How we can help the people affected by Katrina.
Plus more than a few other things.

How to help.

Aside from the Red Cross there are several other agencies providing help; the Salvation Army, Second Harvest ; , NOLA.com has a list, in addition to being up to date on news, as do many other news sites. Just be careful and donate to an organization you know. Another agency I like is the Humane Society Disaster fund. Kids and animals depend on their guardians to care for them; but when a disaster like this happens, human life always takes precedence. It makes me feel better to know that the Humane Society, and organizations like Noah's Wish are helping the animals left behind.

The more than a few other things.

I have heard several comments that the people now stranded in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast are at fault for being there after a mandetory evacuation. They don't realize many of the people who stayed behind had no way to get out. No car - no money for hotel if they did leave - no friends with room on their cars. Others too ill to move. I didn't see busses lined up to take those with no transportation to safety. It's true - some were stubborn and decided to stay and ride it out. It's also true that any disaster preparedness material says you need to bring your own supplies to a shelter. It's also true that people reported the water rose so fast in some areas they didn't even have time to put on their shoes. The reasons people stayed don't really matter; they need help now. Playing the finger pointing game doesn't help the thousands of people who are dead, and more importantly the ones who survived but are dying now because of lack of food and water, and medicine.

I don't care about looters. I make a distinction between thieves and those people who broke into stores for food, water, diapers, medicine, cigarettes (as a former smoker, I have utter sympathy) even shoes and clothes . Thieves are another matter. What are they going to do with a plasma TV, anyway? Stealing drugs I can even understand, but those idiots shooting at the rescuers? I don't care how desperate anyone is, killing rescuers is not going to help. If there really are snipers and the gangs of armed criminals killing, raping, robbing (who knows if that's true, or a media escalation) they should be delt with accordingly.

I feel the federal response has been appalling. I can cut them a little slack - it takes time to get everyone mobilized, get the rigs on the road.

But, food and water drops should have begun right away. There should have been at least a few FEMA and National Guard units ready to go BEFORE landfall. The storm did impact most of the roads around the stricken areas, but surely there was something they could have done on Tuesday, after the storm. "Help is coming" brochures, at the LEAST should have been printed up and dropped, with instructions for what to do, where to go, in my opinion. Hopefully the agencies involved will learn from these mistakes.

The editorial comment from someone, "I wonder how fast the response would have been if it was a middle-class predominately white city and it's suburbs hit by the hurricane. " made me wonder, too. New Orleans is 67% Black, 24 % White. There have been portrayals on the media that I find disturbing - the white looters "finding" food, and the black looters "looting" food. What is that about????????

All the politicians and their blah blah blah about "not knowing how series it was", and "several ongoing and unexpected disasters after the hurricane..." BS and covering their asses after the fact. All the back-patting makes me nauseated.

In the weeks and months I know the public will find out that the politicians in the City of New Orleans, State of Louisiana and Federal Government had information about the risk of levee failure long before Katrina was a name on the Hurricane list. I knew about them, and I am just a normal person - but two of my million interests, not usually combined, are severe weather, and New Orleans. But if I knew than a category 4 storm would weaken and probably cause levee failure and major flooding - how could they NOT know???

Watching all this unfold has made me realize I need to update my own disaster preparedness. Obviously if a catastrophe occurred we would be on our own for awhile. Time to get a new tent. Go out and buy a water barrel. Have at least a few weeks worth of food for us and the pets on hand. Forget three days, apparently it might take a week or longer. I wouldn't want to have to depend on the government for my care, and that of my loved ones. From what I've seen, that's not going to happen, in spite of all the money we give them.

My thoughts are with all the people who have been affected by this horrible disaster. I wish I could do more. I'm glad to see the National Guard has arrived, in both Mississippi and finally New Orleans, and I hope the people there get the help they so desperately need.