I've donated to the Red Cross. Prayers and wishes are great, but something more tangible will really help people out.
http://www.redcross.org/ You can designate your donation for hurricane relief. United way and salvation army are also good organizations. Money is more easily used for direct results than "stuff".

NO has been at risk for one reason or another, but there are not many areas in the world that are completely immune to natural disasters, be it earthquakes, hurricanes, flooding,tornadoes, volcanoes, ice storms, fires, etc.

For those of you interested in reading about such things, NO has been at risk for year, not only from ocean based storms, but from the Mississippi River. If you know anything about river deltas, rivers naturally migrate across the deltas, changing thier flow pattern, leaving and pirating channels and so on. For years, the Army Corps of Engineers has been trying to prevent Old Man River from doing what it wants to do naturally, that is, shorted it's course to the sea by pirating the Atchaflalaya River, which would shorten it's route by about 50 miles. They've actually built reverse dams on the Atchafalaya to keep this from happening. Which hasnt' yet, but they always figured it was a matter of time. Anyway,..... no point really, but an interesting book about this kind of thing is In Control Of Nature by John MacPhee.


irulan