Godless Mom in the Bible Belt

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

It's really, really bad.

My husband, Scott, is the district IT manager of a large international company. One of his offices is in New Orleans. Needless to say, it is gone now. Unfortunately we haven't heard from any of his staff in that office. They had the foresight to get the hard drives out of their servers before the hurricane hit. My husband now has those hard drives and he will be setting up a temporary office in Baton Rouge to provide service for the New Orleans area.

One of Scott's co-workers has a son who works in the oil industry in New Orleans. This woman has been in touch with her son (he is safe on the oil company lands.)Apparently rescue workers have set up a base at his workplace and have been using it as a staging ground for getting people out of their flooded homes. Her son claims that the rescue workers have been shot by looters while trying to carry out rescues. The looters then steal their boats.

Many people are being evacuated here to Houston. The Astrodome will be used to house many of them. These people have lost everything and are desperate.

There is no way to explain how devastating this hurricane has been. Many people will never be able to go home and they are spending what little savings they have on their escape. Please, if you can, give to the American Red Cross.
posted by GodlessMom, 5:10 PM

13 Comments:

Blogger Fred said:

I don't think we all get it yet. The 35th largest urban area with 1.4 million people is essentially closed. Overnight.

It's terrible what all those people will face in the next few years. I had to endure Andrew, but I think this is 2x worse.
Posted at 7:37 PM  

Blogger dAAve said:

I remain stunned while watching all the disturbing media coverage. I feel so damn helpless.

You might wish to peruse my latest post. It too is very disturbing - to me.
Posted at 7:39 PM  

Blogger Lila said:

Yeah. It's overwhelming. Pretty hard to take it in. So, so sad.
Posted at 8:21 PM  

Blogger The Lazy Iguana said:

The whole deal pisses me off. I posted about this on my blog.
Posted at 8:58 PM  

Blogger Lucy Stern said:

I will be donating thru the churchs humanitarian fund. I know that every penny is going to the disaster resources. Check out this website to see what they are doing. http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,600159898,00.html

I'm glad your husband is OK and I hope he hears from his New Orleans employees soon. He was smart to take the hard drives out before the storm. My daughter worked at a hotel in New Orleans just three weeks ago downloading the new computer upgrades. She's hoping they were smart enought to grab up the server and get it out of harms way.
You know, we are very lucky that the storm didn't come our way. I can't imagine what it would have done to Galveston and Houston.
Posted at 8:59 PM  

Blogger Blueberry said:

My husband's office was gutted during the Flood of '93 in Chesterfield Valley MO when the levee broke and poured 8 feet of water into the valley. They had sandbagged a 4-foot high wall the night before. Not enough! It was nothing but water for miles where is was land before. A major highway (bridge) going through there was closed to cars, and was surreal seeing people just walking around on it surveying the devastation. It had a post-apocalyptic vibe to it. All of that is nothing compared to this because of the suddenness, the overnight devastation, death, and breakdown of civilization! It is just unbelievable.
Posted at 8:20 AM  

Blogger Meegan said:

Seeing the pictures every day is heartbreaking. Tragic.
Posted at 9:23 AM  

Blogger BarbaraFromCalifornia said:

I am so sorry. Yes, I play to give and donate some blood as well tomorrow.

My prayers are with the victims of this horrible tragedy and those 845 people's families killed in Bagdad yesterday as well.
Posted at 10:00 AM  

Blogger United We Lay said:

I'm still going on tour to proest the war because it's important to remember that the war is part of the reason we're in this position. Having said that, my husband and I are donating a large percentage of his parent's estate to the Red Cross for New Orleans.
Posted at 10:23 AM  

Blogger Kyahgirl said:

The future looks hard. The losses are so devastating. I will try to do what I can from here. Mostly by sending money.
Posted at 11:30 AM  

Blogger Saur♥Kraut said:

It is truly devastating. I strongly believe that all looters should be shot on sight, because it endangers the lives of so many for the 'rights' of so few. Sure, there would be an opportunity to shoot and kill innocents (claiming they were looters) but if we don't impose martial law there, the innocents will be the ones who pay for it.

It is true anarchy there right now. My heart goes out to them. I hope to god we never have such complete destruction here.
Posted at 1:55 PM  

Blogger Urban Chick said:

the scenes being shown on tv over here are truly awful

just can't get my head around why your government's response has been so poor

and all this in the world's richest nation...
Posted at 3:39 PM  

Blogger nigel paddell said:

It's hard to hear people bitching about the rising gas prices(even me) when you remember what just happened to millions of human beings.
I am confident that the city will be rebuilt and I hope the rest of the country will pitch in like it did for New York.
I can't give blood so it'll have to be money from me.
Posted at 6:07 PM  

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