Video

It isn't online yet, but video locally shows a lot of fallen trees--where I'm at (near LSU's northeast side) things are ok for the most part, but just off campus on the west side there's some local flooding--the west side sits on lower, and softer ground.

Again, we were lucky here. New Orleans--and the NOLA burbs--well, about the only good news is that the city wasn't completely obliterated. But there's serious flooding and damage. Read that a couple of shelters in St. Bernard Parish (east of the city) suffered serious damage--one lost its roof. The Superdome had a couple of pieces of roof fly away. The Quarter is still there, but at least a few buildings were smacked hard. A lot of taller buildings like hotels lost windows. In a nutshell, the footage makes it look like the city got beaten up badly.

The mayor of Kenner (and I'll skip the usual sarcastic jokes about Kenner/Metarie and the NOLA burbs) says every house suffered serious damage. Every house. Other footage that's been released shows people in or around the city in chest deep water--and I read a few reports about folks stranded on their rooftops--the highest place they could get.

A levee broke on the Industrial Canal--ouch. A few reports are saying it might be two weeks to a month before some folks can get back to their homes.

Other reports have been of bodies floating in floodwaters--hopefully that's a bit exaggerated, or, if it isn't, that maybe it's a matter of graves being breached (in the city, people are buried above ground in crypts).

Basically, while there's still more or less a city an hour south of here, the damage is EXTENSIVE throughout roughly a six or seven parish area--Orleans, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Tammany, and Terrebone--I expect that Lafourche and Washington Parishes also got hit hard.

Baton Rouge's mayor is making an appeal for donations to the Red Cross.

Here are a few websites to catch some local updates: the BR newspaper, a local televison station, & da paper online.

If I see anything new, I'll pass it along.