![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I got this e-mail from one of the mailing lists I'm on and thought it was worth sharing. (Yes, I asked permission).
Hello everyone. On behalf of everyone who got smacked around by that wench Katrina, thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers.
We are in Vicksburg, MS, which is about 220 miles north and a little west of New Orleans. Thanks to a strong East Texas breeze and/or the love of God, we have had nowhere near the destruction others have experienced. Jack O'Neill would just love this place (ha) because it's full of trees, trees, and more trees. We were sure one or more of the many tall ones surrounding our townhouse were going to come down on us, but they all managed to fall in other directions. Huge branches fell all over the yard and in the driveway, and one gigantic tree flattened my neighbor's carport, but our blessings held. There are hundreds of trees down and smashing things all over town, but nothing completely obliterated like you're seeing on tv. Jackson is 35 miles to the east and in much worse shape utility-wise.
We came out of it stressed witless but otherwise unscathed but for the loss of electricity. We were without power from Monday morning until Wednesday night; it was so short for us because we're close to a substation. It was exasperating to we completely powerless (in more than one way) for that long but compared to the people we've talked to who escaped only with what they could shove in a trash bag and put in their car (or a lot less), we weren't even inconvenienced. Some of the people I work with who live in a town 25 miles to the south are getting power restoration estimates of September 30 or later.
The trees are the reason about 14,000 people in my county are still without power tonight, but most of those who lost all running water have had it restored and even if they don't have power for heated water at least they can flush again. Telephone landlines are in sad, sorry shape but cellular service was never completely lost and was one of the first services to begin recovery.
Gasoline was really scarce the first couple of days and of course the prices have risen, but as power is restored to more stations and more deliveries are tanked in from Shreveport and Houston, the supply is getting better (though, of course, not any less expensive).
There were several church shelters open here until the Red Cross combined them all at the convention center today. There are now over 1000 refugees there; the hotels are all bursting at the seams, and more are arriving all the time, which means the churches may have to re-open their shelters.
Please, I beg you, do not believe everything you see on television and the internet about a slow response to this disaster. It's not nearly as true as some would like you to believe. It just takes a HUGE amount of time to organize and deploy a relief effort, especially when the disaster's not even over and you have only a loose idea what you need and where in the first place. This all happened incredibly fast, and so many companies and organizations have responded so quickly, but you're not hearing anything about them. As of Wednesday I had seen disaster crews, utility workers, and FEMA folk from as far away as Los Angeles, Delaware, and Michigan. You can't drive huge trucks to MS from those places much faster than that.
As for the complaints about the government not getting people out quickly after the storm was over, this is ridiculous. Neither the local nor federal governments knew how many people had stayed behind after the mandatory evac order was issued. How can you be prepared to move 100,00 people through that kind of destruction when they were supposed to have already gone? I'm not trying to get on a soap box or start anything, I just see an injustice happening and it's completely eclipsing the huge amounts of good that is being done.
There is a LOT of good going on. Everyone who has room to spare is taking someone in. Everyone is finding something to give. There are many, many volunteers manning shelters. I work for a casino here, and though we just got re-opened yesterday, today we were able to donate food for 400 and $1,600 worth of necessities like blankets, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, diapers and so much more. We're the smallest one of the four in town and the bigger casinos are right there with us.
I've amassed several bags of clothes to donate at the convention center shelter. My next-door neighbors were running the one at their church, and they said the most-needed and least-donated items were socks and underwear, so tomorrow I'm going shopping for a variety of sizes of those for men, women and children.
Anyway, my family is just fine, thank you so very much. Please keep those prayers rolling for those less fortunate. Many thanks,
When I asked permission to post, she sent along this information, too:
Feel free to post. I'd love for more people to know the response wasn't nearly as FUBAR as the media and politicos are leading people to believe.
Aside from that, it really is as bad as it looks. Here's a link to some pictures from a local tv station in Mobile, AL. We didn't ever live down there but we took many trips down to the coast. It's so sad to recognise the rubble of places where we've had such great times.
On that first page is a picture of the ravaged Treasure Bay casino, which my daughter loved to look at. It now looks like the pirate ship from that movie "The Goonies". Here's a 'before' picture.
The Beau Rivage casino was gorgeous. We went to a Chicago concert there last year. The picture of its front side on that first page makes it look like it's relatively undamaged. The back side looks like the Murrah building from the Oklahoma City bombing.
Second to last on that page is the President casino. We never went in there, but I loved to watch the boats in the marina it sat in. We've stayed at the Holiday Inn it's parked on now.
There's no picture of it on that site, but the elegant and historic Sanger Theatre on Canal street is under at least ten feet of water. We took my daughter to see David Copperfield for her birthday a couple of years ago.
::sigh:: I'll shut up now. :)
Thanks so much for your good thoughts. Keep praying for those less fortunate than I, they're going to need it for a long while to come.
It's nice to know that not everything is as bad as it seems on the news. I know it's bad, but people are working. They are doing a damn fine job, and it's disservice to say that everyone involved isn't doing their best.
Hello everyone. On behalf of everyone who got smacked around by that wench Katrina, thanks so much for your thoughts and prayers.
We are in Vicksburg, MS, which is about 220 miles north and a little west of New Orleans. Thanks to a strong East Texas breeze and/or the love of God, we have had nowhere near the destruction others have experienced. Jack O'Neill would just love this place (ha) because it's full of trees, trees, and more trees. We were sure one or more of the many tall ones surrounding our townhouse were going to come down on us, but they all managed to fall in other directions. Huge branches fell all over the yard and in the driveway, and one gigantic tree flattened my neighbor's carport, but our blessings held. There are hundreds of trees down and smashing things all over town, but nothing completely obliterated like you're seeing on tv. Jackson is 35 miles to the east and in much worse shape utility-wise.
We came out of it stressed witless but otherwise unscathed but for the loss of electricity. We were without power from Monday morning until Wednesday night; it was so short for us because we're close to a substation. It was exasperating to we completely powerless (in more than one way) for that long but compared to the people we've talked to who escaped only with what they could shove in a trash bag and put in their car (or a lot less), we weren't even inconvenienced. Some of the people I work with who live in a town 25 miles to the south are getting power restoration estimates of September 30 or later.
The trees are the reason about 14,000 people in my county are still without power tonight, but most of those who lost all running water have had it restored and even if they don't have power for heated water at least they can flush again. Telephone landlines are in sad, sorry shape but cellular service was never completely lost and was one of the first services to begin recovery.
Gasoline was really scarce the first couple of days and of course the prices have risen, but as power is restored to more stations and more deliveries are tanked in from Shreveport and Houston, the supply is getting better (though, of course, not any less expensive).
There were several church shelters open here until the Red Cross combined them all at the convention center today. There are now over 1000 refugees there; the hotels are all bursting at the seams, and more are arriving all the time, which means the churches may have to re-open their shelters.
Please, I beg you, do not believe everything you see on television and the internet about a slow response to this disaster. It's not nearly as true as some would like you to believe. It just takes a HUGE amount of time to organize and deploy a relief effort, especially when the disaster's not even over and you have only a loose idea what you need and where in the first place. This all happened incredibly fast, and so many companies and organizations have responded so quickly, but you're not hearing anything about them. As of Wednesday I had seen disaster crews, utility workers, and FEMA folk from as far away as Los Angeles, Delaware, and Michigan. You can't drive huge trucks to MS from those places much faster than that.
As for the complaints about the government not getting people out quickly after the storm was over, this is ridiculous. Neither the local nor federal governments knew how many people had stayed behind after the mandatory evac order was issued. How can you be prepared to move 100,00 people through that kind of destruction when they were supposed to have already gone? I'm not trying to get on a soap box or start anything, I just see an injustice happening and it's completely eclipsing the huge amounts of good that is being done.
There is a LOT of good going on. Everyone who has room to spare is taking someone in. Everyone is finding something to give. There are many, many volunteers manning shelters. I work for a casino here, and though we just got re-opened yesterday, today we were able to donate food for 400 and $1,600 worth of necessities like blankets, shampoo, deodorant, toothpaste, diapers and so much more. We're the smallest one of the four in town and the bigger casinos are right there with us.
I've amassed several bags of clothes to donate at the convention center shelter. My next-door neighbors were running the one at their church, and they said the most-needed and least-donated items were socks and underwear, so tomorrow I'm going shopping for a variety of sizes of those for men, women and children.
Anyway, my family is just fine, thank you so very much. Please keep those prayers rolling for those less fortunate. Many thanks,
When I asked permission to post, she sent along this information, too:
Feel free to post. I'd love for more people to know the response wasn't nearly as FUBAR as the media and politicos are leading people to believe.
Aside from that, it really is as bad as it looks. Here's a link to some pictures from a local tv station in Mobile, AL. We didn't ever live down there but we took many trips down to the coast. It's so sad to recognise the rubble of places where we've had such great times.
On that first page is a picture of the ravaged Treasure Bay casino, which my daughter loved to look at. It now looks like the pirate ship from that movie "The Goonies". Here's a 'before' picture.
The Beau Rivage casino was gorgeous. We went to a Chicago concert there last year. The picture of its front side on that first page makes it look like it's relatively undamaged. The back side looks like the Murrah building from the Oklahoma City bombing.
Second to last on that page is the President casino. We never went in there, but I loved to watch the boats in the marina it sat in. We've stayed at the Holiday Inn it's parked on now.
There's no picture of it on that site, but the elegant and historic Sanger Theatre on Canal street is under at least ten feet of water. We took my daughter to see David Copperfield for her birthday a couple of years ago.
::sigh:: I'll shut up now. :)
Thanks so much for your good thoughts. Keep praying for those less fortunate than I, they're going to need it for a long while to come.
It's nice to know that not everything is as bad as it seems on the news. I know it's bad, but people are working. They are doing a damn fine job, and it's disservice to say that everyone involved isn't doing their best.
