Aftermath3

Day three following Katrina, and we woke up this morning to see that removal of those stranded in the N. O. Superdome has been halted because some idiot fired at an army helicopter.  I'm surprised the people waiting to be taken to Houston didn't chase down the miscreant and beat him to a pulp.  Now that the army has been threatened, even so slightly, maybe martial law will be declared and order restored to this drowned city.  It seems this may be what it's going to take.

 

But life goes on here north of the disaster area.  There is still difficulty in calling long distance--my call this morning to a town only 30 miles away could not be completed because all circuits were busy.  I'm told that normally all such calls are routed through a central phone office.  Where is it located?  New Orleans, of course.  So the phone company is having to reroute everything through other exchanges, including Atlanta.  A minor thing, compared to the thousands who have no phone or cell service at all.  But telling.

 

My purpose in making this call was to discover if a local disaster relief fund had been set up to aid refugees in the civic centers and other places.  So many people have asked if they can help or where they could send a check that I thought I might be able to post an address here.  My own local town doesn't have such a fund, according to the mayor's office.  I was referred to American Red Cross--and they are helping of course.  And yet the ladies from area churches are taking money from their pockets to pay for the food they are preparing and delivering to families camped out at the city-run shelters, state park and church camp grounds.  It seemed useful if monies could be collected to help in this endeavor--because it isn't going to be over in a day or two but may stretch to weeks of meals.  In addition, a lot of people would like to help but are wary of sending money to organizations where bureaucratic overhead may take a large percentage of it.  More on this later.

 

I seem to have left a couple of things unresolved from my previous posts.  I should say, then, that my daughter and her family from southern Mississippi are safe and sound, though their home is still without power, water or phone service.  All things being, equal, and since they are not in the worst hit area, they should have these services restored by the weekend.  Also, I've seen aerial photos of Grand Isle which was on my worry list.  The beach area appears to have similar destruction as the coast around Gulf Port and Biloxi, with a wide swath wiped clean and debris piled in a long row like a particularly vicious high tide.  Beyond it, however, houses appear to be standing.  What the death toll may be there, however, remains to be seen.

 

The number of deaths rise every hour where Katrina left her mark.  Mayor Nagin says it may run into the thousands in New Orleans.  I look at the roofs of houses barely visible above the water and think of the people who may be trapped inside, unable to break out or give any sign they are alive, and I fear he's right.