(no subject)

[heidi]

elke_tanzer, queen of useful links, has a wonderful collection of links with donation information here and methods of getting and sharing information here.

Flickr has over two thousand photos that ordinary people have taken on camphones and their own cameras and uploaded to the site. It's heartbreaking.

hurricane_blog is the RSS from our local Sun Sentinal's hurricane-themed blog. It's very down to earth and useful in terms of flat-out information, but if you want something very local, check out the Times-Picayune's blog.

And fandom_charity is thanking donors with gifts of fics, icons and art. The general fic "rate" is $1/100 words, $10/1,000 words.

A big thank you to the US Navy, who are en route with amphibious crafts to rescue and transport people to safety, and bring food and drinking water for those in need. My brother in law, who is in the Navy, is currently in Ft Worth where everyone from his New Orleans base is relocating - it looks like he'll be there for weeks, if not months. I am choosing to avoid politicizing right now, but I may later rant about the morality of vacationing. On the flip side, though, there was a family quoted in the Herald this morning who decided that if they were going to spend a hundred dollars a night on hotels, they were going to drive to Orlando and take the kids to Disney World and try and distract them from the fact that they may not have a home to go back to. I'm not sure if I'm cheered or devestated by that.

It's probably too early to really talk about this, but back in 1992, everyone said that Homestead and County Walk and even Kendall and the Gables would never recover from Hurricane Andrew, which flattened nearly two hundred thousand homes, destroyed towns and ruined lives. Yes, the devestation from Katrina is multiple-times-multiplied from Andrew, but the sentinment should be the same - New Orleans, Biloxi and all the other devestated towns need to be rebuilt and revitalized. Kudos to the casinos who've promised at least three months pay to their employees. Kudos to those who are helping their neighbors and the refugees in their midst. Best wishes and the all important "please stay safe" to everyone in the area, and may they get that damned levee closed.

Comments

[phoenixsong]

The latest idea, according to the Baltimore Sun, is to find a barge and drop it into the now 500 ft breech.

It sounds just crazy enough to, hopefully, at least work to slow things down. Is this being reported anywhere else?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

I saw it on Yahoo news too.

[emrinalexander.livejournal.com]

I'm so proud of all the services right now. Coast Guard, National Guard, Navy - wonderful people all.

[stephandra.livejournal.com]

I actually heard the sound byte of the Disney World Guy, and he said that insurance would pay for their home and their belongings, but they still had each other and they were going to celebrate that. I found it cheerful that the people who are so devastated by this have some perspective. And with Houston opening up the Astrodome to NO refugees and cancelling everything to at least December, it gives you some faith.

[hedwig-snowy.livejournal.com]

I don't know. At some point I would like someone to stand up and do the right thing and tell people that IF their property is destroyed on the coast, especially on a barrier island, they cannot rebuild. We love to applaud the resiliency of people in their efforts to hold on to something. I wish we wouldn't allow that sentiment to get in the way in this case. This isn't about property or gambling receipts or beachfront homes...this is about lives.

1) Biloxi - Quit pretending that you're not gambling on the Bible Belt and construct your casinos inland.
2) No homes within 1/2 mile of the beach. It may be 30 years before another hurricane hits, but I wouldn't count on it.
3)Even if the Feds don't take tax money to rebuild, insurance rates will rise and they'll be allowed to rebuild because the local Govts need the tax money from those homes and businesses on the coast.

It's not likely that this type of change will happen anytime soon...maybe one day. At the very least, they should increase the building codes 1000 percent and try to spread these people out and away from the shore as much as possible.

Anecdote: They have a river in N California. Russian River. People live along it and it floods every few years. After those floods, you see somebody being interviewed saying something like, "This is the 3rd time my house has flooded in the last ten years, but we'll rebuild." Right in the same spot...

[leiabelle.livejournal.com]

You really think it's sensible or practical to rebuild New Orleans? The mind boggles at the amount of work that would need to be done. There's no way that the buildings in the flooded areas are still structurally sound -- from the pictures, I'd imagine that downtown NO would have to be completely leveled and rebuilt from scratch. It will also require building the levees back up, and quite frankly I really can't see the sense in setting a city up for a second disaster.