Wednesday, August 31, 2005

I really won't have time to post much for awhile

...but since Houston has suddenly turned into the confluence of the two events focusing the nation's attention, I thought I'd better tell you what I'll be up to:

-- I'll be attending the first stop of the Bring Them Home Now Tour Thursday evening, with Cindy Sheehan and the veterans and their families, so I'll have some thoughts on that combined with my still-unposted Camp Casey report; and...

-- I'll be volunteering to assist the Katrina refugees at the Astrodome this weekend.

So if you don't see anything posted here until next Monday, you'll know why.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Some suffer, some don't






"The city of New Orleans is devastated."

"We probably have 80 percent of our city under water; with some sections of our city, the water is as deep as 20 feet...

Both airports are under water. The twin spans are destroyed. The yacht club is burned and destroyed."

-- New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, from an interview with WWL late last night

Mayor Nagin said that it is possible that the highrise bridge in east New Orleans could be unstable. "All of Slidell, and most of Metairie is under water". Nagin also stated that "there was no clear path in and out of New Orleans," and that I-10 is under water.

CNN also quoted a spokesperson from the hospital associated with Tulane University in downtown, who said that they were moving all of the patients from the hospital due to water standing six feet deep in the first floor and rising at the rate of one inch every five minutes. She said white water was pouring down Canal Street (which would be from the breach in the levee at the 17th St. canal at Lake Ponchartrain).

Nagin: "An oil tanker has run aground and oil is leaking from it. Hundreds of 9th Ward residents have been rescued from the roofs of their homes. Undoubtedly hundreds of people throughout the city will have lost their lives."