Cantr II Discussion Forum

I would just like to send out a prayer to the people of New Orleans who are about to be hit by a Category 5 Hurricane Katrina.

This is one of the worse things that could happen especially to a below sea level city. I'm afraid that there won't be much left of New Orleans by the time this storm passes.

I hope that nobody is seriously injured or dies.

It seems that New Orleans may yet survive, though the damage is extreme. Best wishes go out to all those affected, in Louisiana and Alabama especially.

It seems thing have gotten worse overnight. The news is reporting that 80% of the city is underwater, 1,000s of people are missing, levees have been breached and water is continuing to rise, the pumps are not working, and fires are burning out of control since emergency personal can't get to the areas due to flooding and damage.

Martial law has also been declared in New Orleans.

But the worse of it is in Mississippi. I just saw some video on the news from helicoptors going over that area and there is nothing left. Whole towns have been wiped away and they are reporting that upwards of ten thousand people who did not heed evacuation orders could be dead or injured and it will be weeks if not months before emergency or rescue workers to get to those areas.

Last night, it looked like that Katrina didn't hit as hard as the doomsday people were predicting. Today, I think we can safely say that the doomsday predictions have come true and it it worse than anyone can imagine. One reporter was saying that people are just pulling dead after dead from the rubble of buildings in Gulfport.

This is a very bad catastrophe that I don't think we as Americans have ever been confronted with.

The bad thing is that things will get alot worse before they start getting better. With all the clean supplies unable to enter the hardest hit areas because all the roads are either blocked or nonexistant, the survivors in those areas will begin to suffer from the unsanitary conditions which will begin to spread disease and infection. I'm hearing on the radio that people are going to far as to hitch rides out of the region and leave anything they may have left behind just to get away.

On the other side of things, I heard this story today...

The owner of the cabinet shop I work at had a brother just outside of New Orleans.

His brother traveled all over the place for his job and was calling a little camp ground between the lake and river home. He knew the storm was coming but thought it would turn or die off so he didn't try to leave till the very last minute.

Unfortunatly, he didn't have the time to get his 40 ft travel trailer off the jacks and on the road because he waited too long to do so. When he finally did decide to leave and head toward Texas, he stopped at a gas station and promptly got robbed by someone else who was trying to get away from the storm and apparently needed more travel money. He had an emergency stash and was soon able to get on the road again minus his wallet.

Once he crossed the state line into Texas hours later he remembered something that was somewhat important. His wife, who was at their house here in Florida, had just redone the insurance on the trailer and it didn't take effect until today. If he'd thought ahead and left in time to take the trailer with him, then it would be been covered by the insurance on his truck, instead it's sitting in the middle of flood waters .

My boss got a huge laugh out of this because his brother has an IQ of 150 and still screwed around and let all this happen because he didn't leave when he should have.

There is definantly something to be said for common sense.

Common sense... it ain't so common.