Wednesday, August 31, 2005
Here is some very helpful information: (thanks to bellygoth) Official Search and Rescue Center at the Louisiana Office of Emergency Preparedness 225-925-7708 or 7709 or 3511 or 7428 i.e. 225-925-3511 If you have friends or family that are stuck in NOLA and the surrounding areas this is the official number to call. Be prepared to try to call several times... everyone is calling these numbers. If you can contact your friends get the exact address of where they are at or where they are going to be for when you call search and rescue. tell them if they have to leave to call you asap. You can update the OEP at commo1@ohsep.louisiana.gov Cell phone communication is extremely limited, but Text messaging on T-Mobile, Verizon, Cingular and Sprint networks appear to be working. If you get in touch with your friends they need to do the following 1) They need a white sheet on the roof of a building 2) They need to wave something to notify the helicopter that they need to be rescued. 3) If it is at night they need to use flash lights to signal the helicopter. 4) They need to stay at the highest point.
thank you all so much who have written me to make sure I'm okay and stuff... you really can't even know how imprtant it is to me and how much better it makes me feel in all this to know that I have such a great, generous network of friends and family who are concerned about me.
I am stupidly, unfairly fortunate; in the midst of all this hell, watching as new orleans sinks more and more every hour, when so many thousands of people are in misery or worse, and I get to be sitting in my parents' condo on the beach, air-conditioned and comfortable. I feel so useless and helpless right now. Part of me wants to go back to NOLA and DO something to help, anything - but they're saying it may be 12-16 weeks before we can go back. gahhh. despite our nice surroundings, my family and I are clashing quite a bit lately, under all this tension... we haven't lived together in so many years, especially not in such close quarters, and tempers are flaring. which adds to the fun exponentially. Tuesday, August 30, 2005
hey, I've just been made aware of a couple of sites that have been put up to discuss katrina and help locate people... again, the best news coverage I'm hearing is on WWL 870 am radio, which has a strong signal and reaches 42 states at night, and quite a few all day...I believe there may be an online feed for it too, also, new orleans tv stations wdsu and wvue will have good data, much better than the national channels for specific information. flickr katrina discussion blog Katrina Missing Persons Board --ab3
WWL 870 am is the best source for news on the city, listen if you can, I can pick it up in florida... it's getting worse. I-10 east has been washed away; the 17th street canal has broken, and is emptying the lake into the city. water is rising throughout the city, the bowl is filling; they want everyone still there to get out... the only way out of town is over the crescent city connection and then to take 310 north. I'm going to try to start an e-mail network, merging the multi-emails I'm getting from other evacuees. --ab3
first things first - if you're a friend who has evacuated and are reading this, please e-mail me,IM me, or text message me (504 cell numbers may not be working but text messages still do.) I want to know everyone is okay. from the coverage on tv, new orleans is lost. they keep saying we were"spared the worst" and "dodged the bullet" - but I've seen photos of every neighborhood in the new orleans area - lakeview, metairie, kenner, uptown, marigny, cbd warehouse district - and I tell you what, typing those names makes me feel like I'm talking about extinct animals, because may never be neighborhoods again, except in our memories. the devastation appears to be nearly complete. my rather dire predictions a few posts below are likely very accurate, or else it's worse. I suppose we could've flooded higher, but for re-building purposes, the difference between 6 feet and 12 feet of water standing in your house for a week is negligible - gotta tear it down and start over anyway. which is the other thing - who's going to start over in new orleans? how? where do you live while your house (and everyone else's) is being rebuilt? with what money? if your home is relatively okay, what good does it do to live in a city with no businesses, no economy, no amenities, no nightlife, no longer beautiful? a city of ghosts and construction crews attempting to recreate the past? I'm relatively sure that I have no job to go back to myself - the neighborhood around my office looks bad, and even if the office is okay, most of our clients are destroyed, and those that aren't won't be doing much advertising in the forseeable future. I love new orleans, I always will. I will go back and suffer through the aftermath as soon as I can get back into town - which may be weeks - and do what I can to help with what grim things need doing. and then, I think I will probably leave it behind; get that fleur-de-lis tattooed on my arm, and begin again somewhere else. my beloved city is irreparably damaged; if it does come back, it won't be even remotely the same. Monday, August 29, 2005
looks like we're not completely decimated after all, but i'm hearing some pretty nasty reports anyway, buildings down and streets with several feet of water uptown near my place. lots of people seem to be stranded on rooftops and in attics; hearing that the marigny, 9th ward, mid-city, kenner and much of downtown are severely flooded; no news on metairie; and of course there's no power and no phone anywhere. so there may be a city to return to, but it ain't gonna be pretty. and here's hoping all my friends and acquaintances who stayed are still okay.
sounds like some bad things are happening in NOLA, but maybe not the worst case scenario. wow.
we're here in destin, florida, at my parent's beach condominium. the waves are pretty extreme, the winds have kicked up, and we're expecting some low level hurricane action here - but nothing like what's going on in new orleans, and we'll be plenty safe here. nothing left but to watch the weather channel and see what happens. as if this day wasn't bad enough, I got in a wreck on the way here - my fault, too - rear ended another car in traffic, my first real stupid accident, actually. fuck. still, could've been worse as those things go. my father, rather oddly, suggested that I e-mail myself some predictions of what I think I'll find when I get back. I think it's kind of an inspired idea, but instead I think I'll blog them. so: my condo uptown: external brick wall structure intact. severe roof damage. all unboarded exterior windows shattered. 4-6 feet of flooding. (despite being on the second floor.) pretty much all of my stuff soaked through. tree damage to external front walls and windows. 60-80% loss. 50% of st. charles oak trees lost. my parent's house, near lake pontchartrain in metairie - several feet of flooding, maybe 8 -10. first floor totally flooded out. huge external structural damage, possibly walls down. roof damage. picture windows shattered. 70-90% loss. my 1997 mountaineer, parked in front of my parents house, near the lake in metairie: complete flood total, possibly even carried elsewhere. my office: severe external damage. severe first floor flooding. 40-50% loss. maybe I'm being pessimistic. I hope so. I hope I have something to go home to. I hope I still have a job and a place to live. *sigh* more later. need to sleep so I can wake up and watch the landfall. Sunday, August 28, 2005
 traffic is bad all the way out to florida, and supposedly worse for those fleeing to the west. I just hope everyone gets out of the city before things start to hit. --ab3
I'm on the way to florida, think I've made it past all the really bad traffic, and I think that all of my friends and relatives are outta there. which is all that matters. new orleans is under a mandatory evacuation and martial law. they've commandeered city buses and private buses to get people out. the storm is almost beyond category 5 - 175 mph sustained winds.if it gets any stronger, it ceases to be a hurricane and becomes a hundreds of miles wide FUCKING TORNADO. they think it may be the strongest storm on record. there may very well not be much of new orleans to go home to. --ab3
looks more like i'm headed east, to my parents' condos in destin, on the florida panhandle. it might be a little wet and windy there, but i won't be in a bowl of toxic floodwater soup with floating balls of fireants. i've heard there are nearly 100,000 people here with no mobility - no car, no way to evacuate. (i know several. if you're one, call me ASAP and come with!!!) which is why we've never had a "mandatory evacuation" - it's pretty much impossible. the mayor has already put his family on a plane out of town. The head of the NOAA just called him and told him we could have a 25 foot storm surge - and our levees are built for 12-15. They're talking about putting people on buses and trains - anything to get them out of the city - and what may in a few hours be the city's first mandatory evacuation in history. just helped batten down the hatches here at my condo building; we've got one of the other board members who's set on staying - he's on the third floor - and he just chained up his small bass boat in the parking lot, and - shotgun in hand - made us a solemn promise to defend the place from looters. this is no joke, friends. i love this city, anyone who knows me knows that. i cannot imagine the loss we may be about to undergo. if you're the sort who prays, please do. Saturday, August 27, 2005
I'm back, after what was really too long a hiatus. See, unapologetic broke sometime in late May, and stopped posting what I was writing. I was a little turned off on blogging at that moment in time for some reason - it happens occassionally - so rather than fix it, I thought I'd just... not fix it for a while, and, well, that went on a bit longer than i expected. In that time, i've turned 30, taken a trip to boston with melinda, a trip to an indie music festival in chicago, and had both my sister and my best friend leave town, jessica to fort lauderdale for med school and melinda to bloomington, indiana for a masters in library science. I did occasionally try to post during that time, so there are a few posts from that period which have just showed up, now that i finally put it all back together...
and why the sudden reappearance? well, mostly because within about 36 hours, new orleans, where i live and sleep and eat and work and have done all my life except for college, is facing what may be a direct hit from a category 5 hurricane. which is basically what we've been waiting for to wipe us off the map. Katrina is scheduled to hit with storm winds starting at about 1am Monday morning, and actual landfall Monday afternoon. It is now... 9:45 on Saturday. i'm still in new orleans. my parents are staying here, in a hotel downtown; most of my friends have left, though a few are going to ride it out. my current plan is to leave sometime later tonight, but i haven't decided yet quite where i'll be going - most likely, north to Jackson, Mississippi. The option remains, also, to stay here and document the effects of the storm with my DV camera, but that strikes me as a bit cavalier. hmmmmm. well, i've got a few hours to decide, don't i? well, unapologetic is back, and i've got my trusty sidekick, so no matter where i am, i'll keep you posted. wish me (and everyone in this city) luck. |