Update 9-6-05   

Hi,

The holiday weekend, but much of the news is about New Orleans.  Some personal reports:

From a friend of mine in Los Angeles who's from New Orleans:  I've been in touch with all of my immediate family who had to evacuate, but there are still one-or-two friends who I've not heard about.  They are medical personnel and had to stay in the city.  I'm sure they're fine, but I'll be just a little anxious until I know positively.
    I think the human toll will be heavy, but still comparatively light because of the mandatory evacuations and the fact that so many people did actually leave.  But the property damage will be very, very, very ugly.
    None of my family has been home yet to survey the extent of damage to their specific places.  It may be many more days before people are let back into the city.  I've been watching it all, and I've been on the phone pretty steadily.  It's bleak.

[Rich -- Zelda White Nichols and I went back and forth in the first few days discussing damage.  She said, "When they were talking about evacuating people to the Super Dome because it was high off the ground, I said to my husband, 'What about the roof?  No one is talking about it being able to withstand winds of that intensity.'  I was so scared for all those people, who, fortunately, were initially okay.  But only time will tell how many are reported missing and dead, and I still think it might be more than we are hearing about now."
    I wrote Zelda that I thought the evacuations were going to hold the deaths to a relatively low number, especially considering the millions of people involved.  But reports today from the New Orleans' mayor seem, unfortunately, to head in Zelda's direction.]

Another report, from friends of mine in Baton Rouge:  The storm mainly did wind damage to our area.  We only got three inches of rain.  But there are now twice as many people in Baton Rouge than there were before the hurricane, supplies are tight because of limited trucking coming in, and gas is almost impossible to buy.  Still, school starts on Tuesday because the city wants to keep kids off the streets and occupied.  And there are more kids going to school now because they've come from other areas, and they're likely to stay.
    We also lost electricity for a couple of days, but now that's on, though it's still hard to get a phone call out.  Phone calls in somehow are easier, but almost all cell phones are out of commission.  Our take on the levees in New Orleans is very different from everything we've heard nationally:  it's not that the levees were underbuilt or under-maintained; it's more that they were built to withstand a 3.0 hurricane, about the worst that's ever hit this area.  Katrina was a 4.5 -- a possibility, but not very probable.  The equivalent caution would limit all buildings in, say, the earthquake-prone areas of California to three stories, on the chance that no one had figured out how to safely engineer above that.
    One last thing:  almost everything covered in the national media seems exaggerated, and a number of young reporters seem to be trying to make their reputations on the disaster.  Some of this might be due to the fact that in the first days after Katrina hit, the local television stations were being used to broadcast practical information, about rescues, medical and food supplies, ambulances, hospitals, and evacuations.  So no erroneous national stories were refuted, and reporters who weren't local got a lot of things wrong.  But the local Louisiana politicians are working their hardest both to get relief to the area, and to correct misimpressions.

From a friend in Biloxi:  The first floor of our house is in three feet of water, because we're right on a bayou.  The refrigerator was floating when we finally got back home, and I didn't know a refrigerator could float.  The casino I work in, on a boat, has split in half, and a lot of jobs will be lost.  We don't know how long it's going to be before we get our lives back together.

And from Key West, Florida:  Katrina caught everyone here by surprise, but fortunately she didn't cause much damage.  Certainly nothing like what happened to the poor people of Louisiana  and Mississippi.  We were without power for about 36 hours, but that was about it.
More about Florida from Zelda White Nichols:  My mom lives on the beach in Pompano Beach, and although the hurricane was only a category one there, she said it caused more damage than many other hurricanes in previous years.  You don't hear about that at all, because this story is so much bigger in other places, yet people in Florida need assistance, too.

And from Barbara Blitfield Pech:  Just wanted to share this with you.  I was out of Miami to spend the four-day weekend with my son and daughter-in-law near Orlando.  I left Friday afternoon and drove north on the Florida Turnpike.  The turnpike eventually leads to I-10, the main highway to Mobile, Gulfport, Biloxi, and New Orleans.  Throughout the drive, I was riding with utility caravans, food service trucks, hospitality vans, and medical and military transports, all heading toward the hurricane-affected areas.  Today, four days later, coming home, I watched the continued traffic of caravans and lifesavers on the road in even greater force.  I can see and appreciate how much I have to be thankful for, and I share many prayers for those so less fortunate than myself.

Finally, a little practical advice from Zelda White Nichols:  I was scheduled to go to Florida last Thursday, but the storm changed that.  My heart goes out to Barbara Blitfield Pech.  In light of the damage, people might consider the following:  Please think about getting your house reappraised and increase your home owner's insurance to meet today's value.  3,000 homes were lost near San Diego during the firestorm of 2003, and many houses will be lost or suffer severe damage during this hurricane.  What most people learn too late is that their insurance does not cover replacements or repairs at today's prices.  People were paying insurance on houses that they purchased between five-and-twenty years ago, and it was that purchase price that the insurance companies used when people filed claims.  In California alone, housing rates have soared in the last year.  Six months before we sold our house there, we had it reappraised and were bowled over at how much it was worth -- $400,000 more than what we paid.  When we put it on the market six months later, the same realtor reappraised it for $100,000 more.  Granted, this is an extreme, but had we lost our house, we would never have been able to afford to rebuild.  No matter where we live, nature in one way or another will remind us how fierce it can be.  Up-to-date insurance is just one way of protecting yourselves should disaster strike.

[Rich -- There's more reunion catch-up, but that will keep till next week.  One last thing my friends in Baton Rouge discovered:  a cheap, five-inch, black-and-white, battery-operated television set can be enormously helpful when the electricity is out.  Along with plenty of batteries, checked annually for expiration dates.]