August 30: Devastation and chaos

Sunday I was sitting in a hippie bar in Peoria, watching CNN with no sound, watching the Doppler images of Hurricane Katrina moving in. Monday I was half-joking that I wished I could be one of the reporters they send to go stand in the hurricane to show everybody "look! It's raining! And windy!" And then today, it's not exciting, or jokable. Or over.

CNN has a video clip of a man, crying, holding a little kid, talking about how he and his wife were in the attic when the house ripped apart, and he lost his grip on her, and she told him to look after the kids. He's saying "I can't find her body." I didn't watch the clip, which they linked to four times in one story (and again in pretty much every story on the hurricane they've got), but the text is everywhere.

My parents spend a week every summer in Biloxi. Spent, I guess I should say. It sounds like there's not much Biloxi left now. Reports are that one of the floating coastal casinos was swept out of the ocean, over the interstate, and is now sitting on what used to be houses.

If the news from resort towns like Biloxi and Gulfport is this bad, I can't even imagine what's become of the people who live in the shacks and trailer homes along the river, the people who don't have the money to flee and don't have the media looking for them.

The staff of the Times-Picayune was blogging from their bunker in their newsroom, running on reserve power throughout the hurricane. They've fled now, setting up a temporary newshub in a nearby newspaper's offices. They're committed to putting out a daily paper every day, by posting .PDFs at midnight. It's harrowing, but they're also still blogging: the police are asking for any boats to use for rescues. This hospital is closed. This hospital needs volunteer RNs. Heartbreaking, heartbreaking.

I know I have nothing to add to the commentary on a natural disaster that is, in no real way, affecting me personally. I'm just shocked--it seemed so recently like the damage wasn't going to be so bad. I keep thinking of our trip to New Orleans this past spring. The train went right along the path--New Orleans, east over the river, north up through Jackson, Mississippi--Katrina practically rode the rails on inland. I hope the second best bloody mary bartender in town took heed and headed up to Baton Rouge, or wherever it was he was from. I hope St. Peter's is still there. I hope they manage to keep the Superdome crowds under control. I hope it's still possible for the Big Easy to, someday, be easy again.