I’m still goofing off (which means I’m only minding the munchkins and not trying to work on the website too :-p ), and I can’t help but be riveted to The Weather Channel. One of the fiercest hurricanes ever recorded is blasting through New Orleans today. Here in Tampa Bay we watch these things go past us time and again, always knowing that it’s not a matter of if one will hit us, it’s a matter of when. The legendary (at least to us weather junkies) Jim Cantore has, as usual, been reporting from “ground zero,” which in this case is a concrete building sitting 27′ above sea level, and 1/2 mile north of the shore. He’s been telling us about the water filling the lowest level of the building, and the cars floating by - and how the surge of water came in in about 20 minutes. It’s the kind of thing you hear people say “I can’t imagine” about, but I think everybody who lives here can imagine. The clouds that are dumping rain onto Mississipi, Alabama, and Louisiana today have been pouring a little on us too, the winds that are tearing apart buildings and trees have knocked down a few branches here as well.
Last year, when folks were excaiming over the extraordinarily severe hurricane season, the weather dudes were quick to remind us that such severity was the average, that in fact we’ve just been going through a bit of a lull the past few decades. Add the effects of global warming to that, and I’m seriously concerned that the land my house sits on - about two miles from the ocean - will be waterfront property by the time I leave it to my kids. Or worse, underwater property. After all, waterfront property might actually be worth something if sold to one of the damn fools who apparantly think rebuilding their palatial homes every decade or so is a sort of status symbol. *eyeroll*
Hurricane Katrina will, I expect, claim a couple hundred lives when all is said and done between the floods, tornadoes, and falling trees. (six fatalities in Florida already, five due to falling trees - must be some kind of record) It’ll be listed as one of the most dangerous storms ever. What’s astonishing really, is how a storm that’s if anything fiercer than, say, the Indian super cylone of 1999, will take a few hundred souls here where the Indian storm killed 138,000 people.
Why? Well, we have better warning systems. But mostly, I think, it’s that a lot of folks over here have the means to get away. They’ve got cars, and money for hotel rooms (or relatives on higher ground). Some folks didn’t have the means to get away from this one either. Many of them are huddled inside the Louisiana Superdome while the wind tears pieces off the roof, the levees fail, and Lake Pontchartrian fills the basin the city sits in with water.
I wonder if someday my family will be one of those who haven’t the means to get away.