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And the other Linda,
If there is anything beyond giving to the Red Cross that we can do up here, please let us know. It is hard to see the news and not be able to do anything, but I suspect that this is the best thing to do right now.
I was just at a conference in that conference center in the summer of 2004. I cannot even picture the situation that must be there.
Techteach
Please don’t forget helping the Salvation Army if you can. Remember the published report for September 11, publically stating that only only 60% of funds donated to 9/11 went to assisting the victims. The other 40% went to administrative costs.
The Salvation Army, a more low-key operation, puts 100% of funds toward assisting victims of natural disasters.
I am not knocking one charity in favor of another. Its just that the Salvation Army does not advertise like the Red Cross and I felt compelled to mention this. Please check this out for yourselves before deciding.
Thanks.
Pat
Anything anybody wants to edit, just send me the paragraphs you want swapped, and the url where the thread is and I will edit for you.
Sorry to have disabled the editing feature. You can edit your own post for an hour after you’ve posted it, but I had to disabled it after that. Temper’s have flared and people have gone in and deleted all their own posts wholesale. There are still threads in tatters from that. Seeing as how this place is sacred to me, that was a hard blow. I’m still not totally over it.
So, I don’t think I’ll be allowing those privileges anymore. Once you post it, it belongs to all of us. This needs to be understood. Of course, this is not in the sense that we’re free to claim authorship of anything but our own writing, or that we’re free to quote anything here without giving proper credit.
Mercy Corps is another pretty good organization that is worth considering for Katrina donations.
I am told by the Red Cross that minimum volunteer assignment in the area is two weeks. I don’t know whether there is any flexibility in that or not.
What we are doing amiss all our troubles here is loading 18 wheelers and pick up trucks with supplies and getting men to drive them over to our friends in Mississippi. We here on Alabama’s gulf coast love those people over there…they are our friends when we get hit they are the first to rush to our aid. Also they have supported us for years with their business. Our business will suffer greatly because of this we as a community will suffer greatly but it is far worse for them so we clean our mess up and load trucks to take to them….we are running out of food here because we are sending much of it to them.
Linda
Linda (quest for facts) I totally understand and don’t worry about anything God is going to get us all through this tradgedy. I am sorry if my response was too sharp. I am filled with mixed emotions about what is happening. I have relatives that my family can’t reach. I am praying for you and all the people there. If I was there I would give you a great big hug.
One real sad thing is I have not seen a smile all week. Everyone is just so depressed it hard to get on with things. We have so many people here that all displaced some of our own and many of the people from Mississipi and Louisiana. West Beach in Gulf Shores was hit bad too. Perdido Key has roads caving in. Perdido Key is the barrier island that protects Perdido Bay from the storm surge. Perdido Bay still was pretty rough and flooded homes as far inland as 5 miles near my home. The storm surge on this one was massive it damaged roads as far east as Fort Walton Beach Florida. An oil rig washed up on the beach of Dauphin Island at the mouth of the Mobile Bay. Another rig ran into a bridge. Boats and ships ripped from there moorings and were floating everywhere. One business owner had 6 barges in front of his business. Every business on our causeway over Mobile Bay was completely destroyed. Like I said it’s bad here but Mississippi….Oh God Mississippi. My husband and I as we looked at the pictures tried to find something that looked familiar. Only thing we saw that we could figure out what it was Casino Magic. I have to go have to go see if I can find some gas for my car so I can get some supplies to the truck going to Mississippi. Pray I find some gas folks.
Linda
We’re praying for you, Linda.
A friend sent me this. Let me apologize up front if the political reference offends anyone, but the story was terrible.
We spent most of today with a NY Times reporter who flew in to interview people who had opened their homes to New Orleans refugees. A family came by to meet us and stayed a couple of hours. The first family we’d counted on staying with us – I couldn’t find all of yesterday – but the woman called today in hysterics. She’d left her parents at the VA hospital in New Orleans and just found out her father died b/c he didn’t have water or food. She was screaming,”The goverment killed my father! Why are they doing this to the people of New Orleans?” I was really shaken up after speaking with her.
Here in Lillian Alabama we are predominately a white and indian town but down the street we had one African American family move in a couple of months ago. This is a family of 4 but in these last days it has been a family of 25. See this family who moved in are a Navy family and they are from New Orleans. They now have 25 people living in their home all family members with no where else to go. We have been gathering clothing for them. Lillian is a small town on the west shore of Perdido Bay, Pensacola is just to our east on the other side of the bay. Lillian has about 1000 residents year round. One murder in the history of the town. It is a nice safe place to live and raise children. It’s a nice safe distance from the resorts and hustle and bustle of city life in P’cola. Mobile is 1 hour to the west and Gulf Shores and Orange Beach are just to our south on the Gulf of Mexico. On a clear day we can look down the bay and see the condos on the beach. It is a strikingly beautiful place. We have cliffs where the storms and bay have eroded the land over the years at the bottoms of those cliffs are beautiful sugar sand beaches to be enjoyed if you are hardy enough to climb down the cliffs. We also have very flat land along the bay that floods during storms. Long ago people use to live on some islands out in the bay but storms have washed away those homes now it is now illegal to live on these small islands in the bay. I suppose now they are just swamps for snakes and alligators. The Creek Indians have called this place home for 1000’s of years and as you look around one can understand why they claimed this area. Most of the settlers in this around are for a good part Creek Indian. Looking around you can see clearly the mixture of the whites and the Creeks as they have intermarried for generations. Over the years many whites from the north have moved to Lillian and built subdivsions of older adults. You can clearly tell the locals from the transplants. I was talking to an elder one day and she said you should have seen Lillian before all of them came it was a better place to live. It was then just a little village of mixed blood people. She is 70+ and has lived here her entire life. To find these people you have to go deeper into the trees closer along the bay into the REAL Lillian. I live 1/2 mile from the bay and at the edge of one of these treelines directly behind my home is wooded land with homes spreckled throughout the trees…this is where you will find the true Lillian….Lillian’s natives. A group of several hundred mixed blood indians….one would think I’d be right at home huh? But yet….that’s a story for another day.
Linda
Things ARE getting better here our schools have just reopened and gas is not that big of an issue these days. With all the refugees here our schools have had an influx of new students. Things were not as bad here in Baldwin. It was worst in Mobile County. Dauphin Island and Bayou La Batre were messed up real bad many lost their homes. Mobile County still has not gone back to school. Katrina wreaked havoc from the western edges of Baldwin County to New Orleans. I know one thing we do not want to see another storm this year. All the trees on the islands have turned brown. The natural vegatation is all brown. Katrina simply killed them. The road I drive to work on everyday is collasping they are trying to save it…we shall see.
Linda
Linda,
I am glad you are ok. This is a very traumatic situation…I have family in Mississippi not far from Biloxi….they were lucky in having little structural damage to their home but it’s still a mess. All of the trees in the neighborhood are gone. ALL of them. And a ways from there where they still had trees they saw bodies hung up, “caught up” in trees. OH my God.
It is just heart wrenching. Don’t even know what to say…….Sue J
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