A friend lives in Baton Rouge in a house that fared well in the hurricane, so he's taken in around a dozen relatives as they decide what to do next.

One is an architect for a small firm based in New Orleans who has a wife, eight-month-old, and father living with him. Since his company may be out of business, he's looking for a job, primarily in the Baton Rouge or Lafayette areas of central Louisiana, but might consider other locations.

"He's a bit of a jack of all trades and I think he could be a contractor or a key guy for a contractor," according to my friend. If anyone has any job possibilities or advice for the suddenly unemployed, let me know.

Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/06 · 1 COMMENT · Link

Barbara Bush's Texas Hospitality

As Presidents Clinton and Bush toured the Astrodome yesterday, an NPR reporter recorded an amazing comment from First Lady Barbara Bush:

Almost everyone I've talked to says we're going to move to Houston. ... What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this -- this is working very well for them.

Indeed. Losing your home, possessions, and loved ones is a small price to pay for the chance to live like a zombie in a strange place with thousands of people, on constant guard to protect your children, clothes, and cot.

On Air America, Al Franken retold the infamous story of his meeting on a plane with Barbara Bush, which I've attached as an eight-minute podcast. The story's hilarious, if you don't mind a little name-calling:

I told people this story the next day. And this is people who are Republicans, there were Democrats there -- this was just a journalistic thing ... Everyone laughed at the story, but what they laughed at the most was that I thought Barbara Bush was kidding. And they went oh no, no, no, no, no, she's horrible.

Radio · Politics · Podcasts · Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/06 · 71 COMMENTS · Link

The Road Trip blog in St. Augustine reports that several gas stations in the area ran out of fuel this weekend:

... both gas stations in my neighborhood were out of fuel today. One (a Chevron affiliate) was completely out and another (a BP outlet) was out of regular. In fact, half the gas stations between here and Jacksonville on US 1 were dry Saturday night.

I haven't seen this myself, paying around $3 per gallon when I fueled up on Thursday. The Florida Times-Union reports current prices in Jacksonville ranging from $3.20 to $3.60.

Florida · Hurricane Katrina · Jacksonville · 2005/09/05 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Katrina.Com Owner Responds to Storm

A web designer whose personal site has been published for years at katrina.com has turned it into a Hurricane Katrina relief site in response to the huge traffic from victims, their loved ones, and others seeking information on the disaster.

Katrina Blankenship told ComputerWorld that the site has received 400,000 hits the past week, a twenty-fold increase on the normal monthly traffic.

... it wasn't until Monday morning -- when she saw her e-mail in-box full of messages -- that Blankenship realized how many worried Internet users had gravitated to her site for help. "They were scared to death," she said. "They still are now -- the calls that are coming in with the stories that they have. One caller asked, 'Please, can you help me find my husband?' -- things like that."

In less heartwarming news, a Jacksonville-area man who registered several Katrina-related domains has been sued for deceptive trade practices by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist.

Robert E. Moneyhan of Nassau County is accused of registering katrinadonations.com, katrinahelp.com, katrinarelief.com and katrinarelieffund.com with the intent of pocketing donations.

Moneyhan, who registered the domains under the name Demon Moon, told the Florida Times-Union he registered them to keep them out of the hands of cybersquatters. "As people were watching the storm, I knew that other people were going to be snatching up domain names and making a profit."

He removed donation links from the sites and replaced them with a for-sale offer, according to the attorney general's office. The domains appear to have been sold or tranferred on Saturday to Kevin Caruso of Chula Vista, Calif., the owner of tsunamis.com and preventsuicidenow.com.

Though I was tempted earlier this year by the process the World Meteorological Institute uses to select tropical storm names, I did not become a hurricanesquatter. The word "hurricane" followed by every scheduled name from 2005 to 2010 is owned by DisasterResistant.Com, which uses the sites to sell the Elder Valve, a $70 pipe valve that prevents human waste from returning to its creator during flooding:

Sewage finds the path of least resistance. All sewage at that pressure can go up one service line, sewage pressured up from over 100 or 1000 or 10,000 homes at higher elevations than yours. Sewage from that many homes could rocket up your line when no ground water is anywhere near your residence. Your yard could be dry, with raw sewage half way up your interior windows.

Hurricane Katrina · Florida · Domains · 2005/09/05 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

New Homes for New Orleans

Habitat for Humanity is beginning a home in a box program to quickly assemble, ship, and build new housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina:

Habitat's plan is to assemble the materials needed to build a house -- either purchased or donated -- and then, working with affiliates, churches, corporations and others in communities all over the country, volunteers, working with building specialists, will "pre-build" the frame of a home over a few days. The house will be tacked together to ensure a rock-solid fit, then the frame will be taken apart and the components placed, along with other necessary construction materials, in a container and shipped to an area along the Gulf Coast or New Orleans where families, volunteers and builders will rebuild the home.

These 1,100- to 1,300-square-foot homes will meet local housing codes at a cost to the charity of around $67,000 per home, if the 1,500-home, $100 million figure in the announcement is correct. You can donate online to support the effort.

More on charity efforts: The Liberal Blogs for Hurricane Relief campaign passed $150,000 this afternoon towards a goal of $1 million, and author John Grisham gave $5 million to help Mississippi residents rebuild.

Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/04 · 1 COMMENT · Link

'Abandoned By Our Own Country'

The president of Jefferson Parish in Louisiana, Aaron Broussard, appeared on Meet the Press this morning in an interview you can watch on Crooks and Liars.

Broussard reported FEMA officials who refused entry to shipments of water, turned back diesel fuel, and cut emergency phone lines:

We have been abandoned by our own country. Hurricane Katrina will go down in history as one of the worst storms ever to hit an American coast. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina will go down as one of the worst abandonments of Americans on American soil ever in U.S. history.

In disconsolate grief, Broussard broke down at the end of the interview while telling Russert a personal story about the head of emergency management for his parish. Watch it and you'll be crying too.

In the same show, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said that the federal government didn't realize the situation was bad Tuesday because newspapers said New Orleans had "dodged a bullet."

We're now witnessing our second mass evacuation in a week, as government officials try desperately to escape blame.

The man-made disaster that followed Hurricane Katrina rises from the local officials in New Orleans to the parish officials in southeast Louisiana to the state officials in Baton Rouge to the Louisiana Congressional delegation to FEMA to the Department of Homeland Security to Chertoff to President Bush, who now has the distinction of being the first president to lose a major American city on his watch since Teddy Roosevelt in 1906.

And if we don't demand real accountability from our leaders when all the rescue efforts are over and rebuilding has begun, the blame lies with us.

Hurricane Katrina · Politics · 2005/09/04 · 42 COMMENTS · Link

Broadcasting live from the New Orleans Convention Center on Hannity and Colmes last night, Fox News anchor Geraldo Rivera cried, holding a 10-month-old child as he discussed the extremely inhumane conditions 15,000 evacuees have been forced to live under.

Outside, a visibly despondent Shepard Smith pointed out locked exit doors on the center and road checkpoints that prevented the exit of people housed for six days without food, shelter, sanitation, and medicine.

"Let them go," Rivera begged.

View the 8-minute clip on Crooks and Liars.

When did the road to New Orleans go through the rabbit hole?

Politics · Hurricane Katrina · 2005/09/03 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Read More Entries