We now have aerial photos of Clermont Harbor, home to Robyn’s grandparents. The house is gone, but the railroad embankment to the north seems to have kept the debris contained. The deforestation and the annihilation of mostly cinderblock houses leaves me somewhat speechless.

Before

Google Maps

After

NOAA NOS Data Explorer

Eerily there is less visible damage closer to the beach (not pictured here) because all that remains are the concrete pads of the houses.

It will be months before we get back here to sift through the rubble.

It may sound crass with so much human misery around, but I ask for very human reasons. What is happening at the Aquarium of the Americas? Has it been breached? It is right at Canal St. and the river. There are some creatures in there that you very definitely do not want swimming through the flooded streets of New Orleans. I haven’t heard a word about it.

UPDATE: GC writes in with this story on the aquarium. It survived the hurricane proper, but there appears to be “some question” about its state right now. High water, fire, lawlessness, pestilence … we really don’t need unfed sharks in this equation.

A colleague of mine in China has not heard from her brother-in-law in New Orleans since Monday morning. If anyone has any information on his whereabouts please contact me.

Name: WeiQun Wang
Date of Birth: 06/13/1968
Last contact time: 08/29 9:30AM
Location: Chemistry lab of Chemistry Department at University of New Orleans

I’m posting this information mostly just to get it indexed and Googleable.

UPDATE: WeiQun has been located and is safe in New Orleans. Phew!

Jeff Greer provides a dispatch from the front lines of the medical response to the hurricane.

My parents live in Baton Rouge and were thankfully spared from the brunt of the storm. Most of Baton Rouge has power, but parts of the city are still without and many schools are closed. Phone lines and cellular systems remain congested and it has been difficult to get through.

At this point, BR has become the point of refuge. My father runs a medical clinic there and my mother is a nurse – they are now very much involved in relief efforts. As of last night a few hospitals were still operating in NO, but with the recent orders to evacuate NO things will most likely be changing. BR clinics and hospitals were planning to see as many patients as they could today and LSU has cancelled classes to help accommodate the influx of people who are able to make it there on their own or who have been evacuated from NO. As has been reported, things are incredibly chaotic and without access to working phones, organized communications are nearly impossible.

All facets of infrastructure are at (or have exceeded) their breaking points and I encourage all to donate to charity and/or other support organizations.

For additional information:
Baton Rouge Advocate
NO Times-Picayune

I’ve had a few moments of emotional perspective-shifting lately.

The first was Sunday as I stood in the throng of wetsuited, goggled 30-34 year-old men ready to begin the triathlon. As normal, adrenalin and fear were duking it out. My training was frequent but not for long durations and so I was more than normally worried about the race. As I stood there flirting with panic I heard a call from the back of the pack to make way. The physically-challenged athletes were set to go off in the wave before mine and they were making their way to the Swim In, as it is called. Amputees hopping, blind athletes being led, the “Paralympic hopefuls” lined up to begin. In a move that I can only applaud, the race organizers actually put the physically-challenged racers with the elite racers (not quite pro, but way better than the rest of us). Because, let’s face it, finishing a triathlon blind is fucking elite. Perspective shifted, I jumped in the lake invigorated.

Then today. As I noted in the previous post, my wife’s grandparents have most likely lost their house in coastal Mississippi. We were worried that they did not understand the severity of the storm. That is, until my wife’s grandfather, whose son died tragically in 1990, said this: “I lost my son and he cannot be replaced. Everything in Mississippi can be replaced.” OK, then. Family matters, stuff doesn’t. Move on.

Lastly, the whole “this is our tsunami” business. Katrina is a bitch, there is no doubt. My family is scattered throughout the south and their property is in various states of destroyed. But, people, it is not appropriate to compare this to the tsunami in southeast Asia. Tens of thousands of people died there. Let’s keep things in perspective. Tragedy is tragedy. Superlative comparison not needed. (Are you listening network TV?)

My wife’s grandparents live in coastal Mississippi in a tiny town called Clermont Harbor. The eye of Hurricane Camille made landfall there in 1969 and didn’t leave much standing. Our grandparents successfully evacuated in advance of Katrina, but we’re worried for them. They are getting older and, having grown accustomed to evacuations from New Orleans and Mississippi, we fear that they don’t understand the severity of this latest storm. There are no reports from Clermont Harbor right now, but nearby Bay St. Louis is in tatters. The house we care about and which contains so many of my wife’s childhood memories is only a block from the water. Even if the house is still standing, the long-term disruption of our grandparents’ daily routine — such a sustaining force for them — is what will hurt the most.

We feel so helpless up here in Chicago.