I'm happy to see that Oklahoma Baptists have taken the initiative to welcome and house refugees from Hurricane Katrina at Falls Creek Baptist Conference Center, near Davis in south-central Oklahoma, home to one of the largest church camps in the country. Falls Creek has a cafeteria, a conference center, and a hundred or so "cabins" owned by local churches, most of them air conditioned, each housing between 20 and 200 campers. It should be a pretty comfortable situation.
Mister Snitch! links to the fascinating Survival of New Orleans blog, written by someone with DirectNIC, a New Orleans ISP which has managed to remain running and connected to the net since Katrina struck. He also links to Brendan Loy, who wrote about the impending disaster as the hurricane bore down on NO, and who says it could have been much worse.
Lance Salyers notes that Dennis Hastert wasn't the first to question the wisdom of rebuilding NO after the devastation of a hurricane. The first was a city official. (UPDATE 10/25/2005: Had to remove the link, as Lance has taken down his blog and the URL has been hijacked by a spammer.)
David Warren is optimistic about New Orleans' future:
If I may be so insensitive as to continue looking on the bright side, the experience of Katrina was just what was needed, to reconsider the city's environmental defences. After the expenditure of a few more billion dollars (the kind of government spending in which I exult), it ought to be possible to make the whole levee and pumping system good to withstand Category Five. It is an engineering challenge, the sort of thing Americans love, and can afford....Indeed, one of the things that makes great disasters so exciting is the prospect of recovery -- of restoring what was best and building what is better. It is a moment in which the cost-benefit analysis swings out of view, and in which we confront the elements with what is elemental in ourselves.
Vanderleun of American Digest Modestly Proposes that America take a year off from helping the rest of the world to rebuild itself.
Comments (2)
Credit is due the churches of Christ in the Tulsa area as well. Two congregations had volunteered their Family Life centers to evacuees by Wednesday of last week. These congregations are Crosstown and Broken Arrow.
Posted by Bill Roach | September 6, 2005 2:35 PM
Posted on September 6, 2005 14:35
Mark and I volunteered from very early morning until evening at one of the military sites which brought in 1,434 evacuees in a convoy of 37 buses. We heard personal stories of what exactly happened. Some of these people will be staying possibly a year. They were thrilled to finally get treated at this military site with dignity and respect -- complete opposite of how they were treated in Louisiana at the dome. In the U.S.A., you would not think people could behave in such a manner even under the worst of circumstances yet small children through adults viewed things they should not have had to see in their lifetime! The stories overwhelming. If Hinton would like to contact me, I have pictures of our day serving these victims that survived to
make it to Oklahoma. Because we have been chosen as Red Cross Heros, we already have experience in serving those in desperate need.
The Salvation Army was there. Red Cross and Salvation can use all the financial donations you can give. The amount of food needed each day is enormous. Every victim coming to the military site was treated as a special guest. We were able to bring smiles, laughter, and hope
in their time of need. Men want to get back to work and instead of having the Mayor of New Orleans trying to think up ways to spend outlandish amounts of U.S. taxpayer money on how to put victims on the Carnival Cruise and awarding first responders with lavish trips to
L. Vegas, it seems to have missed the point. On Fox News, I agree with 'MY WORD" on FOX NEWS news story tuesday you can download his script, FIRE THE MAYOR OF NEW ORLEANS AND THE GOVERNOR FOR INCOMPETENCE. As a older man said, we have had corruption in our politics for 56 years in New Orleans. They have known about the levees needing to be stronger for many years. Instead they spent the money elsewhere. The victims also agreed the current New Orleans Mayor and the Governor need to be fired.
Posted by susan | September 7, 2005 12:01 AM
Posted on September 7, 2005 00:01