Red Cross accepting donations for relief efforts

First, Red Cross Hurricane relief effort fund if anyone would like to donate.

The spectacle of devastating flooding in New Orleans feels dismally similar to September 11th in the incomprehensible destruction it has brought to peoples' lives and to an entire city and less directly for most of us but still palpable, to the rest of our country. What is so sad is that like the occurrence of a major terrorist attack on New York, the likelihood that a hurricane could wreak devastation on New Orleans was out in the open several years ago:

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as “among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country, directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City.

The article linked to in the Americablog post is eerily prescient.

What's more, funds for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which controls hurricane and flood protection, were cut by a record 71.2 million for fiscal year 2006. I don't know what funding was like this past year, but a well-known threat was fatally under-estimated, to say the least. Boy, this is awful.

My heart goes out to the people and city of New Orleans, but where my heart goes out isn't worth a damn. My donation isn't worth that much either, but hopefully small donations from people across the country will be worth something.