Things are really bad in New Orleans...

I'll update this post with more information as it comes in, but sadly, I thought it important to report right away that things are apparently much worse in New Orleans than you may have been led to believe from preliminary reports.

I had wondered why none of the death toll figures seemed to have any numbers from New Orleans, and I assumed at first that it was because Mississippi was so much harder hit. Tragically for New Orleans, the initial hit was just the beginning of problems. Levies apparently continue to fail, and the water level has been going UP consistently since Monday, and still is. Apparently there are no death tolls for New Orleans because officials realize they need to get everyone out and abandon the city, so they're not stopping to count, or even recover bodies. Hundreds more people have been evacuated to the Superdome, which must now, itself, be evacuated, as the water continues to rise, and there is no air conditioning, no electricity and no toilets for the thousands of people now sheltering there.

There is also apparently an AP report out now saying that the Mayor of New Orleans has stated that hundreds - perhaps thousands - of people have been killed there. Death tolls are morbid things, and we all know how untrustworthy they can be in early days, but I'm afraid that, tragically, it appears that Katrina has probably killed many hundreds of people, and many more people are still in serious danger. These latest reports may end up being somewhat exaggerated (let's pray they are) but it now seems clear that the early reports didn't nearly do justice to the size of this disaster.

Update: Quotes from the Mayor of New Orleans from the Globe and Mail:

"We know there is a significant number of dead bodies in the water," and others dead in attics, Mr. Nagin said. Asked how many, he said: "Minimum, hundreds. Most likely, thousands."

Update 2: www.redcross.org There's never a bad time to give money to the Red Cross, but it's often only during events like these that we think of it. Things look pretty bad, so please consider giving. Someone effected by this or another disaster could depend on it.

Update 3: Just to give everyone an idea of just how vulnerable New Orleans was to a hurricane like this, it turns out FEMA had 3 major catostrophic disaster scenarios that they used as "worst case for the nation" type secnarios. A major earthquake in California. A major terrorist strike in New York. And a Category 5 hurricane hitting New Orleans. Now admittedly, Katrina landed as a category 4, but as one expert said, that's like the difference between getting run over by a 18-wheeler instead of a freight train. Neither is any good.

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