Jesus...

My God.

Its not just New Orleans, its Biloxi, Gulfport, Long Beach and the Alabama Coast.

Theres huge sections of southern Mississippi that are still simply unacessible. Its day 4, we now face the very real spectre of a cholera outbreak, the numbers of people living without sanitation makes this a very real threat. Having your possessions destroyed is one nightmware, watching your family die of cholera, thats a whole nuther thing altogether.

We are in a race against time here.

The human toll is just is staggeringly unbelievable. We all "wargamed" what a nuclear war would do to surviving civilian populations, and this is as near to anything like that as weve ever seen.

One of the things that people arent taking into consideration is that the reason why the police and local agencies have been so disorganized is that they too were destroyed in the disaster. These guys are trying to work, knowing that their homes are destroyed and theie families are spread out all over the south. Its hell to be a cop, but when your house just floated by and you dont know where your family is and the bad guys are carrying Ak-47s and breaking into hospitals, well, theres not enough overtime pay in the world to get your over that.

New Orleans isnt just a tourist trap, is a working port and so is Biloxi and gulfport. But those ports no longer have any working facilities, much less people to man their positions. The barge traffic coming down from the north has nowhere to unload, the ships coming into those ports are being diverted to other ports, but those ports are also impacted. Thats not just convience, thats jobs - thats commerce and the lack of it will effect us all.

On 9/12, manhattan went back to work and with the exception of the neighborhoods around the WTC, people were not displaced. Katrina has placed about a million people in refugee status. The reason there is not a high death tool isnt that people didnt die; they did die and they died in large numbers. The reason we havent heard anything is that the local authorities are still trying to come up to speed with the problem, which is difficult when they too have been destroyed. They cant even deal with the dead yet, thats how far down the "hierarchy of needs" they are.

Weve become somewhat jaded with 24 hour coverage of every hurricane that comes down the gulf, but this isnt a little high water for foolish people living on barrier islands. Weve lost an entire city, actually we didnt just lose one city, weve lost 4, and the impact to the rest of the country is going to be bigger than most people realize. People should stop whining about how much they are going to pay for gas, there are a million people trying to figure out where their loved ones are and where they are going to live and that is going to have a bigger impact to all of us than the price of a gallon of gas.

I just cant get my head around the horror of all this.

Digital Globe also has quickbird images of New Orleans from yesterday on their site. These satellite images will be invaluable to the rescue effort.

Along those same lines ESRI, the company that created ArcGIS mapping software, is looking for GIS experts to volunteer their time creating maps and other products to aid in the recovery efforts. The best part about this is that you can volunteer your GIS (Geographic Information System) services from wherever you live via the interweb.

More here.

Agree earlier posts. This is as bad as a Nuclear attack.

Bush must begin to act decisively and get ahead of the powercurve here. -Spin

A little instant photo analysis, for those who don't know the city.

The visible flooding ends about three blocks south of I-10, call it Carrolton Avenue or so. From there to the river, Uptown appears to be dry. That includes all of St. Charles Avenue from just west of Poydras all the way to Riverbend. The Garden District, Tulane and Loyola Universities all appear to have escaped the flooding.

Unfortunately, the homes along St. Charles are reportedly being gutted by looters. Gutted. We can reasonably assume that the Garden District is suffering a similar fate. Perhaps Loyola and Tulane have retained enough security to protect their campuses; right now we don't know.

More unfortunately, as you can see, north of I-10, the city is a lake. I can't even imagine the horror that half of the city is undergoing right now.

The Central Business District appears to be dry from just south of the Superdome. As far as the French Quarter is concerned, it looks like the water stops about halfway down Canal Street. From roughly Bourbon Street to the river, it looks dry--but the looting is probably even worse here due to the concentration of shops and storefronts.

Will - the satellite pictures show the port appears to be in good shape, which is counter what I have heard in other places. I assume that road and rail up to the port are gone,but this shot seems toshow the ships are at their moorings and the piers are standing, is that what it looks like to you?

Frank, yes, but I can't make out the actual conditions of the docks. If they're anything like similar facilities in Mobile and Biloxi, the loader/offloader cranes are smashed and the pumping stations are also "down."

It's hard to tell. From this scale, all you can get is (literally) the big picture. There could well be much more destruction up close.