ONE YEAR LATER: LA NOUVELLE ORLEANS.

One year ago tomorrow, that nasty horrendous & historic Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and changed the lives of many there forever. I remember blogging extensively on it, worried to death that it would be really really bad as it approached the area, especially for New Orleans; a city I have partied hard in and enjoyed tremendously in the past.

My worst fears came true unfortunately.

I was watching all kinds of shows on the disaster this past weekend on cable and it was really sad to see just what happened there. There was incredible footage of some firefighters who amateurly taped the storm as it was barreling down on the Big Easy and the amount of rain was tremendous, but even more shocking was to see how quickly the city began to fill with water as levees began to break and the flooding got worse. Even after the storm has passed, the worst was yet to come, for as the water kept pouring in, it was now mixing with household cleaning chemicals, oil from local refineries, sewage, gasoline from parked cars, and all kinds of toxic crap! I mean, if ya didn't drown, you probably got poisoned to death. How bloody awful! And even after the water was pumped out, the houses got infested with nasty smelly destructive mold. This was a disaster that even one year later, we are barely beginning to comprehend.

Pretty compelling stuff! I hear Spike Lee came out with some documentary on this, which is quite graphic, and I dunno if I can sit through that one. Some 2,000 people were killed, but even that might be wrong because so many went missing and unaccounted for. This storm wasn't even as bad as it could have been (and that's saying something), for New Orleans wasn't even hit directly and the hurricane was a Category 3 by the time it reached land.

Government response was quite lame as we all saw, that dumb mayor was re-elected (God knows why), and the catastrophe only reiterated the urgent need for us all to be prepared for any kind of natural disaster or terrorist attack which means stocking up on stuff to survive. I'm so bad, 'cause I don't even have water stored! I'll die if a huge quake hits LA anytime soon and catches me unprepared.

God, please keep the ground beneath me as stable as possible...