Eaglesfan27, I am glad to hear you are safe. Terpkristin it is always good to know that you can now relax knowing your brother is safe and Pumpy Tudors, your timing to leave is uncanny. I give all you guys the best wishes and I hope things turn out well regardless of how it seems to look for you now, because you guys are alive and safe.

The wind is blowing pretty good here now. I would estmaite it at about 30 MPH with guts up to 40 MPH. We have some rain. The good news is that it is suppose to push east of here.

Well, it is hitting home now. Tornado warning within 2 miles of my mother-in-laws house in Conyers, Ga.

Shep Smith is walking around the French Quarter with video - looks like they were very lucky. No flooding, looks like only damage were windows and shutters, no outward appearance of structural damage.

I've seen things elsewhere that indicates other parts of NO weren't as lucky as the Quarter, particularly the more eastern portions of the city. Mayor has mentioned "bodies in the water". Nothing on how many, though. They're also confirming that this was the second coming of Camille over in Mississippi. While it could have been a lot worse (if Katrina had been just a hair west of actual), clearly, it's going to be bad enough as it is.

I really hope those "bodies in the water" are from the graveyards.

This is the source of that information, from the website of a TV station down in NO:

People trapped on roofs, bodies in water

I dont think well know the extent of the damage until tuesday if not wednesdday at the earliest. Brace yourselves for the other potental hurrricanes in the mid atlantque.

CNN reporter just on was quite upset by what she saw in the area were there is severe flooding. She said there was bodies in the water, and I-10 is completely under water.

Am I the only one who thinks that state and federal aid should be denied to the dumbasses who didn't evacuate when they were told to?

I certainly hope so.

Why should everyone be forced to pay higher insurance premiums cause people want to live 10 feet under sea level on the coast? Their shit gets wrecked, then they get it all replaced, and can rebuild. Thats the thing that always pisses me off.

some people couldnt evacuate, they didnt have a car, were too poor to afford hotel rooms, etc.

Look, I understand if there are people physically or medically unable to get the hell out when a storm like this is looming. They aren't dumbasses.

I'm talking about dumbasses, able-bodied individuals who have seen this thing coming for a week, done fuck-all about it, and then sit on their roof, call emergency services, and go "Send somebody to pick me up. I want to live!"

Yes, that's an actual quote.

If you're a dumbass, you should be denied aid. Why should the rest of the nation subsidize your idiocy?

Those who were physically or medically unable to leave, the ones trapped through no fault of their own, that's an entirely different matter.

I would have thought that it would be evident from my use of the word 'dumbasses' that I'm talking about people who are there because of a lack of common sense, but apparently I have to spell it out.

I'm not talking about those people. I understand there are innocents in every disaster scenario, and I'm not proposing denying them aid.

I'm talking about an entirely different class of people.

That's not completely true--my parents live on a bayfront and they are required to hold additional flood insurance not required of other homeowners...

Dola,

I don't think regular homeowners insurance covers flooding...

Watching FOX News right now, and I'm getting sick to my stomache. I'm definitely a bit more conservative than I am liberal, but the more I see the conservative view-point of modern times, the more that line is thinning for me.

They are talking about the same things that Stevew is - Should "we" be forced to help these people that "choose" to live in a dangerous area? That is an absolute bullshit question. I highly doubt that the children that live in these areas "choose" to live there, and I also have a feeling that many poor people don't choose to live there either. Regardless of that, I find it nauseating that conservatives, the so-called "moral-majority" (and religious majority) would even raise this question. Especially while so much damage and pain isn't even a day old. For those that claim allegiance to Christ, I ask you this question: Would Jesus allow people to suffer without lending aid in this situation?

I'm sure I'll get blasted, but I don't care. I've heard both sides of the issue, and I see both points, but I know which side my dollar and my heart goes toward.

Schmidty, the dollar should follow where the heart (and spirit) leads.

I agree, it's just that I'm so angry and sad to see the "side" which I tend to agree with be so fucking heartless, hypocritical and stupid. :(

Sackattack is the one talking about witholding aid. I just think it isnt very pragmatic for insurance companies and the government to pay to rebuild homes in areas with a potential to be destroyed, its happened quite a bit of late. Move inland.

Children, seniors, and other people that don't have the means or options live in these homes, apartments, and other structures. To ask them to "move inland" is absolutely heartless and unfair. Especially right now. Life isn't just about money, politics and logic. It's amazing to see how many seemingly intelligent people have trouble understanding that.

This is spreading out. Carrol County, Georgia has 30 homes destroyed and 100 homes damaged. Everyone still in the path, keep your eyes out and be safe.

What about earthquakes in California? Landslides in Southern Cal? Torondoes in the midwest and open areas? Blizzards in the winter climate regions?

I would think that because of the laws that require homeowners living in flood plains to carry additional flood insurance on top of their regular homeowners insurance, I would imagine that the insurance companies actually come out ahead in the long run...

Of course not,


Jesus would just raise his arms and calm the storm.

Since NO hasn't had this problem (hurricane related) in a long time, hopefully there's enough in escrow from various insurance companies to cover it. Theoretically, they've had to pay this insurance for years and years of esentially nothing, they should be able to cash it in now.

Of course the insurance companies will cry poor however.

Actually on MSNBC (or CNBC or one of those stations) I heard one of the insurance bigwigs say that this would be NOTHING at all like Andrew; the point was that Andrew was an historical disaster, and the insurance companies learned some lessons from it.

I was probably dozing on what happened with the insurance companies relating to Andrew, can you please refresh?

If you want destinations to be reachable for vacations, scientific work, industrial work, and commerical work, you need people to live there. Someone is going to have to live in dangerous areas. And since we all benefit in small ways from having a population thats spread out as opposed to stacked up and living in super safe arcologies, all of us will have to live with the fact that we have to help lend a hand with our wallets from time to time.

My grandparents have totally lost their home near the gulf West of Biloxi to this storm. But its not like it happens every year to them, they lost one near the same spot in Camille 36 years ago. (They are a good 10 mile as the crow flies from the Gulf, 20 miles driving time.) So helping people rebuild houses every 36 years may be the price we have to pay to not abandon all the near coast line of the South for one big mega city in South Dakota.

Edit: West not East. Normally I have a good sense of direction, must be getting old.

Actually heard a financial guru say the insurance companies MAKE money on these disasters. They pay out big money on the front end, but will more than make up for in increased premiums on the back-end. Don't worry, they're not.

When I saw the "Of course not", I was expecting something like "Of course not... as long as they were in favor of tax cuts for the rich and opposed to abortion and gay marriage" but this was much better :D

SI

They are showing live footage from a helicopter circling NO. Horrible flooding, and extreme building damage as far as you can see, at least on one side of the city.

...Ice storms in the Midwest and East? Extreme heat in the Midwest? Forest fires in the West? Lightning strikes about anywhere? Damaging hail in the Midwest? No'easters in the Northeast?

All have killed people and caused huge amounts of property damage over the years.

Watching the archived streaming videos on wwltv, I was impressed by the reporter immediately going to the rescue of the numbnut driving into a wall of water. I had been cynical enough to believe that certain others would have just stood there shouting "OMG!!!1!!! A CAR JUST DROVE INTO THE WATER!!!!111!!!!".

Anderson Cooper. ;)

Dola: I wonder how the Offshore Oil Rigs and Mississippi based refineries held up. I hope minimal damage but I doubt it.
Oh and reading those comments you'd think this guy is the second coming of Edward R. Murrow.

I know they said at least two unmanned platforms are reported to be free-floating right now. And one rig that was brought into the Mobile bay is lodge in a bridge.

Some of the video is unreal. This is probably going to be the worst disaster in the US since at least 9/11.

Check out this link (hopefully it goes to the right place) & you get a glimpse of one of the reasons crazy reporters do crazy things -- the sort of fan mail he's getting goes a long way toward making it make sense sometimes.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,167284,00.html

I'm sorry, Jon, but watching part of his 8 min video, all I saw was a guy trying to be macho and pointing out the VERY obvious.

Good job finding a way to blast the evil conservatives in this thread. Nice. You've got a good point, why wreck it by trashing a whole group of people? You don't see me in here bashing liberal CNN for their prominent "Did Global Warming Cause Katrina?" headline, do you?

You're a fucking twit. Read what I said again and make a cogent response.

My point of view has nothing to do with where they "choose" to live.

It has everything to do with the burden stupid people place on emergency services when they see a hurricane or wildfire approaching and refuse to evacuate. Not only is it a financial burden on the state at a time when it can least afford that burden, but it's putting the lives of skilled, trained emergency workers at risk - again, at a time when the state can least afford that burden.

IMO, if an individual is unwilling to follow evacuation orders designed to reduce the burden on the emergency workers and minimize loss of life, they should forfeit any right to rebuilding assistance as well.

People who cannot evacuate because they in some way fundamentally lack the capacity to do so, that's one thing. It's those who willfully place a burden on others in a time of disaster and then expect people to help them back up that I take issue with.

Like children, seniors and other people unable to make the choice to evacuate?

I want to say some mean things, but I need to stop....

One of these days we will see a reporter get killed on natl tv covering one of these things, and he will be hailed as a TRUE AMERICAN HERO. :rolleyes:

Which appears to have played pretty well.

I didn't see the piece(s) so I'm neutral on how they looked ... I'm just talking more about the "why they do it" aspect.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting through my 2nd tornado warning of the night, this time more nervously than the earlier one. The first was in my county but 10 miles east of me traveling due north so not a big worry personally. Nothing reported on the ground this time yet either, just hook echoes in the radar to this point, but it's pretty much due south of me ... and traveling due north.

Sitting here typing, it's still another 5-10 minutes from my location, but this kinda feels like sitting on a train track & seeing a light coming in the distance.

(If I stop posting, nobody freak or anything, with the wind & rain we're getting I'll be surprised if we don't lose power for a while soon, but that'll very likely be the worst that will happen).

Problem is, I think it's probably pretty hard to tell which person was/wasn't stupid about evacuating and while trying to rescue as many people as possible and time is of the essence is probably not the best time to be issuing questionaires and polygraphs. Sure, it sucks in that in an ideal world, because of limited resources, it would be best to get those to who both need and deserve them most. Unfortunately, there's not a good way to do that.

(Granted, in an even more ideal world, there's no limited resources and we save the dumbfucks in spite of themselves because, really, if you don't, you're just an asshat)

SI

If any good comes out of this tragedy it would be from FEMA getting some time and ''practice'' for any future calamities either man made or from nature.

Haven't you seen the X-Files movie? FEMA is the tool the consortium will use to take over the world! Any practice for them is just getting us ready for the invasion!

SI

I'm sure that my opinion doesn't mean shit here, but it appears to me that this thread has been derailed. At least it didn't happen until the worst of the Katrina's damage had been done. I wish the best for everybody who is in the affected areas or who has family in the affected areas. That includes myself. My participation in this thread is over.

I hear people complaining about having to help pay for the rebuilding of homes along the Gulf Coast, and I wonder if they realize the financial benefits the gulf coast brings to the rest of the USA. Oil, tourism, food, etc. are all signicantly contributed by the Gulf Coast. I think this is a heartless time to be debating about such things and was sickened to hear it on the news today, and am sad to see that sentiment echoed by a few here.

So all in all, where are we now? Is the storm almost over? Was as much damage done as anticipated?

This is the video I had in mind when I posted that. Harrigan's a good reporter - his embedded reports from Afghanistan and Iraq were remarkable.

But this is a storm, not war. I don't need some reporter standing out in the wind and rain, risking getting their head chopped off by flying debris to tell me the winds are strong.

This seems like a good time to post our "Tornado Night Drinking Game" that we've come up with here in Kansas. Granted, I don't really drink so it doesn't do me much good, but maybe it'll do someone so good.

Tornado Night Drinking Game

To Start, each time a station pulls away from normal coverage for tornado coverage, pull a bottle out of the liquor cabinet. And not just for a little 30s blurb with "More weather news at 11". I mean full blown "Tornado Night" coverage- you know what this is if you live in tornadic areas. I know this "each time a station pulls away" sounds silly but basically, you keep flipping between them to see if there's anything fun- new footage, more updated radar, a weatherman going crazy, etc. In Lawrence, this is a little nuts because we have 8 stations (4 Kansas City, 3 Topeka, and 1 Lawrence).

Next are your tornado night buzzwords. As with most drinking games, they have to be said just enough to be uncommon but likely to be heard a couple of times. If you hear a weatherman say "hook echo"- take a shot. If you hear a weatherman say "wall cloud"- that's a shot, too. "Wind shear" is another one.

Tornado watches count for nothing- it wouldn't be tornado night without them so they might as well be when you take the shotglasses down or something. However, if your county gets a tornado warning, that's two shots. If they show a Future Doppler (or whatever the local term is) and they have a storm that's produced a tornado and you're in the little arrow path they show, that's another two shots.

Finally, if they mention your town and this can't be a city- has to be a town or local area like your subdivision in a large city. For instance, Houston doesn't count but, say, Inwood, where I used to live- that'd count. Lawrence has 80K people so it doesn't count, but if they say a street intersection like Sixth and Wakarusa that's within a mile from where you are, that counts. Anyways, if they mention your place and it's within a couple of minutes, that means the news is at least a minute or two old and you'd better finish the bottle, stumble into the basement, bathtub, or wherever you hide to be safe.

SI

One brings to mind that billions in aid that were given to the 9/11 families and businesses. It was for the good of the city and for the good of the US. This is also why we have given trillions of dollars in aid all over the world, to good countries and to bad ones as well. It is better we do such things than not.

As a staunch libertarian, I believe the federal govt has too much money to spend but more importantly, if they have to have it, I believe it should be put to the best use as possible. This is one.

Let's see how this would have turned out.


Well, when I tuned in at least two stations were wall-to-wall coverage, so I figure that's good for a couple of bottles at least.


Heh, I know exactly what you mean & yeah, we do that here too.


Would have gotten at least 3 or 4 shots from "hook echo" alone tonight.


2 warnings X 2 shots = 4 shots.


"City charter" & incorporation not withstanding, I believe 3k population counts as "town" for our purposes here. We got at least two mentions thanks to the NWS wording tonight, so the bottles are gone & I'd have been in the closet under the stairs.

Good stuff SI & a lot more pleasant than me sitting here listening to the next band of rain passing overhead.

I'm usually pretty okay with nights like these, but this one has me jumpier than usual. Especially when you get those spells where in rains in sheets & suddenly goes dead calm. Or when you hear sounds like a very hard wind, but there's nothing moving the trees (aka that "freight train whooshing sound"). I heard that sound twice in about 10 minutes, so did my wife, but there was zip going on outside both times, everything had fallen quiet ... too quiet.

Nerve wracking crap kinda night I tell ya, nervous indeed.

I don't think as much damage as anticipated was done, but I think significant damage was done. I'm not sure that will be fully assessed for a day or two at least. I do know from several reports that the low lying lands in Plaquemines Parish were hit very hard. One of the things that I do for work is ride in a state vehicle to see very poor kids in at a school called Phoenix. The community is so poor that the high school serves Kindergarden through 12th grade. It's really close to the ocean and the surge appears to have hit this area very hard. I'm scared that some of my patients might end up being among the casualities. I know many of them are so poor that they just don't have transportation to leave the area.

I also know from a report about Chalmette High School that my main clinic is almost certainly severely flooded. I don't know about my own place, but when I think about the possible casualty counts, it doesn't seem nearly as important. Also, I've heard/seen reports that multiple parts of I-10 are under water right now. I'm not sure how I'm going to return to the city yet. However, at least the main part of the city was spared the worst part of the storm and there is a city to return to. I just worry about the people in Plaquemines and Saint Bernard which were areas that I was quickly becoming attached to.

As I'm typing this, the video on ABC during the halftime of the football game is just shocking again. Once again, I'm reminded how bad it is. A mall I've shopped at frequently is heavily damaged. Streets are under a great amount of water. One of the areas where I was thinking about buying our house experienced heavy flooding.

Of course, that doesn't even count the severe damage to Mississippi, Alabama, and many other places like Georgia which were hit by Tornados associated with the storm. In fact, my father-in-law evacuated to be near his family in Georgia (he and MIL divorced a long time ago) and there was a tornado not too far from him in Snellville reportedly. I think there will be some damage from the storm even this evening.

Well, because it's in bands, it's a lot different than your typical storm, I'd imagine. I mean, sure there are storms that come and go in a normal mess but it has an ebb and flow to it that's probably much different than this. Hopefully you and everyone else in the path of this storm make it through safely.

SI

EaglesFan -- re: Snellville: No promises, but I haven't found anything mentioning any weather damage in that area at all so far, looks like they just got nasty t-storms that had hook echoes but no tornadoes on the ground mentioned anywhere in that area. Hopefully he just had some nervous time like we had here but nothing worse than that.

Agreed. I guess by now I shouldn't be surprised that even this thread has deteriorated into a political quagmire...

I hope I wasn't the person that started it, but I was literally hurt and angry by the words of people that I usually considered decent.

I understand that there are no promises, but that is still nice to hear. Thanks. Our cell phones aren't working. Reportedly, that is because our home towers are in the New Orleans area and those towers are "disabled." It is frustrating to have such difficulties getting in touch with relatives and friends who left town.

In addition to the oft-mention newspaper website
http://www.ajc.com

Here's our TV station links
(just in case you want to check a little closer for the area tomorrow morning.) For reference points, Snellville is in Gwinnett County, about 25 miles ENE of Atlanta, about 15 miles due east of SkyDog in Tucker, about 60 miles NNW of me in Monticello.

http://www.wsbtv.com/index.html
http://www.cbs46.com/
http://www.11alive.com/
http://www.fox5atlanta.com/index2.shtml

I know the feelings. Seeing Clearview mall decimated like that by wind and water at halftime seemed so surreal. I remember going with my family to Maison Blanche a lot when I was little and seeing puppet shows in Clearview.

And now the really bad stuff begins ... at least 55 people dead in Mississippi, including 30 residents of an apartment complex in Biloxi.

http://apnews.myway.com//article/200...D8C9T0O80.html
http://www.clarionledger.com/apps/pb...S0110/50829038

Yep, just saw the breaking news on top of CNN.com. :(

I heard on the news that water is still rising gradually. God help those trapped in their attics.

Well, the power has been out all night here. It finally came back on but it will go out again. i am going to bed here soon. The only thing there was to do was to sseat aroudn adn drink and i did that.

As an aside, I'm really enjoying Little Rock, AK. We ended up actually staying in North Little Rock to keep the entire family together. We are by the McClain (sp?) Mall. Lots of shops, movie theaters, and restaurants around. I really like the nice weather that is less humid and hot than New Orleans so far. I don't know much about the city, but my very early impressions are that I could happily relocate here should it ever become necessary or desirable.

Jon, thanks for the links. I worry about my FIL much less than my other in-laws. He is ex-military and can handle just about anything.

Also, this room at the La Quinta is nicer and bigger than many "fancy" hotels I've stayed in. It is also about a third of the price that I've paid at some of those same hotels.

I'm really worried about that. It would seem that all of the rain that is falling in the Tennessee valley and the surrounding area will likely drain into the Mississippi. I imagine the river could continue to rise which might be problematic.

Im listening to Jean Meserve's discription on Aaaron Brown on CNN right now and it is riveting, I have goosebumps listening to it right now. It reminds me of ER Murrow on BBC . Her descriptions were pretty graphic, Women with legs gone, many dead dogs, bodies all around.....Its gonna be bad folks. :(

Dola: From interviews it seems that people walked out of their shelters when the rains and winds stopped and were caught by the storm surge.....

Things seem to have taken a turn for the worse. Apparently there's a 2 block wide breach in the levee holding back Lake Pontchartrain.

SI

I am at a complete loss seeing the extreme damage in New Orleans, especially since the storm "missed" the city. My family is safe in a shelter in the city. They don't know what if any damage our home suffered. It was fine in the morning, but they haven't been able to get in touch with anyone (phone service is down) since a nearby levee failed (17th St Canal). Water is still rising in the area. It's hard to express how I feel now; I am not worried about the possessions, but the thought of the house/home I grew up in being detroyed is very saddening.

Oh my :(

Just watching CNN and listening to the VP of Tulane Hospital and Clinics say that she has been told by state police that there is a 2 block breach of the levee and Lake Pontchatrain is just draining into the city. She said water is rising around Tulane and Charity Hospital (they are right next to each other) at 1 inch every 5 minutes! It is now over 6 feet high and rising rapidly.

I just checked my staff website at LSU/Charity Hospital and they are evacuating as they have lost the backup generator (which could be very bad for many critical patients on ventilators.) They are going to evacuate via helicopters :(

I suspect that I'm going to have to try to extend my stay here in Little Rock past Weds. morning.

Things seemed to be going fairly well until now. There was no way to escape this without major damage, but it seems that New Orleans had been narrowly missed and it made landfall in places that, while it sucks that it had to make landfall anywhere, they seemed to be in spots that could *mostly* (not all, of course) drain off fairly quickly and rebuild easier than NO.

SI

Has anyone had any contact with folks in the coastal areas of Louisiana? From what Ive heard there's no news / contact as of yet from any of those towns and that it seems that nobody listened to the warnings or didnt hear em. This is not looking good.

The local media has very little info about conditions in lower Plaquemines parish (the part that sticks out into the gulf), Slidell, and the Mississippi gulf coast. Estimates are that 80% of the people evacuated New Orelans and similar numbers have been reported for other areas.

Maybe if everyone moves off planet then Stevew won't pay as much insurance. I'm sure he'd like that.

The Amry Corp of Engineers is supposedly will release a statement on the levee breach of the 17th street canal. The initial breach occurred sometime early this afternoon, but recent reports (on CNN) suggests that it might be getting much worse. The canal is an open air drainage ditch that is contiguous with the lake and about half a block from where I lived growing up.

To me it hasn't though. I see dumbasses on both side of the aisle on this one. I think some people really have the need to feel superior to others and that isn't necessarily politically motivated.

What sucks now is that all my good feeling about the hurricane sparing NO is being diminished because I'm reading that it's not over yet.

Yeah, I went to sleep as soon as I got home and this is the first place I went for "news" so I hadn't really heard any hurricane coveraqe since monday morning. :(

OMG! Anyone see the aerial shot of New Orleans???? OMG!

Link?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9063708/
NBC's Kerry Sanders, reporting from a helicopter above the city, said “it's basically one giant lake here in New Orleans.”
FOX NEWS and CNN are showing the shots now.

• Watch: 'You can't hold me, take care of the kids'

EDIT: You can't direct-clink on that link. Go to CNN.Com. It is on the front page. :(

I heard this on CNN radio last nite and ino words can describe the guys emotions. :(

Just because FOX News and one person on this list said it, doesn't mean that the entire "moral-majority" or whatever you want to call conservatives these days are fully behind it. I'm a conservative, and my personal opinion on this issue is that there needs to be some limits to what we do in dangerous areas (high-rise buildings in LA are specifically DESIGNED to withstand earthquakes, for example), but I agree that people everywhere have something they deal with and we as a country need to step up and help them.


Use a narrower brush next time, then. Call out the specific people, not an entire group. I thought Sack had a good point (he was very careful to attack people who CHOOSE to stay, not the large numbers who were stuck) that others chose to misinterpret, but you were the first to bring in the political angle to this.

Please, start sending your funds and materials to any of the relief agencies.

The one question I have is was there a mandatory evacuation of the Mississippi Gulf Coast?

Yes.

That was horrible:(

I don't mean to minimize the seriousness of what has happened to Louisiana and Mississippi (I used to live in West Alabama myself, so I feel some attachment to those regions), but I was taken aback when a local mayor (of Biloxi, I think) spoke of this event as "our tsunami," according to a CNN headline. Isn't that statement somewhat over the top and, in a way, arrogant? There is a qualitative difference, not just a quantitative difference, between an event that kills perhaps 200,000 people, and an event that kills perhaps 100 people.

Why is it that Americans so strongly insist that our suffering is as bad as everyone else's suffering? Maybe it comes from a sense of guilt, a realization that, in fact, we never suffer the way that most people in the world suffer.

Again, I am not saying this to downplay the seriousness of the situation itself, just to raise a question about how Americans deal with these situations, and comport themselves more generally.

There's also a certain amount of relativity in play here, it's likely as close to being a tsunami as Biloxi (et al) is going to get. Same way a rec-league football coach might say of a city-wide championship game "This is our Super Bowl".


Dunno, but I do have a question or three of my own.

How on earth did you happen to stumble across our humble little forum for the first time ever & of all the threads pick this one to post in for your debut?
Or are you a long-time lurker so moved by all of this that you decided today was the day that you just had to post something? Or is it possible that you're a regular who wanted to troll this thread in an attempt to sidetrack it into another round of political based argument but lacked the balls to do it under your own name? Inquiring minds want to know.

As an outsider, I kind of do think of this as "America's Tsunami"... the potential of Katrina would have been absolutely devastating in terms of human casualties if not all the timely warnings, evacuations and protective measures..

The difference between the Tsunami in Thailand etc in December and Katrina, is that the Tsunami came without any warning.. no one was prepared for the absolute catastrophe.. no weather-reports had warned off the people on the beaches, no national disaster warnings had gone out on TV etc etc.. However, imagine what would have happened to New Orleans et al if no warnings whatsoever had come.. So I personally view this as "America's Tsunami" in many ways.. not the least in the way that I think several thousand lives could have been saved if the people in Thailand had been warned.

Little Rock isn't such a bad little city. Arkansas gets bad when you get outside of the area.

I think the Galveston storm of 1908 is probably a good comparison here.

I find it amazing that some of you are quibbling over your various agendas in the midst of a disaster thread. Take it somewhere else.

It struck here pretty hard and we were on the weak side of the system. It was just so big to affect Atlanta and here at the same. We had about 40 MPH winds for all of the night with some good gusts. No injuries that I know of but there were several fires and power outages. My own power went off and back on several times before going out for about four hours.

That is my report. I do not think we ever under any life threatening circumstances. It was still pretty bad though. I can not imagine what it would be like to go through one of these if the winds were 175 MPH.

So, what's the plan, EF? What is your hospital going to do if it is months before than can get the building back into condition?

Heck, I had to wake up at 12:30 last night to discover a leak in the big window in my bedroom. Wife was trying to figure out what I was doing with a stack of towels at that time of the night.