tour the area hit by Hurricane Ivan (which caused 92 deaths) and it took him almost an entire week to visit the areas affected by Katrina (which has caused more than 246 deaths as of Monday September 5th). As of September 1st there were more than 20,000 people reported missing.

I figured it was just a matter of time before the religious wingnuts came out. The organization, Repent America, implies that Hurricane Katrina was sent by God to destroy New Orleans before its Southern Decadence festival. I’m guessing Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are still reeling from the Chavez comments. It hasn’t been long enough for them to forget themselves and say something asinine, but I don’t expect that to last.

Last year, Brown also faced heat when it was discovered FEMA paid out $31 million in aid in Miami-Dade County after Hurricane Frances, though the storm hit 100 miles to the north and the county never felt sustained winds of hurricane strength.

President Bush on Friday was quick to defend Brown, saying he thought Brown was “doing a heck of a job.”

One of the best members on Warner’s team is William H. Leighty Jr., his chief of staff. As is the case with key staff members, citizens rarely hear much about them unless something goes wrong. That is not the case with Leighty. In fact, he is in high demand.

Governor Mark R. Warner announced today that the short-term outlook for Virginia’s gasoline supplies has improved dramatically. The Plantation pipeline, which carries gasoline from the Gulf Coast to the Commonwealth, returned to 95% capacity today, and the Colonial pipeline is operating at about 66% capacity and expects to reach 85% capacity late this weekend. An interruption in electrical service due to Hurricane Katrina briefly shut down both pipelines earlier this week, which provide 75 to 80% of Virginia’s gasoline supplies. “I would urge motorists to drive smart this holiday weekend, conserving when they can and sticking to normal fuel purchasing habits,” Governor Warner said. “There have been some isolated shortages in some Virginia communities, but the situation is improving and should get better over the holiday weekend.” Concern about the supply of gas has resulted in rumors, but Virginia has ordered no limits on gasoline sales. Law enforcement personnel and inspectors from the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs will be on the job this holiday weekend to investigate reports of gasoline price gouging. In 2004, Virginia adopted an anti-price gouging law in the aftermath of Hurricane Isabel the year before.

It seems some are intent, gleeful even, on the end of us. And so I join the masses in saluting a man of conscience in a time of cowardice:

Any idea where all our helicopters are? It’s Day 5 of Hurricane Katrina and thousands remain stranded in New Orleans and need to be airlifted. Where on earth could you have misplaced all our military choppers? Do you need help finding them? I once lost my car in a Sears parking lot. Man, was that a drag.

Some really good information here on Katrina's effect on agriculture in Louisiana. Another story of interest is here.

The complaints showed how the Hurricane Katrina disaster is prompting the same recriminations that surround nearly all subjects in the capital’s current angry mood.

And as physical needs slowly get met, spiritual needs will need to be met too. Several news stories have picked up on the cry for people needing Bibles. A few things are getting rolling on that front, like how American Bible Society is responding to the need for Bibles in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. [full disclosure: I’m an employee of the American Bible Society; and 100% of donations go to ministry, no administrative overhead]

The situations are so totally, completely, fundamentally different that I’m finding myself intensely angry every time I hear the mayors compared, and the mayor of New Orleands come up wanting. Yes, he may not be as competent, in the end, as Giuliani. Maybe Giuliani is better connected and better able to get the Feds to respond with a larger response - I don’t know that. But you can’t just line up the two situations. I don’t know what Rudi would have been able to do differently before Katrina hit, and I’m not sure just how much of a difference he might have been able to make afterwards. But the challenges of 9/11 and Katrina seem VERY different, to me.

The DOD response is well ahead of the 1992 Hurricane Andrew timetable. Back then, the support request took nine days to crawl through the bureaucracy. The reaction this time was less than three days officially, and DOD had been pre-staging assets in anticipation of the aid request from the moment Katrina hit.....

Even as Katrina strengthened to a category 3 storm with a path that had it coming right at New Orleans, I still planned to stay home for it. I was even discussing drinking strategy with my friend Larry the Saturday night before she hit. My reasoning was this: If the storm came and destroyed my home, I would be miserable whether I was there to witness it or not. A few days stuck in evacuation traffic would only add to my misery.

Yesterday, I found out that my mother, who was in Texas on a business trip, got a rental car, filled it up with water, food and gas, and drove to my grandparents and intends to stay with them a few days. She and my grandparents are not in the immediate area feeling the brunt of the hurricane, but it just feels wrong that in this age of global telecommunications that I can’t contact them.

I know everything will be fine, but until I hear something, I don’t know what to think.

It is as simple as that. If I am selling something then I should not be artificially limited by government to simply recouping my costs plus a non-market determined profit. I should be able to sell anything I want for any amount I can get for it. If you don't want to buy it then don't. If you can find someone down the street sellling for less then take your business there.

But even lower are those partisans in the MSM and elsewhere who are joyfully using this horrible disaster to try and score points against the President. I thought I had seen the worst kinds of behaviour possible from these idiots, but they’ve clearly sunk to a new low, publishing some articles blaming the disaster on President Bush BEFORE the hurricane had even struck!

Things are really weird around here. I last saw stuff like this last year, especially in the days after Hurricane Charley. Of course, since Hurricane Charley hit here (or three miles from my house, anyway), that wasn’t so unexpected. Now…Katrina hit miles and miles from here. But, what do we have…rapidly rising gas prices…and massive lines at the gas pumps. It was enough to cause me to go out and get gas on my lunch hour today…and when I got off work at 9pm, I was glad I did so because the lines are even longer now. Lines for gas at 9:15PM on a WEDNESDAY night, who’s ever heard of such a thing?

Two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for such a disaster. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels. Reports at the time said that thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. … Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now." (Too bad Louisiana isn’t a swing state. In the aftermath of Hurricane Frances — and the run-up to the 2004 election — the Bush administration awarded $31 million in disaster relief to Florida residents who didn’t even experience hurricane damage.)

Being from the midwest, hurricanes are a frightening and completely foreign concept to me. Tornadoes, sure, no problem, you sit in the basement and listen to the radio and it blows over. Moving to the east coast raised my awareness a bit. Oh, sure, we had some minor flooding in downtown Baltimore during Hurricane Isabel two years ago — my kitchen window dribbled rainwater for an hour and my nerves were scrambled — but cars floating away? Perching on shingles waiting for a helicopter? Not part of my reality.

Several US Web sites, including Weather.com, became temporarily unavailable while people were trying to find all information available on Hurricane Katrina.

By all indications, New Orleans is undergoing their worst case scenario. This study, written in November of 2004 by Shirley Laska of the Center for Hazards Assessment, Response and Technology at The University of New Orleans, provides a glimpse of exactly what is in store for the great city of New Orleans.

In fact, for the last two years, efforts to shore up the levees and pumps in order to prepare for an event like Katrina have been gutted due to the every growing demands of the Iraq war. This disaster might not have been so bad had plans been allowed to continue to prepare for the storm everyone knew was comng sooner or later.

We THE 66TH MOB and I am sure several RAIDERS fans want to extend a helping hand out to all of the victims devastated by Hurricane Katrina. *THE RAIDER NATION TO THE RESCUE.

Hi, jumping in between normal TWT episodes here to give you (and me) some encouragement to do what you can to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I don’t intend to stump for a particular charity; instead I encourage you simply to remember the importance of charity (or love, if you prefer.) 1 Corinthians 13, which you’ll hear on September 2, says it’s greater even than faith and hope.

May all of our thoughts and prayers, go out to the people whose lives have forever been altered by Hurricane Katrina. From the devastated coastal communities, to the families affected by inland tornados and storms. May they be given the strength to endure their grief and suffering. Many have lost the material things they hold precious, but material can be replaced over time, but it seems it’s always the poor who take the brunt of the pain. To those of them who were unable to leave, we can only hope they found shelter for them and their families.

The President has also authorized a declaration for public assistance for the southern tip of Florida in response to Hurricane Katrina's first landfall on Friday. FEMA is moving federal response teams as well as supplies of generators, water, ice and food and other emergency commodities into the region for immediate deployment once the storm passes to any of the Gulf Coast states impacted and in need. The FEMA site has full details.

As for my girlfriend’s hometown, New Orleans was spared the brunt of Hurricane Katrina but it still got hit pretty hard. If you are coming here for hurricane information, then you are pretty stupid, but I can tell you that it will be a few days (obviously) until her parents venture back to town to discover what has been left behind. As of right now, it is pretty much assumed that her father’s office was destroyed because nearly every report has implied that there was standing water of at least feet near Lake Ponchatrain where it is located. Again, here’s the link to the Red Cross and any help would be much appreciated by the thousands of displaced Southerners.

But with Monday’s all-day coverage of Hurricane Katrina, it appears severe weather has a new suitor: the Internet.

Hurricane Katrina has weakened to a powerful Category Four storm. Maximum sustained winds are around 145 mph.

Watching the CNN coverage is surreal, he’s right.

They are covering it like a sports event - and inventing a psuedoscientific argot of catastophe as they go along: “wobble factor”, “cone of possibility” etc.

New Orleans is about to be hit by an enormous hurricane, the highlight so far of an unusually active hurricane season. Meanwhile, Americans keep buying SUVs...

Hurricane Katrina is worrisome for many reasons. I have family and friends in Baton Rouge but I think they will be reasonably safe. But, if the predicted scenario happens the entire nation could be effected by the damage brought on by Katrina.

By the time most of you read this post Hurricane Katrina will have come and passed over New Orleans. However on this, the eve of the storm, I can only compare the thought of the oncoming storm to the saying that I heard from my brother-in-law some time ago; “Everyone prays in the foxhole”.

They are saying Katrina will likely be a category 4 hurricane, with winds 140+ mph. This could be significant damage, with loads of residual damage as well. I have boarded the front and back windows, which are the most vulnerable to damage from flying objects. My northern side is protected by buildings next door (this is one of the few times it is good to have neighbors an arm distance or so away).

out of nowhere, hurricane katrina is now upon us and tomorrow’s classes are cancelled! i can’t believe it, i was sitting at dinner with christine eating mexican food (chicken and rice burrito, yum-me) talking about what i wouldn’t give to not have to do my homework tonight and my phone rings. it was my roomate dave telling me that miami-dade county cancelled all classes at all schools for tomorrow and friday and our school is included. so my weekend started on wednesday night, totally awesome.

OK, as of 1:30 AM Thursday it is not yet a hurricane. Just a tropical storm. But it will be Hurricane Katrina later today or tonight. And then if projections are correct, come ashore about 5 Am Friday morning. And head down Hollywood/Pines Blvd west to my neighborhood.

To irreversibly date this blog entry: hurricane Katrina is heading our way. As of the latest advisory, the storm should be hitting us in the middle of the night, with bad winds starting this afternoon-ish. If it keeps its current westward track (it’s now around 26-27 degrees N), it’ll end up hitting Ft. Lauderdale more directly and we’ll be getting the top side, which is actually pretty bad.