I awoke this morning to 40 mph winds from an outer band of Tropical Storm Ophelia, which Jeff Masters of Weather Underground expects to become stronger:

TD 16 gathered enough strength last night to be given a name -- Ophelia. Ophelia will be a name we will hear a lot of over the coming week. She is going to cause plenty of trouble, and will be moving slowly enough that we'll still be talking about her a week from now. ...

With so much time over warm water, and the shear likely to decrease once the trough bypasses her, Ophelia will have a good chance of attaining at least Category 1 hurricane status and making landfall somewhere on the Southeast U.S. coast. All interests along the Southeast coast from Miami to Cape Hatteras need to watch this storm.

The current strike probability for Jacksonville/St. Augustine is around 20 percent. Ophelia is currently so mild by hurricane standards that even I'm not panicking, but it reminded me of something I learned during news coverage last week: Scientists are much better at predicting the path of an approaching hurricane than its intensity.

Florida · Jacksonville · 2005/09/07 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superuser

The Detroit Free Times covers Michael Barnett, the network admin barricaded in downtown New Orleans who's been publishing a post-hurricane journal called The Interdictor.

Barnett, an unabashed libertarian with a military background, has covered the disaster with his blog and streaming webcam while remaining online, which is both a journalistic and technological feat. To my knowledge, his connection never went down.

Last night, some of the troops stationed in the city found them:

Sometime around midnight, a squad of 82nd Airborne guys accompanied by a US Marshall busted into our Data Center with their M4-A1s to investigate the lights and movement. Personally, I know they were just bored -- there's no way they honestly thought there was some kind of threat up here just yards away from several huge military and police presences.

Hurricane Katrina · Journalism · 2005/09/07 · 1 COMMENT · Link

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 · 3 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

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