My thoughts and prayers are with the people of New Orleans and the surrounding area. May Hurricane Katrina spare the area devastating damage and destruction. May the people of that area stay safe and protected.

I hope everyone listens to the mandatory evacuation and doesn't try to ride it out.
"MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER." From:
http://weather.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/iwszone?Sites=:laz062
Wikipedia has a good article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina

I'm rather surprised that nobody seemd to mention the possibility of new orleans being immersed during the last hurricane to hir the area. That being said, good luck to those who live in NO or the surrounding areas.

EDIT: After reading one of the links I noticed something; "LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED." that has me wondering why they don't say the same for people, my guess it so as not to cause a panic.

EDIT2: Has anybody seen the documentary called "Oil Storm"?

Steve Harrigan from Fox News was "exposed to the wind" and he survived! :-)

http://www.foxnews.com/foxfan/index.html (click on "Blown Away")

Don't try to convince me that prayers don't work...

Prayin ain't never been my thing but if it works for you then go for it.

Livestock tends to stand around in fields where they are subject to wind chill and flying debris. Humans tend to have waterproof coats and are able to seek shelter.

I had a houseguest from New Orleans (who, in an amazing feat of bad timing, went home 2 weeks ago) who says the place floods with amazing regularity.

Yes actually it does. They are below sea level so they have to pump rain water up to the ocean (well gulf). Now they have another problem though. The leves ment to keep the gulf out are now holding the flood waters in. Kinda ironic huh?

From what I heard a couple of the pumps failed, that is really bad.

I did say ingame last night that the person who designed the city to be built below sea level was a fool... I do believe I did...

Of course, I do hope people make it out all right--New Orleans is one of the most vulnerable cities in the US to hurricanes, so if it gets hit it gets trashed by definition. :/

It turns out my former houseguest will be returning to my hospitality, given that his place now features 4 feet of water inside.

Only 4 feet? Yikes, aren't there about 10 feet outside?

That depends on where in the city you are. The average elevation of NO is 6 feet below sea level. And yes, the person who decided to found the city there was a fool. He was actually told by several people that this aint such a good spot being below sea level but he said "I dont care this is where I wan't to start my city." - not exact quote

mcduff: but the bad thing really is that they will rebuild after this right in the same spot and wait for the next one. I think if it was me i would take the insurence money and move to higher ground, but thats just me