I was never able to get anywhere with more media coverage for non-NOLA areas, in spite of putting all my energy into it the last couple weeks.
Things still pretty bad for my family in MS. Heard word back that between 30 and 40 of the Sheriff's Dept in Jackson County without homes. Hardly any of the city was in a "flood plain" so no one has insurance to rebuild. Inexplicably, FEMA told my brother's wife they wouldn't cover anything to their house, which was flooded with about 5 feet of water. Haven't been able to get to talk to my brother directly for a week, so I don't know any more than that. Last time I talked with him, he had been sick for two days with what sounded like dysentery of typhoid; I asked him to go to the doctor at the jail and they immediately gave him strong antibiotics and took him off his (double) shift. He then had some days off after that, finally, but I believe he's going back on duty tonight.
No trailers there from FEMA for the 90% of the folks in Pascagoula who have no homes to go to. They can't open the schools because of all the people living there that have no place to go. Similar story all along the MS Gulf Coast.
Haven't heard much about the horrible situation in Slidell/St Tammany Parish, St Bernard, or Plaquemines Parishes. Since MS has a better handle on hurricane relief than LA I can only speculate the situation there is more dire.
Even having some problems with my local friends; one told me today that everyone there should just "get over it" and move forward, which pretty much exemplifies the lack of compassion I have been seeing across the board.
I am trying to figure out a way to move forward from this myself, emotionally. I think I'm going to put together a blog with community info on all the affected coastal communities, and try to get the word out for "sister city" adoption, and try to help in that way. The Clinton Foundation, finally, was not interested in putting the community information on their website at this time; they are understaffed and spending all their time dealing with taking in the donations (they've taken in something on the order of 10 million but I have no idea what they plan on doing with it).
I did get an apology from CNN on the air for not having more non-NOLA coverage, and also additional articles on USA Today, which hardly seems like any results, but I guess I'll have to be satisfied with that. At least there were articles on cities like Bayou La Batre, Waveland, Slidell, and D'Iberville. Also some things have been coming from AP writers and picked up, more recently.
There are some ugly party politics going on in MS but I won't go into it. Anyone who's been following MS will know what things I'm referring to.
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Katrina's Surge: http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/Katrinas_surge_contents.asp
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