WombatNation

I’m starting to get the feeling that I should have just created a category called “Hurricane” and then set up “Katrina” and “Rita” as sub-categories, because it looks like we are in for a future of a lot (bevy, gaggle, horde?) of major hurricanes hitting areas where I have a lot of friends and family.

My wife has several family members in the area southeast of Houston. Her father and step-mother have already evacuated most of the patients and workers (and some of their families) from the nursing home they own to College Station. Her step-mother wisely rented two school buses very early on, and also rented a horse trailer for moving supplies.

My wife’s brother siphoned gas out of every gas powered engine on his property and managed to head out early this morning with 38 gallons of gas. He left at 2:30 am from Angleton and managed to get to College Station by 5 am by driving on route 290. Although news reports said 290 was also completely backed up, he said he saw relatively little traffic at the time he drove. I know that at some point yesterday the Texas Highway Patrol started opening both sides of the highways for people who were evacuating. There was a ridiculous photo in the Oakland Tribune today showing a cop pulling over a driver for driving the wrong way on a completely deserted Interstate, while the other side of the road was a veritable parking lot. While you end up with some traffic issues if there were some vehicles trying to get back into Houston, I think those problems aren’t nearly as bad as having hundreds of cars left stranded on the highway because the cars ran out of gas.

This actually happened to my sister-in-law’s brother’s ex-wife. She was driving in a car behind his when she ran out of gas. Fortunately, she and their son were able to transfer to his car and keep going, but they had to leave her car behind.

A friend just sent me a link to a PDF presentation of before-and-after overhead photos of Biloxi. The after photos were taken at a slightly different angle, so you can’t exactly compare them, but you can compare them well enough. The destruction in the neighborhoods that are shown is amazing. There are a couple photos that clearly show how far the two parts of the Grand casino were moved down the coastline.

I’m back after spending just over a week on vacation in Ireland. My wife and I met up with thirteen other family members and spouses connected to the McGuire side of the family. We stayed at McKeever’s Mill near Nobber, which is about an hour from Dublin. The mill was a great place to stay and I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to see the historic sites in County Meath (e.g., Newgrange, Knowth, Hill of Tara, Trim Castle, etc.) and spend some time in Dublin.

Google now has some updated satellite and/or aerial imagery for New Orleans. You can easily see the flooding by looking at the entrance and exit ramps to most of the freeways. Some of them have a line of cars sitting just up out of the water. If you click back and forth between the “Satellite” button and the red “Katrina” button, the difference is quite shocking.

• Breached canal near N. Claiborne ave.
• 17th Street Canal at the Old Hammond Highway Bridge - compare flooding on right to dry land on the left
• Superdome
• French Quarter
• Convention Center
• Gentilly
• Pumping water back into Lake Pontchartrain
• Fair Grounds - Racetrack
• University of New Orleans

Unfortunately, Tulane is one of the areas not covered by this set of photographs.

My mother just spoke with her neighbor across the street on Popps Ferry Rd. in north Biloxi. The electricity came back on at their house today. That can obviously make a huge difference, as many people can now boil water to sanitize it and they can much more quickly spread the news that they are safe (assuming DSL and cable internet providers are functioning).

My mother is planning to go back to her house tomorrow to do some more clean up and to check to see if her car will start. If the power is also on at her house and at least one of the vehicles starts, I suspect she will likely stay. I was planning to check the electricity status by calling her house and waiting to see if the answering machine picked up, but she told me that she had turned off all the circuit breakers before she evacuated.

Thank you very much to the men and women at utility companies who are working so hard out in the field to restore power to the neighborhoods!

Please help the victims of Hurricane Katrina by donating to the Red Cross. My mother was a nurse in Biloxi for many years and has volunteered for the Red Cross and served on the board for a division of the Red Cross in South Mississippi. A very large percentage of the money you donate to the Red Cross goes directly to helping those who are most in need.

The WLOX website continues to be an excellent resource for video and still images of the Mississippi Coast. WLOX suffered a great amount of damage from the hurricane. Their antenna was knocked off the roof and huge holes were ripped through the roof and ceiling. They’ve gotten fuel for the generators, though, and are back in business, even if in a limited capacity. Their website has been kept to date through the generous help of personnel at other stations throughout the South.

The driving and helicopter video tours of the Coast are astonishing. Although I haven’t lived in Biloxi for twenty-two years, I’m still fairly familiar with the area through my regular visits to see my mother and my friends. At times during the videos, I have to struggle to spot even a single reminder of the area they are driving through or flying over.

WWL in New Orleans has also been a fantastic source of information not just about New Orleans, but all over the Louisiana and Mississippi coastlines. They are currently reporting that Mayor Nagin believes over 10,000 may be dead.

If you happen to be listening to KCBS in San Francisco at around 3:30 pm today, you may hear me being interviewed about my family and friends in Biloxi, Mississippi, and how they are surviving the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The US became the first team from the CONCACAF region to qualify for the 2006 World Cup in Germany by cruising to an easy 2-0 win over Mexico this Saturday in Columbus, Ohio. Mexico rarely threatened and took only one dangerous shot in the entire game. Keller dove to his right to block the shot, making it look like a routine save. His shot stopping ability is amazing. While the US and Mexico both struggled in the first half, the US turned it on in the second half and powered to the victory.

Mexico’s coach Lavolpe is a really sore loser. Whenever Mexico loses, he’s always full of excuses and complaints. This time after yet another loss in the US (they haven’t scored a goal here since 1999), he said “They [the US] play like my sister, my aunt, and my grandmother.” Wow, Manuel, I didn’t realize that three women from your family could so soundly defeat the entire Mexican national team. Next time, I recommend replacing the some of the guys on your team with women and maybe you will have half a chance of scoring.

Steve Ralston scored the first goal for the US by putting in a rebound after Oguchi Onyewu soared high over the Mexican defense to head a ball off the post. Just a few minutes later, the US carved up the unsettled Mexican defense as an unmarked Claudio Reyna made a sharp pass to an unmarked DaMarcus Beasley who then blasted the ball over the goalkeeper. The US then kept the pressure on Mexico the rest of the way and handily closed out the game for the win.

My mother spoke with a neighbor in north Biloxi who said that water service was restored this afternoon to their neighborhood (just north of the Sunkist subdivision).

Update Sept. 3, 10:30 pm: Hopefully, no one is drinking that water, though. I just read a story at WLOX.com about some people in Biloxi potentially getting dysentery after drinking tap water on Friday.