I honestly didn’t believe it the first time I read it, but apparently it is true that the Red Cross is not allowed to enter New Orleans and provide aid to the people who have not yet been evacuated. And don’t blame the federal government for this one, the order comes down from state officials.
Did you know that Ari Gold, the megalomaniacal agent played by Jeremy Piven on Entourage, is based on Steve Ballmer? Neither did I, <a title=“John Battelle’s Searchblog: Ballmer Throws A Chair At “F*ing Google”” href=“http://battellemedia.com/archives/001835.php">until now.
Here’s a picture of swamped school buses in New Orleans. It sure seems to me like officials could have loaded up these school buses with people and evacuated them before the storm, saving a lot of lives and suffering.
Here’s an email sent to my mom by a woman who attends her church. My home town of Orange, Texas is the first exit on Interstate 10 headed west from Lousiana. Nearly all Katrina refugees headed to Texas have passed through there. I received this, called the chamber and the next group of buses, about 800 people, will arrive around noon today. They have drinks but need food for these people. I will be buying what I can and making peanut butter sandwiches. I figured my money could feed more people on PB. Please read the email below. ...
For the past 24 hours or so I’ve been posting about the government response to Hurricane Katrina, mainly because it has disappointed me so. That doesn’t mean that I haven’t also been thinking a lot about the basic humanitarian side of things. The first time I really teared up was when I started reading the postings about Katrina on the New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi Craigslist sites on Tuesday. Seeing regular people offer their spare rooms, recreational vehicles, and other accommodations to refugees really touched me. Churches in the areas surrounding New Orleans are full to the brim with refugees, and people are feeding and clothing them as best they can with the resources that they have. See the comment from my mother on this post for a short first hand account of the refugees staying at my family’s church. Universities all over the country are making special accommodations for students from New Orleans. The Washington Post reports that a private construction company stepped in where the Army Corps of Engineers failed to mend the largest breech in the levees around the city. ...
Here’s a satellite photo of New Orleans that provides enough detail to show exactly which areas have flooded. You can also sort of gauge how deep the flood waters are. The creepiest thing about the photo sort of transition from above water level to below water level and back again. Also, in the photo you can see that the French Quarter is still mostly high and dry, although the western corner is flooded. You can also clearly see that the Superdome is surrounded by water. (If you find the Superdome on the map, the French Quarter is directly northeast a few blocks, just to the right of the flooded complex of buildings that have what looks like red tile roofs.) ...
One of the most cited pieces of evidence of the chaos in New Orleans was the report that Children’s Hospital was under siege by looters. I didn’t mention it because it didn’t seem particularly plausible. The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which had reported the story earlier today, has since published a refutation: No Children’s Hospital Looting Doug Mittelstaedt, vice-president of Human Resources for Children’s Hospital in New Orleans, said one of the biggest issues at the hospital on Wednesday was debunking the prevalent rumor that looters had stormed the hospital. ...
One aspect of Katrina that has really disturbed me has been the lack of news from parishes further down the Mississippi delta in Louisiana like Plaquemines Parish and St. Bernard Parish. Many of the people who live down in the bayou never evacuate, and they must have faced the full brunt of the storm surge. I finally saw some pictures posted by the Plaquemines Parish government, and things are looking as bad as I had feared. ...
I’ve been riveted to the news from New Orleans for the past 48 hours. As best as I can tell, the breaches of the levees separating the city from Lake Ponchartrain are going to result in the city flooding until the water level in the bowl that is New Orleans reaches the same level as the lake. (Currently the lake is 6 feet above its normal level, meaning even more additional flooding.) At that point, I guess it will be possible to repair the levees since water won’t be cascading through the breaches. It’s impossible for anybody to really tell what this all means, but the talk now is of power not being restored to some areas for 6-8 weeks and schools not reopening for months. Right now the city is even without fresh water due to a broken water main. ...
It seems some Flickr users are rather enraged at Flickr merging its user database with Yahoo’s user database. There’s no question though that this was in the cards from the day the merger was announced. Flickr is a lot less valuable to Yahoo as a completely separate service than it is as an integrated piece of Yahoo’s suite of Web sites. That said, the migration has been handled poorly. I went ahead and integrated my Yahoo account with my Flickr account immediately since I have the same user name for both, and it means I have to keep track of one less password. Unfortunately, doing so has only been an inconvenience, mainly because it seems like I have to log in every single time I visit Flickr. Fortunately, the Flickr people have said that there’s a fix in the works for that problem. ...