If You Can Handle It...

...this piece from the October '04 issue of National Geographic offered an extensive and poignantly before-the-fact profile of the extreme risks to the wider New Orleans/delta region and, indeed, the whole country in the event of a Category 3 storm. Keeping in mind that Katrina was a Category 4 by the time it hit the Delta, and a Category 5 only hours beforehand, read the article and bear in mind that the scenarios and ramifications it describes, heart-sinking as they are, may actually not be as bad as what the region will have to face.

As so often, my source for this article is the terrific and mad-as-hell blog Brilliant at Breakfast, which is indispensably story-rich and wide-angled all the time, but it really shines in times of crisis like the one we're heading into now. (Check, too, the updates on French, Canadian, and German programs to assist the decimated Gulf region.)

Anecdote of things to come: a friend of mine walked into a grocery store yesterday in upstate New York, noting that gas at the station outside was selling at $2.85/gallon. He walked out 30 minutes later with his groceries, and gas had already risen at the same station to $2.99. Looks like I might be having some more company on the sidewalks and crosswalks for a while.

Again, my heart and my money are going out to everyone in the Gulf region. Meanwhile, lest we forget, almost 1,000 people died in that false-alarm stampede in Iraq at the beginning of the week, and as heavy as all of our hearts are, I hope we're all finding room for everyone who needs it.