New Orleans

[bunn]

I haven't seen this link about the disaster posted anywhere this side of the Atlantic yet, so thought I would share it here :

http://www.livejournal.com/users/wicked_wish/582898.html

It is like a John Wyndham novel.

Personally I find it hard to register disasters: it always seems to take a day or so for them to really dawn on me. For some reason this one seemed utterly terrible right from the start, even before the really bad news stories started coming out. I think it's the domestic level of the stories: Lynmouth or Boscastle scaled unimaginably huge. I relate to flooding on a level that I can't really grasp manmade disaster - is it just me?

Comments

[king-pellinor.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this one? http://www.livejournal.com/users/interdictor/

The staff of a data centre are sitting in a skyscraper in the middle of the city, trying to keep communications open for the authorities and sending out pleas for diesel for their generators.

In one post the manager asks for people who have offices in the same building whether he can borrow any useful things they might have in their desks - clothes, first aid kits, food, hand sanitisers, ammunition...

John Wyndham and The Stand were my first thoughts.

[chainmailmaiden]

Only having had limited access to a TV/Internet over this past week I missed a lot of the news about this when it all first happened. When I finally saw how bad it all was, it appalled me that the US Government took so long to do anything useful to help evacuate people.

Having been in Carlisle during the floods there earlier on in the year, I think it helped me to appreciate the problems a bit more. Obviously the Carlisle floods were no-where near as bad as the US ones, but I think it does help when you have some sort of personal experience to relate news items to.

I wonder how long it'll take before things get back to some semblance of normality, there are whole streets in Carlisle that are still all lying empty because the necessary repair work hasn't been done yet. Though admittedly some of the delay was caused by the contractors having to wait until the brickwork had dried out enough to make it worthwhile starting the repairs, but the sad fact is there aren't enough builders, carpenters etc. to go round and lots of people didn't have insurance. From what I heard, households are getting £500 each to help with the repair costs. Having just started to price up how much the changes we want to make to our house are going to cost, I can see that's going to go precisely no-where.