I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight. Hurricane Katrina is bearing down on New Orleans, the town where the diveblogger grew up. Thankfully, my parents, sister and her kids are safely in Shreveport. However, my brother-in-law and countless friends are required to ride the storm out due to their professions (hotel management, police and healthcare). I sit here wondering...will the home I grew up in exist tomorrow?
I was down there last weekend and took a day to go fishing out of Venice and snapped this picture:
Where will those boats be tomorrow?
As usual, Instapundit has a good roundup of links. Brendan Loy has some criticism of Mayor Nagin's delay (until this morning) to declare the mandatory evacuation. Sorry. I don't agree. Who the hell waits until the "mandatory" evacuation order to decide to get the hell out of New Orleans with a hurricane rolling in? It doesn't take a direct hit to put that city under 5-10 feet of water. It will always be "too late" because mandatory evacuation orders are made at points of no return. People were fully informed, according to my parents. The problem is that many people wait for nearly 100% certainty that the hurricane will hit before evacuating. That's too late! You'll have to live with a few "false alarms".
My family hit the road at 3am this morning. And went north. Most of the traffic issues were westbound on I-10, not north on I-55 or I-59 or east on I-10. Hell the Weather channel guys crossed the Causeway bridge late this afternoon and there was almost no one on the span. The family went to Shreveport via Jackson, Mississippi (not the most direct route, but with the least traffic risk). My dad makes a hotel reservation whenever a hurricane even marginally threatens New Orleans (many hotels have 24-hour cancellation policies). They got caught in the traffic nightmare for Ivan (how's 14 hours to Houston grab you?!) and weren't about to deal with that again, hence the 3am departure.
Sooo....where's the coffee?
