Updated Katrina News Links

[liz_marcs]

In all honesty, I think I'm taking tomorrow off from this. I'm tired. My head hurts. I have a desire to down a bottle of wine.

Yup. Now I remember why I left newspapers for a relatively sane writing occupation.

The American Red Cross relief efforts. Choose "Hurricane 2005" relief on the donations page.

Second Harvest, the food bank network, relief efforts. To donate funds, go here.

First, something that'll be useful to everyone:

There are several sites that track gas prices in cities across the U.S. It's a good way to help you find cheap(ish) gas. I know I use Gas Buddy. Another site you can check is Gas Watch. Both sites take reports "from the field," i.e., motorists, on gas prices. While you might not see all gas stations listed, you'll soon find out who matches the cheap gas prices within a reasonable distance of where you live.

Massachusetts colleges and universities will take in college and university students from the Gulf States. Maine is doing the same thing. While I can't find a link specifically for this, the grapevine has it that Boston University will be opening its doors to Tulane Students and giving them a space at the school (the two universities have a long-standing relationship). Tulane students will be able to transfer to BU and back to Tulane with no penalty in credit hours.

Sovereign Bank in New England is collecting Red Cross donations and will match funds for the first $50,000 collected. I know Sovereign Bank has other branches outside of New England, so check with your local branch if you have any.

via smashsc: I was remiss earlier by not pointing out that BET is running a Katrina telethon. The page they've got devoted to the relief efforts is kickass, so check it out.

via airawyn: Kung Fu Monkey is also offering matching funds for the Red Cross. He's apparantly offering proof that he plans to do this. Since I trust airawyn, I'm posting it here.

via ginmar: the Parrotheads are mobilizing nationwide to bring relief to Katrina refugees.

katrinarelief is tracking relief efforts and grassroots efforts to bring aid to the hardest hit areas.

Now this is something you don't see every day. Jack Cafferty on CNN completely lost his shit on-air over the sluggish federal response to the tragedy unfolding in NOLA. CNN's Anderson Cooper also lost his shit. Cooper probably has the better excuse. He's been on the ground in NOLA since the whole thing began. Warning: High traffic at the site means that you might have a hard time getting the videos to play. Trust me. Both are jaw-droppingly impressive to see.

FEMA is taking the 'blame the victims' approach. With all due respect, most of the people who stayed in NOLA were dirt poor with no means to get out of the city or were people who couldn't leave because they had dependent family members. Yes, you had some people who wanted to "dance with Katrina," but I'd lay good money that three quarters of those people would've been gone if they had the means. Witness the number of people who descended on the Superdome or tried the "vertical evacuation" option. I've been in NOLA. Walk one or two blocks outside of the tourist areas (any tourist area) and you walk right into scary poverty. It's a city where you have money, or you don't. And for a city the size of NOLA, there weren't a whole lot of cars (by comparison with, say, NYC, Boston, or LA). The entire city was networked with mass transportation because that's how the vast majority of people got around. So, yeah. Shut-up and do your job instead of making excuses.

Furthermore, not all evacuees are equal in the eyes of rescue efforts. Just ask interdictor.

Fats Domino has been found and has been evacuated from the city. His condition is reportedly "good."

Offers of help from the international community are coming in. Given the article about Jamaica's offer of help being turned away, this needs to be repeated over and over. Maybe it'll put pressure on the administration to accept.

God bless, Houston. The first refugees have arrived at the Astrodome where conditions are controlled and much safer than the situation was in the Superdome, which turned very quickly into a real life disaster movie. To show my appreciation, I will refrain from making any jokes about Texas for a month. Maybe even two.

ETA: I spoke too soon. CNN is reporting that the Astrodome is now turning away NOLA refugees.

dawnmipb has more links about other states and cities stepping up to help.

The Senate has approved $10.5 billion in aid to the hurricane ravaged areas.

National Geographic has a 1994 article about NOLA's vulnerabilities in the face of a killer storm. The opening paragraphs, written last year, are an eerie repeat of today's news.

The Guardian has an excellent overview article about what went wrong with relief efforts. Worth the read.

via the_red_shoes: matociquala is blogging news and information links about the Gulf States and Katrina in particular. Her sources are slightly less conventional than mine. While I am a loud and proud member of the People's Republic of Massachusetts, I've been fairly careful about finding links from mainstream news organizations and using those whenever possible. Her sources fall more on the left-wing side of the divide.

speaking of matociquala: she linkes to an article that explains, in excruciating detail the logistical nightmare Gulf Coast cities were faced with. The article also points out that we lost 9 major cities in Louisianna and Mississippi. The math is hard to read because it makes your head and heart hurt.

The Times-Picayune reporters and editors deserve medals for operating under fire and for using technology to continue reporting from NOLA. I've worked as a reporter during in much, much smaller natural disasters (one tornado, one hurricane, several nor'easters) and those were unbelievably hard to work. I can't imagine the hell these reporters and editors are going through as they watch their city crumble around them. And you know the paper's taking a huge financial hit to do its job. This is what a newspaper should be.

Comments

[soundingsea.livejournal.com]

I'm reading your links and trying not to cry. Thank you for providing them (but try to take some time off and stay sane yourself).

[liz-marcs.livejournal.com]

I just added a new link that states that some people in NOLA are just being out-and-out abandoned by rescue workers.

And yes, I am on the verge of tears.

Thanks for not thinking I'm crazy for doing this. But I really have to walk away from the computer tomorrow, I think.

[dawnmipb.livejournal.com]

You have been working so hard with this. You deserve a break.

Thank you for keeping the flame in all this.

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

d00d, take a break, hell yes. We were both so depressed after 3 hrs of coverage this evening we declared a news moratorium and are currently watching a really, really terrible Skiffy original picture called "Pterodactyl." It is so terrible it is actually entertaining. It is so terrible I actually managed to forget for whole minutes at a time that a major US city has apparently turned into Third World territory, without our gov't giving a tinker's dam. Then I felt guilty.

I SAW both Cafferty and Cooper on air realtime -- man oh man, most of the reporters I've known would rather be staked out on fire ant ground than lose their shit on the air. If it's wracking for me sitting in my living room across the country watching it, I can't even imagine what it's like being there in the middle of it all trying to report on it. Did you see Paula Zahn smackdown the head of FEMA? I mean, freaking Paula Zahn? The reporters are getting radicalized, right on the air. Altho I guess that's not hard when you see raw footage of devastated suffering and then some blow-dried gov't lackey trying to give you spin-with-a-smile.

The Pulitzer committee should just save time, money and effort and give whatever they have to the Times-Picayune guys, right now. They're incredible.

[julia-here.livejournal.com]

Thanks again for doing this.

The National Geographic link is the best refutation possible for "nobody knew the dikes would break" and the Brown interview is actually somewhat less offensive than what he said this morning in a brief interview with Diana Naiad on "To The Point"- which was that "people should have left town when they were told to."

We know. We have known. We cannot forget.

Julia, too sleepy to google "Hurricane Pam" but will try in the morning

[(Anonymous)]

I don't have an LJ account, so apologies for the anonymity. My name is Ruth and I live in Jackson, Missisippi. Both my home and workplace have been without power since Monday afternoon, and we're under a "boil water" edict in the city, but my family were very fortunate and suffered no damage from the storm -- others in the area had trees fall on their homes, roofs blown off, etc. Jackson is very, very lucky, though, compared to our neighbors on the Coast and in many other cities devastated by Katrina, and most local people are grateful for it. (We have our share of idiots who complain about how slow the power company is to make repairs, as if they aren't blessed to still have a house, but they are a minority.)

I'm commenting because I've been unable to get any news since Monday except what was on the radio, and without the Internet I've been unaware of just how terrible the relief "efforts" have been in NOLA. The past couple of hours I've been catching up on news, and your LJ has been massively helpful. I'm now even more depressed than I already was, but I WANT to know the truth, so thank you for all the links. I'm too angry and frustrated to comment rationally on the information right now, but I appreciate your sharing it.

I've been reading your LJ for the fanfic, but I have been learning a lot from your reportorial postings as well. Again, thanks so much for the links, and I agree with all your comments!

[http://users.livejournal.com/amy_star_/]

In your last post you mentioned the Vancouver crew being turned back, but CTV is reporting that the USAR team is actually on the ground in Kenner, LA.
CTV article here: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1125629846148_165/?hub=TopStories

[dreamerjules.livejournal.com]

Please take the day off. Thank you so much for this. I can't bring myself to watch the news, so this is my main source of information. It's just too much. Yes, I'm a coward, but I am going to volunteer.

[silly-dan.livejournal.com]

CNN is reporting that the Astrodome is now turning away NOLA refugees.

They seem to have restarted efforts there, and sending them on to other places in Texas. I'm surprised they didn't publicize that as the plan from the start.

[stoney321.livejournal.com]

*cough* In all fairness (and a proud Texan) to the Astrodome, they are trying to provide santitary conditions so things don't escalate to the horrifying conditions in NoLa. Huntsville (a 45 minute ride) had prepared an over-flow site, but the communications to bus drivers were faulty, hence the horrible "turning away." Dallas, where I live, had already taken in 2000 people by 4pm Thursday, and are expecting 25,000 more by the end of today.

We have food, medical supplies, school... it's all in plan and ready to go and FUNDED and did I mention ready to go? We aren't turning people away. We're putting them in safe places where they can have some dignity.

And yeah, I'm a bit Texas proud. (Bush ain't a native, and neither is Rove.) :-D

[texanfan.livejournal.com]

Texas proud here as well. I'm wondering if I'm missing some reports. Is any state, other than Texas, taking in large numbers of evacuees?

[luxshine.livejournal.com]

I really thank you for all your efforts to keep people informed. I'm from México, a bit far away from all the situation, but my best friend's family is from NOLA (Lacombe actually, that is not mentioned in any links so here's me hoping they're fine), and if it wasn't for you and people like you, she wouldn't know where to look for information that didn't started with "And we're all going to die..." (News around here are a tad sensacionalists around disasters). So thank you, and please, take a day or two away from all this. I want to cry reading all this and I wasn't the one looking for links.

[married-n-mich.livejournal.com]

I'm usually the big avoidy-gal. I try not to get to close to this stuff because it upsets me too much and there's really not much I can do about it.

Well, that's changed. I've been reading articles both the normal way and through my FLIST.

Thanks for posting this. Kind of puts things into perspective and now I have a good reason to feel sick.

And yes... take tomorrow off. If you don't... badness will ensue and you'll make yourself sick.

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

Liz, thank you for your work with links and information. It is so overwhelming. :-(

[thespatz.livejournal.com]

Wesleyan University is also offering classes to any stranded CT students. Details can be found here.

Also, is the link to the National Geographic article from 1994 or 2004? Since it cites a 2004 book, I'm guessing typo.