Katrina, now just a tropical depression, is raining hard on us here in Madison. It seems like a normal rain, but just knowiing the literal hell on earth it has caused makes the rain seem worse than it is.
It amazes me that even though New Orleans was spared the worst case scenario, the scene is still horrific. With the levees now broken on Lake Pontchartrain
NO is in for a long haul that I doubt any hurricane pummelled community has had to survive. The mayor is saying some people may not be able to come home for weeks if not months. That said the coastal areas to the east are in no better shape.
I think what gives me the willies (for the lack of a better word) are city streets full of toxic waste, poisonous snakes and fire ants. Welcome to the industrial swamp.
Here’s a bizarre tidbit from the above Times-Piqayune of New Orleans. They’re doing a good job of covering the disaster.
About 5 p.m., almost as if on cue, the battery power of all the house alarms in the neighborhood seemed to reach a critical level, and they all went off, making it sound as if the area was under an air-raid warning. Two men surviving on generator power in the Lake Terrace neighborhood near the Lake Pontchartrain levee still had a dry house, but they were watching the rising water in the yard nervously. They were planning to head out to retrieve a vast stash of beer, champagne and hard liquor they found washed onto the levee. As night fell, the sirens of house alarms finally fell silent, and the air filled with a different, deafening and unfamiliar sound: the extraordinary din of thousands of croaking frogs.