Things in New Orleans are getting worse. You can help.

Helping out is a good thing to do.

Here’s the Katrina Help Wiki.

Here’s Instapundit’s roundup.

And here’s NZ Bear’s list of charities and blogs trying to help out.

The living haven’t all been rescued yet and the dead are uncollected.

We’re reminded that on some level, we live on nature’s sufferance and our own ingenuity.

I’ll suggest that you read John McPhee’s “The Control of Nature.”

I wrote about this a while ago, and soon I’ll talk more about the issue of infrastructure.

12 thoughts on “Things in New Orleans are getting worse. You can help.”

  1. Perhaps this is well known now (although probably not to those who restrict their information sources to the likes of Instapundit or LGF or the MSM) but you ProWar people need to come to grips with the consequences of how you’ve chosen to spend US taxpayer money:


    For the first time in 37 years, federal budget cuts have all but stopped major work on the New Orleans area’s east bank hurricane levees, a complex network of concrete walls, metal gates and giant earthen berms that won’t be finished for at least another decade.

    “I guess people look around and think there’s a complete system in place, that we’re just out here trying to put icing on the cake,” said Mervin Morehiser, who manages the “Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity” levee project for the Army Corps of Engineers. “And we aren’t saying that the sky is falling, but people should know that this is a work in progress, and there’s more important work yet to do before there is a complete system in place.”

    “I can’t tell you exactly what that could mean this hurricane season if we get a major storm,” Naomi said. “It would depend on the path and speed of the storm, the angle that it hits us.

    “But I can tell you that we would be better off if the levees were raised, . . . and I think it’s important and only fair that those people who live behind the levee know the status of these projects.”

    The Bush administration’s proposed fiscal 2005 budget includes only $3.9 million for the east bank hurricane project. Congress likely will increase that amount, although last year it bumped up the administration’s $3 million proposal only to $5.5 million.

    “I needed $11 million this year, and I got $5.5 million,” Naomi said. “I need $22.5 million next year to do everything that needs doing, and the first $4.5 million of that will go to pay four contractors who couldn’t get paid this year.”

  2. Thank you for posting this. I lived in New Orleans while attending Tulane (taking a few classes from an environmental professor featured in _The Control of Nature_). This is very heartbreaking. I’m breaking a temporary hiatus from the news and blogs to get some ideas for donations and hope that when I return to the outside world in about a week or so there might be some hopeful news.

    McPhee’s book is good. I would also recommend John M. Barry’s _Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America._ But what I would really recommend right now is John Kennedy Toole’s _A Confederacy of Dunces_ or Walker Percy’s _The Moviegoer_ or any of these:

    1. Louis Armstrong, The Hot Fives & Sevens
    2. Professor Longhair, Fess: An Anthology
    3. Mahalia Jackson, Live at Newport
    4. Champion Jack Dupree, Blues from the Gutter
    5. Lee Dorsey, Yes We Can
    6. The Meters: Funkify Your Life
    7. Dr. John, Gumbo
    8. The Wild Tchoupitoulas, The Wild Tchoupitoulas
    9. Rockin’ Dopsie and the Zydeco Twisters, Louisiana Music
    10. Dirty Dozen Brass Band: Funeral for a Friend

  3. Otherside, There may or may not have been governmental failures that contributed to this disaster. If there truly were any, then they’ve been decades in the making. The Iraq war has nothing to do with it. WRT to being a Bush supporter, I’m a registered Democrat but you’re still logically challenged.

  4. From the other side: You are attempting to hijack a thread about how people can help. What are your plans to help your fellow citizens? Pointing your finger is a crappy gesture to people who are in need of a hand up. You may not like the administration but that is no reason to flip off your fellow citizens.

    Sorry for feeding the troll but I am just heartsick over this kind of stuff.

  5. Nice to know that there are those who will still take an opportunity to turn the worst disaster in US history into a political club to beat Bush with before the bodies are even recovered. Classy.

    Health professionals, if you wish to be a volunteer, please call your local Red Cross chapter. Currently only previously trained disaster volunteers are being sent to the area, but this is likely a disaster that will need trained people for relief of the first wave of people that go down, as it looks more and more likely that thousands of people will be without access to proper health care for a period of months—-minimum. To learn how to become a disaster volunteer, you need to take one or two 2 hour courses at your local red cross chapter, so please call your local chapter for information.

  6. If you can get to Dallas Reunion Arena, there are requests for diapers and diaper rash creams, tooth paste, tooth brushes, Diaper wipes, handwipes, clothes and the like, if you can just drive by and give them to volunteers.

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