The Gulf Coast has just witnessed what's being called the "the largest evacuation in US history", but let's hear from those hardy souls who stuck around NOLA to ride it out, shall we? Hey, where else are you gonna see National Guardsmen (charged with the task of enforcing curfew) put down their rifles and take the stage at a local bar for a little blues jam? And be sure to watch the video that accompanies the article: immensely entertaining!
posted on Sep 3, 2008 - View this thread

More worries in New Orleans, this time from the Police Department. Within three weeks, Police Superintendent Warren Riley (as seen on the left) has suspended three NOPD officers in separate incidents: one for leading Crescent City Connection police on a high speed chase which ended in one pursuit officer grazed by the fleeing car and another slapped (video). One involved an off-duty officer brandishing a gun at a children's camp and shouting expletives, apparently even backed up by responding officers, according to witness accounts. Another was suspended for wearing the wrong colored shirt on the day he retired, a punishment Riley sees as appropriate as a "consequence of his actions".
posted on Jul 17, 2008 - View this thread

Killings Bring New Orleans to its Bloodied Knees In the sixth New Orleans murder in less than 24 hours, Helen Hill was killed and her husband (who co-founded a sliding-scale doctors' office to serve the impoverished community) was shot in their home Thursday about 5:30 a.m., said police, who found the bleeding man kneeling at the door of the couple's Faubourg Marigny home, clutching their 2-year-old son.
posted on Jan 5, 2007 - View this thread

When the levees broke, he looked for was his camera and a boat. This Times-Picayune photographer tells his story of what happened next.
posted on Dec 13, 2005 - View this thread

Convoy on the go. Most of you probably already know this, but a massive convoy of food in and people out of downtown New Orleans is underway. On CNN they have video from helicopters, showing lines of hundreds of busses. This is a huge relief.
posted on Sep 2, 2005 - View this thread

Horror writer Poppy Z Brite is a NOLA resident affected by Katrina. Here's some journal entries.
posted on Sep 1, 2005 - View this thread

Hurricane Risk for New Orleans: "if that Category Five Hurricane comes to New Orleans, 50,000 people could lose their lives. Now that is significantly larger than any estimates that we would have of individuals who might lose their lives from a terrorist attack. When you start to do that kind of calculus - and it's horrendous that you have to do that kind of calculus - it appears to those of us in emergency management, that the risk is much more real and much more significant, when you talk about hurricanes. I don't know that anybody, though, psychologically, has come to grip with that: that the French Quarter of New Orleans could be gone." (Nb. this excerpt from a fascinating 2002 American RadioWorks documentary does not refer specifically to Ivan.)
posted on Sep 14, 2004 - View this thread