George V. Reilly

The Start of Hurricane Season


The Ninth Ward of New Orleans, as shot by Scout Prime.

Christy at Fire­DogLake has written a post about this year's hurricane season, which officially started on June 1st.

New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf is still a disaster area: watch the video linked to above. Disaster pre­pared­ness is far from where it should be. The levee im­prove­ments are inadequate. Re­con­struc­tion is mired in bu­reau­cra­cy and stalled in in­com­pe­tence. The money promised has not ma­te­ri­al­ized. Only one-third of New Orleans residents have returned.

Christy links to a report put together by Nancy Pelosi, detailing the in­com­pe­tence and cronyism of the Re­pub­li­cans, both in the continue.

Are you Ready.Gov?

A friend sent me a Word document with a parody of the Department of Homeland Security's Ready.Gov website. I googled and found an HTML copy of the parody here.

Seriously, there is some useful in­for­ma­tion on Ready.Gov. Which reminds me that Emma and I are long overdue in putting together some disaster planning.

Here are some links that I put together a while back:

If there's any lesson that should be learned from Katrina, it's that you need to have your own continue.

Decision about evacuee housing

On Tuesday night, Emma sent this out to our list of friends.

Subject: Decision about evacuee housing
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2005 00:22:32 -0700
From: Emma Bartholomew

Hello all,

Thank you to everyone who has assisted George & me in our attempt to ready our home for hurricane evacuees.

Re­gret­tably, I have come to realize that I'm not emo­tion­al­ly able to make this commitment after all. I thought I could open my home to others, but I have sunk into a depression over the past few weeks that has finally convinced me that I tried to bite off more than I could continue.

Basement: Concrete Actions

The basement looks far better tonight than last night.

Yesterday, I removed all the lower panels along the entire front wall, and filled in the cracks with concrete. I also bought some in­ex­pen­sive folding doors that will require some framing.

Today, Chuck came over after the BiNet Brunch and helped me put back up the panels and finish all the painting. It looks intensely yellow. The dark blue carpet will help tone it down.

After I've framed the doors, the carpet can be layed. I'm busy all next weekend, at Tim Grey's Photoshop Seminar, so I'll have to do it in the evenings.

I have not yet been able to order the window. Although the window was continue.

It never rains but it pours

This afternoon I would have said that the basement was close to being finished. The painting was almost done, the carpet was due to come in tomorrow, and the window will arrive in two-to-three weeks. But we've had a setback.

Since the last update, I have finished painting the spare bedroom. Emma will move in there as soon as I finish writing this post. She was waiting for the paint fumes to dissipate.

After Lowe's sent someone out to measure the new window hole, I boarded it up with some plywood and 2x4s.

Dipankar came over Wednesday afternoon and helped me paint the basement -- at least the parts that continue.

Basement: two steps forward, one step off

Work on the basement proceeds.

Our neighbor Leo helped me out with carpentry in the basement on Saturday. Emma and Delf went to Oregon on Friday for the Flock and Fiber Festival, and didn't get back until Saturday night. Leo and I stablized the framing around the furnace, put up all the paneling, routed the TV cables above the ceiling, and replaced the missing ceiling tiles.

On Sunday, we planned to paint the spare bedroom and the basement. It didn't work out as planned. Just before lunch, Emma fell off a stepstool while priming the walls of the spare bedroom, and hurt herself. She spent six hours waiting in the Emergency Room at Swedish continue.

Basement update

Last weekend, we made good progress on the basement. On Saturday, Dale and Ernest helped us out, doing some demolition in the basement, and bringing loads to Goodwill and to the dump in their truck.

On Sunday, Jill and Delf helped us clean the remaining stuff out of the basement. Louise excavated a hole outside the window that we're going to enlarge. Deb, currently hors de combat with a pinched nerve, dropped by to provide moral support, as did Frank and Lyndol. Delf spent nearly twelve hours with us that day, and thanks to his experience in con­struc­tion, he and I built framing around the furnace.

Peter and Lucinda have provided continue.

Katrina Evacuees: Work Parties and Scaling Back

Shifting boxes

We've made some progress on getting our house ready to take in some Hurricane Katrina evacuees.

On Labor Day, Emma and I thoroughly cleaned out the garage in the alley, then put everything back much more ef­fi­cient­ly, so that we would have somewhere to store all of the stuff that was in our basement.

On Thursday, Emma made contact with Roy, a doorman at her chi­ro­prac­tor's and a native of New Orleans. Roy and his other family members in the Seattle area are looking to bring up about 20 of their extended family. Roy was very keen to learn that we were offering space. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Emma forgot to get continue.

Hurricane Katrina Determined to Strike in US

In August 2001, George W. Bush ignored a warning that Osama Bin Laden would attack the US. Thousands died.

In March 2003, Bush started an un­nec­es­sary war against Iraq. Tens of thousands died.

In August 2005, Bush ignored warnings that a major hurricane would strike New Orleans, and stayed on vacation. He played guitar in Arizona while New Orleans drowned. Uncounted thousands died.

Not until Wednesday did he return to Washington. Even now, he has yet to show leadership. Photo ops are not leadership. Platitudes are not leadership.

For four years, the Bush ad­min­is­tra­tion has played the terror card, warning us again and again that terrorists would strike our cities. Billions have been continue.

Hurricane Katrina and Evacuees

A few hours ago, Emma sent this email out to our friends:

After long thought and a lot of heart searching, George & I have decided to take in a family from Louisiana. We are now starting to look for someone who can help us make arrange­ments to get people here. Meanwhile, we need anyone who wants to volunteer to help us clean out our basement and fix it up to house people. We have a guest room on our first floor, but we also need to rearrange the entire house to allow us to add 4-6 people to our lives for up to the continue.