Katrina Update #61Katrina Update #61Imagine Louisiana with a population of 50 million people (over 10 times what it has today). New Orleans, the largest city, would have a metro area of 8 million instead of 2 million in its pre-Katrina days. The area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge would be mostly populated, especially along the Mississippi river. If you can imagine that, then you can imagine a little what England is like. The land area of England is about the same as Louisiana, and the entire UK has a land area only slightly larger than the state of Minnesota. (Keep in mind that Northen Ireland is part of the UK, but greater Ireland is its own country).
As I write this, Janis and I are nearing the end of our trip to England. We will watch the first half of Super Bowl XL, catch the half time show, and then head to bed as we need to be up at 7:30 in the morning in order to make it to Heathrow and get checked in for our Noon flight home.
People in England, as you might expect, are a bit more detached from the devastation in New Orleans, but they are not unaware of it. Like much of the United States, what they are unaware of is the extent of the damage, and the extent to which things are not returning to normal in most of the city. After only two days, I found it necessary to give them something to which they could relate. Fortunately, English history was all too obliging: The Great London Fire of 1666 destroyed 80% of London, including 13,200 homes. When I mentioned this to one person, and how 80% of New Orleans was flooded and remains uninhabitable, he immediately got it and said "I imagine that would be worse, because with fire, everything is gone. There is no question about rebuilding – you have to do it from scratch. But with a flood, you have the added burden of tearing down what the flood waters left." Quite true.
One other thing the London Fire did that was somewhat like what Katrina did in New Orleans is that it wiped out what was left of the Great Plague. In New Orleans, the plague was rampant crime and a murder rate that was on track to be #1 in the country. So far, that criminal element has not returned, and New Orleans remains a city with a crime rate far below the national average for even a city of its reduced size.
As in the United States, when people found out we were from New Orleans, there first question was invariably "how did your house make out?" When we tell them our son had four feet of water in his house for 10 days, they seem truly astonished.
You can see a blow-by-blow description of our trip to England, created in Apple's new iWeb program, at http://web.mac.com/thechuck/iWeb/. I have a PhotoCast of our trip that you can view at http://photocast.mac.com/thechuck/iPhoto/uk-trip/index.rss.
If you have iPhoto 6, this Photocast will appear in your iPhoto Source list and you can use its photos just like any other photos in your library; for slideshows, your desktop, custom photo books, etc. And, whenever you are connected to the Internet, iPhoto will automatically update this Photocast so you see the latest photos I've added.
(Requires Mac OS X version 10.4 or later)
If you don't have iPhoto 6, you can view the photos in this Photocast with Safari RSS or any compatible RSS reader on Mac, Windows or other computers by using the link above. Just click on the link or copy it into the URL field of your RSS reader and bookmark the URL to return to the photos in the future.
- A tornado ripped through the New Orleans area early Thursday morning, causing considerable damage to the airport in Kenner, including the gate and concourse from which we flew out:
- On Friday, a fire broke out in the Coliseum theatre in New Orleans, which was undergoing renovations after being damaged in Hurricane Katrina. It was most recently used as a production facility for TV, commercial, and film crews.
- This morning, several homes in the Marigny (near Adam's house) burned down. In both this fire, and the Coliseum fire, helicopters picked up water from the Mississippi river and dumped it on the fires to help extinguish them.
- Denzel Washington and Steven Segal of joined the ranks of celebrities who will be filming movies in New Orleans. Dan Ackeryod and Jim Belushi are slated to appear in at least one Mardi Gras parade.
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