This makes me want to cry. :(

Corry · Aug 30, 2005

...a place where people are posting looking for missing loved ones.

http://neworleans.craigslist.org/laf/

Picksure · Aug 30, 2005

god bless everyone that katerina has touched. its too sad for words.

Artemis · Aug 30, 2005

I feel rather chocked...I hate being useless to help...

Andrea K · Aug 30, 2005

this is such a sad time right now, everyone down there is in my thoughts and prayers

havoc · Aug 30, 2005

I was just in Meterie and the french quarter this time last year. It is so sad to see the places i was at only a year ago destroyed. That place is so unprepared for an event of this magnatude, the pictures they show on the news can't begin to describe it. That area of the state has so many poor people it looks like a 3rd world country when there isn't a disaster, i can only imagine what it looks like now.

Corry · Aug 30, 2005

Lumi was there only a couple weeks ago. Thank god she got back before anything started!!!

Nikon Fan · Aug 30, 2005

havoc said:
I was just in Meterie and the french quarter this time last year. It is so sad to see the places i was at only a year ago destroyed. That place is so unprepared for an event of this magnatude, the pictures they show on the news can't begin to describe it. That area of the state has so many poor people it looks like a 3rd world country when there isn't a disaster, i can only imagine what it looks like now.

I know what you mean, we were just in Biloxi about a year ago...lots of old beautiful and historical homes, not to mention the amount of business lost through casinos and tourist shops. I can't even phathom what it must be like, and can only pray for those still down there stuck in their homes.

MDowdey · Aug 31, 2005

THE LAST PARAGRAPH STILLS MY HEART.

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (AP) -- When Xavier Bowie died in a flooded New Orleans neighborhood, his wife did the best she could in a city so preoccupied with saving the living that no one can deal with the dead.

She wrapped his body in a sheet, laid him on a makeshift bier of plywood boards, with a little help, and floated him down to the main road.

For more than an hour, Evelyn Turner waited along Rampart Street outside the French Quarter, her husband's body resting on the grassy median as car after car passed, their wakes threatening to wash over the corpse.

"This is ridiculous," Turner, 54, said as she sobbed into a dirty washcloth.

Bowie, 57, a truck driver who had been with Turner for 16 years, had advanced lung cancer and could not be easily moved. When Turner could find no one to take them out of the city, she decided to stay home and hoped the storm would spare them.

"I've got electric and stuff right now," Turner told herself. "I can keep going. I've got oxygen. I can keep going."

But Hurricane Katrina left her neighborhood under several feet of water. By Tuesday, with no phone and only a small tank of oxygen left, Turner slogged out into the streets for help.

By the time she got back, Bowie had died.

Grief-stricken, Turner walked 2 miles to a neighborhood police precinct and asked someone to come get the body. An officer told her a truck would be along.

When more than an hour passed, she started down the road again. When she got to the station this time, there were no more promises.

"There's nothing we can do right now," an officer said. "We don't have any equipment."

"So what I'm supposed to do? Sit with the body until you get somebody?" Turner asked.

"Unfortunately, yeah," the officer replied. "That's the only option I can give you. Because we have no way of getting to him."

With hundreds, if not thousands, of residents still stuck on roofs and in attics across the city, officials have concentrated on saving survivors of Katrina and floodwaters. "We're not even dealing with dead bodies," New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said Tuesday.

When Turner got back to the corpse, she collapsed onto the plywood sheets and wept.

Curtis Miller, a former city employee, helped float the body down the road, hoping a passing military truck would pick Bowie up. He was disgusted.

"I'm hurt to my heart with this," the grizzled man said. "To see the city stoop this low. It shouldn't be, mister. It should not be."

Finally, about three hours after Bowie died, Miller flagged down a passing flatbed truck filled with downed tree limbs. After some heated words and an offer of $20, he persuaded the driver to take the body to Charity Hospital, where the police had directed them.

Turner helped load the body into the truck bed, then climbed aboard.

The truck turned and made its way into the French Quarter, where jazz bands are known to lead joyful funeral processions through the storied streets. But the streets were deserted Tuesday, and there was no music for Bowie, just the whirring of helicopter blades above.

Corry · Aug 31, 2005

Karalee · Aug 31, 2005

Across the region, hundreds of people climbed onto rooftops to escape the rising water that lapped at the eaves. They used axes, and in at least one case a shotgun, to blast holes in roofs so they could escape through the attics.

Police took boats into flooded areas to rescue some of the stranded and others were lifted off rooftops by helicopter. The Coast Guard helped rescue 1,200 in New Orleans on Monday night and thousands more all along the Gulf Coast on Tuesday.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin reported bodies floating in the floodwaters, which may have measured 20 feet deep in places.

Officials said a 3-foot shark had been spotted cruising the flooded streets.

:shock:

Corry · Aug 31, 2005

This one really did make me cry...now they are saying THOUSANDS are likely dead.

I've never cried over a news story before.

There are real honest to goodness tears going down my cheeks.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050831...v3XGoBH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MjBwMWtkBHNlYwM3MTg-

Luminosity · Aug 31, 2005

I got back from New Orleans late on the 15th of this month.

Theres so many new friends that Josh and I made there, locals, who I am worried about right now. Absolutely gorgeous ppl in an amazing city ....oh man.....

Every speck of hope in my heart is centred on The Big Easy and it's ppl right now :cry:

I also keep thinkin of the little girl, peekin around a street corner, who I took a photograph of while I was there. I keep wondering if she's ok....

LeadSister · Sep 1, 2005

I have to say... one thing that made me really upset while watching the news is that people were warned about this storm and I'm sure they had to have seen how big it was and yet they decided to ride it out and stay home. OK... the part that makes me mad is that some with children decided to stay! I watched this family with very small children who are screaming and crying being pulled out of a house that is waist high with water. That's just not right. *shakes head*

*I wanted to edit my post to say that I understand some people tried to leave with their families and could not. Whether they had no transportation or were just plain stuck. My post was in reference to those who made the choice to stay. I didnt want anyone to think I was being callous toward those who couldnt leave.

It just completely breaks my heart.
Pamela

havoc · Sep 1, 2005

Most of those people were too poor to leave. These people really had nothing before the hurricane, they have less now. You can't leave the city of you don't have a car, or you only have a quater tank ofgas and no money. If you ever drove through the poorer neiberhoods it would be easier to understand. There not just ghettos, they are somthing you would see in a 3rd world country. But i do understand what you mean.

Corry · Sep 1, 2005

Also, you can't forget those who were to sick to make the evacuation safely. Those are the ones that break my heart...the ones that were basically given a death sentence due to poor health, or something like that.