For one, it gives me a headache. For two, it makes me consume mass quantities of chocolate and BBQ potato chips, putting all of the work I've done to get these thighs into shape in severe jeopardy.
Anyways, this is my sister's block. At the top, where it curves to the right and goes down to intersect with another road, that pile o' nothing to the right of the intersection was where she lived.
LATER UPDATE: Okay, this is her block. But Mom thinks the Refugee's house is the one right NEXT to the pile of nothing. Which would be far better because that house at least still looks like a house. As in, it has a roof and all. But you can't tell from above what the rest of the damage is, so we don't know if a wall is missing or something. We do know that the surge got to about four or five feet. So that means anything on the first floor is gone. But if the rest of the structural damage wasn't to bad, maybe stuff on the second floor is okay. Unless there's a wall missing or something. Because cell phone reception is nil, we're not going to hear back from them until they leave the area.
Mom: "Can you send me another picture, but from street level?"
Me: "Um, no."
Mom: "Why not? Just make another one."
Me: "I didn't make this. Somebody else did and told me where to go to download it."
Mom: "Ask them to make another one from the street."
Me: "Ma, this picture was taken in SPACE. I don't think they can take street level pictures from space."
Mom: "Did you ask?"
Me: *sigh*
Meanwhile, word is Hancock County is even worse than Harrison County. Harrison County is where Gulfport is located. Hancock is further up, where Bay St. Louis and Waveland are, and also some beautiful Cypress swamps. There aren't reports coming out of Hancock County because nobody has been able to get in there, and also what scant resources there are are primarily going into New Orleans, which is a nice big fat Fuck You to the people in the rural areas. Those poor people have been absolutely stranded for days - no buses or blackhawk helicopters or anything at all coming for them. From what I can tell, they're not even getting relief drops!!! The Sun Herald (Harrison) has been able to continue its news site, but the Sea Coast Echo (Hancock) has not. One of the television helicopters flew over yesterday, but you couldn't tell much from the clip save miles and miles of places blasted away.
So the USA Natural Disaster Lesson Here Is:
- Try to be in an urban center, because the disaster agencies and media outlets will first care about and act on behalf of the urban centers.
- Try to be middle class or above, with resources.
- If you can't be middle class or above, try to have some form of working transportation and an emergency stash of cash for gas.
- It would be helpful not to be a minority.
- If you lucked out and are not a minority, it would be helpful to not be poor and living in the sticks.
- However, none of the above applies if you live in SoCal, because when the big one hits everyone from the Hills to Compton will be washed out to sea, leaving nothing but Surf Nazis and a new coastline in rememberance of your time in this liquefaction zone.
I probably wouldn't be so upset about this had I not spent my adult formative years living in cow country. But when you see that rural people are already a bare smudge on the radar when everything's normal, and you see by all the evidence that they don't even REGISTER when a deadly crisis hits? Pisses me off. I feel for those trapped in the devolving situation in New Orleans, but at least they're getting SOMETHING. Nobody gives a fuck about the people in the country.
Thank you to all of the people in the Google Earth forums who figured out how to get this image. Also thank you ever so much to HWSNBN for listening to me ramble about this and everything else last night.
