New Orleans and Mississippi

[DCJenn]

If any of our members are in those areas, our thoughts are with you. If you need anything, please let us know. (Of course, you won't be online for a while!)

But, this is an awesome group of people who invariably pitch in, so if any of you know of anything we can do, let us know.

Jenn

PS- Go give blood, people!!!

[Cumberland]

I really cant believe the things that are going on there. I just read that rescuers are pushing dead bodies aside bc they dont have the time or resources to get to them, stores are being looted while police watch bc they have no functioning jail to put them in, and among the 20k people in the superdome are 5000 inmates that were evacuated there!!

[Amiens]

My heart is breaking as I watch the news reports and the stories of the victims of this tragedy.

Not to be blase or light about such a travesty, but when the news broke that Katrina was going to hit New Orleans, and possibly cover the city with 3 stories of water, I told Matt that it looks like the ASA (American Society of Anesthesia) will have to hold their Convention/Meeting elsewhere because the center will be flooded. Matt just got an email today saying the ASA is trying to figure out what to do about the upcoming meeting in October. Apparently New Orleans had a levy break, and there is so much rising water that no one can get into the city to pump it out.

Back to my heartbreaking- I balled when I heard this man talk today about holding tight to his wife as the flood waters rose, and the wife said she couldn't hold on any longer. The wife let go and as she did she said "Take good care of our children." I cannot even begin to imagine what the residents of Louisiana and Mississippi are going through right now.

Crystal

I saw that snipet of the man who lost his wife, too, and it also broke my heart. I've been thinking about that poor man all day I have a good friend from grad school who lives down there and I've been trying to get in touch with her, but no luck so far. I hope she's ok...

[fluffhead]

It's really unspeakably tragic - I guess when this happens in India and Bangladesh, it doesn't strike home quite so strongly.

/begin{anti-govt rant}
What boils my blood is to see the army Corps of Engineers coming in as heros to repair the levees, when this is what caused much of the problem in the first place. These guys have quite the nerve - they come in to build multi-million dollar projects which screw things up royally, and then 50 years later, start multi-million dollar projects to repair or undo the original work. Case in point - draining the Everglades - they're now embarking on huge projects to undo what they did mistakenly last century. In New Orleans, preventing occasional Mississippi River flooding did not allow the silt and organic material to accumulate in the bayous, and killed millions of acres of wetlands, which would have mitigated the flooding to a great extent.
OK. I'm done.
/end{eco-communist propoganda}

I did hear from my friend in New Orleans...she drove to Georgia yesterday and said on the drive up the area looked like a war zone. She's OK, though, thank goodness.