Hurricanes

Hurricanes are relatively common experiences in the late summer/early fall in the southeast. Most people can handle a normal hurricane but people need help for the big ones. Having said that, the Government and FEMA really screwed up with Katrina. They seemed to forget that poor people might need more help evacuating than does the average middle class person. Hundreds (if not thousands) of people were killed because they couldn't evacuate before the storm and there weren't people there to evacuate them after the storm. The police and the national guard are still finding people that did survive the storm like the 76 year old that was found in his house after 18 days. A hen in Uptown was found to have survived the hurricane and the first strip joint in the French Quarter has just reopened. Things are starting to recover but there is now another giant storm in the Gulf, Hurricane Rita. It doesn't look like New Orleans will get a direct hit, but in the condition its now in, it doesn't need it. The hurricane is heading toward Galveston/Houston, TX where several of the New Orleans evacuees have ended up. Obviously, the Houston/Galveston area needs to be evacuated. Hopefully the government has learned something about evacuating a large number of people that don't have the ability to evacuate themselves.

In Iraq, the American death toll stands at 24 for September and 1908 in total.