Kalika- Is the hurricane effecting you?

seriously though, its soooo nice to have power back, I was getting all greasy and smelt like cheese.

and yes, hotels around here have jacked there prices up a ton, there are a lot of churches and the LSU campus that have opened up as shelters, and I almost got in a fistfight with a woman over some bagged ice at albertsons.

she started it.

I like your version better.  Im all amazon woman in it.  grrr.  fear my extensioned wrath!

Woosh. I was just coming on to do some serious hunting as to where your new home is. I JUST saw the actual footage of the hurricane aftermath this afternoon. Apocalyptic  I was worried about you! I'm in Florida, it seems like there's a hurricane here every other week. I tend to forget how much devastation they can actually do when they hit directly. I'm so glad you're okay.

Oh, and I sympathize about the no power. My district lost ours for a while last year. I was only out for a couple of days but it was hellish in the heat and humidity. My neighbours were down for 8 days.

Kalika, you go girl!!!

Glad you're ok, and have power back.  We have had alot of evacuees here in town, and minus the price gougers, the city has really pulled together to help everyone who has been missplaced.  A little girl in my daughters' 1st grade class, has asked everyone who can donate to donate, and the class who raises the most money will get an icecream party.  It is so amazing to see people pull togther in times like these!!

If you need any more chainsaw help, just let me know, I will hop in my "mom" van, grab my hubby's chainsaw and help you out!!!

Kalika, love the Avatar!!

Is that really how you feel???

This is such a terrible dissaster!

Kalika, im so glad you are okay.  Hows things at the moment?  Also, off topic, where did you get your aviator?

Best wishes,

xx

SOOOO Glad you are OK hun

ijust found this online

-- Breaking news from New Orleans

Search-and-rescue efforts in New Orleans are being abandoned as the devastated city plunges into violence and anarchy.

With thousands feared dead in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the city's remaining residents told to evacuate, Mayor Ray Nagin has ordered virtually the entire police force to concentrate on catching armed mobs roaming the area.

The evacuation of 25,000 refugees from the Superdome was suspended after shots were fired at a military helicopter.

"We have suspended operations until they gain control of the Superdome,'' said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the stadium.

He said that the military had decided not to fly out of the Superdome either and that the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control.

"That's not enough,'' Mr Zeuschlag. "We need a thousand.''


He also said that during the night, when a medical evacuation helicopter tried to land at a hospital in the outlying town of Kenner, the pilot reported that 100 people were on the landing pad, some of them wielding guns, and decided to abort the mission.

About 10,000 National Guard troops in armoured cars were ordered to shore up security, rescue and relief operations along the hurricane-battered Gulf of Mexico coast.

"The truth is, a terrible tragedy like this brings out the best in most people, brings out the worst in some people,'' said Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour on NBC's Today programme.

Dozens of car-jackings were reported, including a nursing home bus and a truck carrying medical supplies for a hospital. Police officers said they had been shot at.








A man in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, is reported to have shot his sister dead in a row over a bag of ice.

Mr Nagin said New Orleans would not be functional for two or three months and that people would not be allowed back into their homes for at least a month.

Asked how many people died in the hurricane, Mr Nagin said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands.'' The death toll has already reached at least 110 in Mississippi.

Conditions in the Superdome were described as "horrendous". There was no air conditioning and the toilets were blocked.

The smell was so bad that medical workers wore masks as they walked around.

Around the city, looters used rubbish bins and inflatable mattresses to float away with food, clothes, TV sets and guns.

Outside one pharmacy, thieves commandeered a forklift and used it to push up the storm shutters and break through the glass.

The driver of a nursing home bus surrendered the vehicle to thugs after being threatened.

The federal government dispatched helicopters, warships and elite Navy Seal water-rescue teams in one of the biggest relief operations in US history, aimed at plucking residents from rooftops in the last of the "golden 72 hours'' rescuers say is crucial to saving lives.

As fires burned from broken natural gas mains, the skies above the city buzzed with National Guard and Coast Guard helicopters frantically dropping baskets on to roofs where victims had been stranded since the storm roared in with a 145mph fury on Monday.

Hundreds of people wandered up and down shattered Interstate 10 pushing shopping trolleys and laundry racks carrying their belongings.

On some of the few roads that were still open, people waved at passing cars with empty water jugs, begging for relief.

Most of the city's half a million population were evacuated before the hurricane struck but between 50,000 and 100,000 remained.

Mr Nagin said that 14,000 to 15,000 a day could be evacuated in convoys.

The floodwaters streamed into the city's streets from two levee breaks near Lake Pontchartrain a day after New Orleans thought it had escaped catastrophic damage from Katrina.

The floodwaters covered 80 per cent of the city, in some areas 20 feet deep, in a reddish-brown soup of sewage, petrol and rubbish.

Water levels between the city and Lake Pontchartrain have equalised and the Army Corps of Engineers planned to use helicopters to drop 15,000-pound bags of sand and stone into a large gap in the failed floodwall.

But the agency said it was having trouble getting the sandbags and to the site because the city's waterways were blocked with loose barges, boats and debris.

If the mayor's death-toll estimate holds true, it would make Katrina the worst natural disaster in the United States since at least the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire which killed more than 3,000.

Katrina would also be the nation's deadliest hurricane since 1900 when a storm in Galveston, Texas, killed between 6,000 and 12,000 people.

Gas in Europe is always more expensive for some reason.