Walkin on Sunshine.....not

Ok there is my 80's band Katrina and the Waves reference, cause it's been flyin around the newsroom for days.
It was quite harrowing in the metro area yesterday.. Tornados touched down all over the place. One of the women who works for Butter's dad had her home destroyed.. the back of it ripped right off.. The weather here was insane, I can only imagine what it was like right in the path of the storm.
This is our Tsunami
said the mayor of Biloxi.. and he may be right.. though I don't see any other countries coming to our aid...
Levees have failed, water continues to pour into the french quarter, and officials don't know why.
The pictures of the devastation are just incredible..
In one area, a CNN reported stated that they could hear people screaming for help last night, but they couldn't get to them to help them. Search and rescue efforts continue today as daylight broke. Horrific stories of bodies floating.. pets wrapped in live electrical wires, being electrocuted.. the smell of death....
The area hardest hit near new orleans is an area of extreme poverty.. many people couldn't leave their homes, as they did not have the means to do so. Many of those people are now dead. Many are being rescued today. My questions are many.. Why didn't state officials get buses together and get those people out of there? Many of the people said they didn't have any money for hotel rooms, and the ones who had cars didn't have money to purchase gas to get out of town. This seems to be a huge issue of bad planning on the part of state officials. Especially with the cost of gas what it is right now, they should have made sure that those people at least had some ability to leave. Because now, rescuers are putting their lives in danger going in to get them, and those resources could be used somewhere else.
The entire situation is just sad. New Orleans officials have declared martial law.. there are no civil rights in NO at the moment.. People are looting.. people are scared. They have no power, the waters are rising, and they have no place to go.
There will likely be no power for weeks, who knows when the water will receed.. and when it does, what or who will they find underneath. Mosquitoes breeding and spreading disease is a very real possibilty..
I hope that Officials get their act together soon.. this has the potential to be really nasty.. well beyond the actual storm..

please visit The Red Cross
to help, by volunteering or sending in a donation.

My thoughts and prayers are with those people in the affected areas.. God Bless...