Just for a random heads up, a friend of mine just checked in briefly from coral springs. It seems the area looks pretty bad over there. her description of her neighborhoods was 'it looks like a bomb went off.' I don't know if she was in the hardest hit area, but the word they heard was 4 weeks to get back power. She also said the cooler weather was a wonderful blessing, because it's keeping them from roasting at least. She's also not sure how long it will take for businesses to reopen simply because so many of them have taken storm damage and are under curfew as well. She was only able to check in briefly, as she was on a cell phone and trying to conserve the phone for emergencies.

<minor rant>
I really wish the news media would stop with the 'ooh, look the first reports in are of minor damage', and realize that the hardest hit areas will take days to check in. You would have thought they would have learned a hard lesson from Katrina, but I suppose not.
</minor rant>

Anyway, the good news is she's safe and in one piece, but it's still a very rough situation over there, certainly not a Katrina class event, but it's also not something that can be trivalized or ignored.

Anyway, hopefully other people are safe and sound. And if there is anything we can do to help, with whatever deep pockets we have, lets do it.

-Mark