Red Cross launching largest relief operation in history for Katrina victims |
CNN has been having round the clock coverage on Hurricane Katrina (aside: why do some hurricanes have female names and others male?). The death toll is as much as 80 people now. I sure hope if any readers are down there that they have long since moved to higher ground and are OK. I hope everybody is OK but it sounds like that’s not the case for many people who are displaced from their homes and/or families. 
The American Red Cross’ relief operation would be the largest in its history, the organization’s president, Marty Evans, said on CNN’s “Paula Zahn Now” — larger than for all four of last year’s Florida hurricanes combined. More than 75,000 people were being housed in nearly 240 shelters across the region, and “we expect that to grow” as people who can’t return home seek somewhere to stay, Evans said.
Some of the pictures and video of the devastation are downright haunting. Mayor AJ Hooloway of Biloxi is calling it “our tsunami.”
MTV: “Insurance officials began making estimates on the damage from Katrina, which could range anywhere from $9 to $20 billion, making it one of the most devastating storms on record behind 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, which had $21 billion in insured losses.”
Katrina left 6 feet of water in the streets, and when Miller looked up near nightfall, he realized that some of his neighbors were still stranded on their roofs. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” Miller said, shaken. “And I hope to never see it again. The people who were on the roof, it was just terrible. It’s terrible. They can’t get anything to them. None of us knows what’s going to happen to them.”
Let’s keep these folks in our prayers and thoughts.
Update 6:21pm PST: Martial Law has been declared in (parts of — New Orleans) the state of Louisiana according to CNN due to widespread looting, shootings and carjacking. This is the first time since WWII that martial law has been declared.
Did this post make you go hmm?
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http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/general/lib/reason.html
Short note:
In 1953, the United States abandoned as confusing a two-year old plan to name storms by a phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie) when a new, international phonetic alphabet was introduced. That year, this Nation’s weather services began using female names for storms.
The practice of naming hurricanes solely after women came to an end in 1978 when men’s and women’s names were included in the Eastern North Pacific storm lists. In 1979, male and female names were included in lists for the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.
Comment by Jehtris — August 30, 2005 @ 3:29 pm PST
Interesting info, Jehtris, thanks for stopping by and filling me in
Comment by TDavid — August 30, 2005 @ 4:31 pm PST