Well sorry to butt in with real life, but I am bringing this up because it is directly relevant to us (sorta). SomethingAwful.com, a perennial favourite of mine (and millions of others) had their servers in New Orleans (or something) and got hit hard. While waiting for something to happen, the owner Lowtax set up an appeal for people to donate money that they could distribute directly (or something) and their 50 000 subscribers started donating. Because their servers were down, they opened a Paypal account for the donations. Now, as you may remember, we had an appeal here to keep Co8 going not long ago. I'd hate to think Paypal might do to Sol what they did to Lowtax at SA. Full story (so to speak) here: http://www.somethingawful.com/
Bastards are everywhere...don't let me get started on this. The whole situation is a royal snafu. Those ships should have been there 12-24 hours after the storm made land fall (...are they even there yet?); the troops & land based supplies even sooner. My opinion is that every bureaucrat involved (...and the vast majority of the politicians) needs to answer some questions about their actions in this thing. Leaving the initial response to a few Coast Guardsmen & the local rescue services was totally unacceptable. They all said "we had no idea it could be this bad", but it's in the history books. Everyone in authority just got complacent, and then they sat on their asses while people were suffering. Sure, the scale is unprecedented (something like the size of England affected), but they didn't even issue an evacuation order until Sunday...36 hours before it hit, when it was category 5. That just isn't enough time to get that many people away before landfall, especially when you consider that many of them would need help getting out. I knew there was going to be hell to pay when the storm had killed people at category 1. And before anyone fires back at me on this, I know whereof I speak. My big storm was a little fellow named Hugo...
Who do you folks who are there blame? Here in the rest of the world, people are focusing Bush, but then he's about the only American leader we know. If Sydney got wiped out, it would very much be a State issue to do something about it, and while the Federal government would of course swing into action, its the State government who run the Emergency Service and Police - Fire - Ambulance etc. My own private Paypal whinge - I did try to chip in $10 to keep Co8 going, but Paypal refused to accept my American Express card, becuase - get this - I didn't live in America. Put 'Australia' in the pull-down menu, and the Amex option disappeared, and that was that, I just had to sit back impotently and do nothing (goodonya to everyone who did contribute). Useless Paypal clowns.
The only Hurricane I've been involved in was back in '86 - Hurricane Gilbert, I'm a little hazy on the details - I was only 6 at the time, but I just remember the blackout, and seeing all the HUGE trees laying by the road side on my way to school the whole of the next week. My heart goes out to all affected in New Orleans. The American politicians, should be ashamed that the read the situation at hand so wrong.
Right now, there is only talk of who to blame. The President was the initial focus of the blame because he was so visibly detached. Flying over (on the way back to DC from an extended vacation) in air force one two days afterwards didn't cut it. He should have gone back to work when it obvious that it was a killer storm before the second land fall; it was cat 5 on Sunday, and he could have gotten the ball rolling then. And if it had petered out, then we all would have simply had a nice training drill for the time when it would be real. I think the Governors did all they could with what they had, and certainly the locals did too; not to mention the federal employees who were already there. But I blame those with the authority to make decisions and who failed to make them. The process for now is recue; then comes recovery, clean-up, and whatever rebuilding is decided upon. There will be jobs a plenty for those currently without work for several years...long, hot and dirty to be sure; and perhaps not of the kind one is used to. But life there is changed now and forever. BTW, FEMA has authority in such situations; all assets will come under their direction, but hands-on control is maintained by the state & local personnel.
