Tuesday, August 30, 2005

10:01 a.m. CDT
The Bay St. Louis Bridge is gone and Hghwy 603 is not passable. The only way to get there is from I-10 and Highway 90. Don't head there.
Porter Ave and hghwy 90 is devastated. President Casino deposited in the middle of the highway.
08:42 a.m. CDT
Just got back from a morning run with one of the Knight Ridder photogs. We made it down to the beach at Cowan Rd. Apartment complexes were torn to shreds and the Fun Time amusement park doesn't exist anymore. The smell of gas is thick in the neighborhoods.
Saw National Guard trucks rolling into town and Red Cross just mobilized the largest recovery effort they have ever done. Lots of Long Beach has been destroyed. Point Cadet has been largely destroyed. Popps Ferry Bridge is shut down. The hurricane bent the steel part of it bad enough that it can't close all the way. Ocean Springs bridge is gone and I've heard that the Pass got hit very hard. I think their bridge is down, too. Pass Road is the only one that is drivable and it is barely that.
One of the reporters was just told her house is gone.
Josh was trying to head west to Long Beach to survey.

self explanatory Posted by Picasa

trees gone everywhere Posted by Picasa

mike reporting Posted by Picasa

Edgewater Mall Posted by Picasa

flag display on Highway 90 and DeBuys Road Posted by Picasa

Katrina devastation Posted by Picasa

Monday, August 29, 2005

We the writers of this blog humbly bow ourselves in respect to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and their families.
We cannot understand your pain.
The information we are giving you is filtered through our experiences.
What began as an adventure has quickly turned into heart-wrenching tragedy.
We joked, and may try to find respectful humor again before long, but we do so honestly as a need for distraction.

For those of you seeking information, the following is what we are comfortable passing on for now and we will try to do more as time passes.
-Every building in a low-lying area along the Coast experienced bad damage.
-The roads are mostly impassable or destroyed and the communications lines are spotty at best. This situation will persist for several days.
-Do not try to come here yet. Police, fire and rescue are beyond overworked. Looters are rampant. Hospitals have overflowed. Officials of all stripes lack the words to properly describe the devastation.
As much fun as its been to do this blog, Mike and I are going to be overworked before long. We want to help those of you seeking information but fear telling you the wrong thing, especially with this much destruction and confusion.
Thank you for reading us.
ToucanJim,
The newsroom is on DeBuys, a few streets west of Maison D'Orleans. Earlier today, we tried to get on Highway 90, the coastal road. We were not able or allowed to get on it. In many places, that road has been completely destroyed.
I didn't see the Maison personally, but if it looks like any of the structures anywhere near the coast, it has either been significantly damaged or destroyed. The surge that came up the beach was said to be at around 30 ft. The day before, a mandatory evacuation was ordered. Hopefully, an officer got to his apartment.
I hope your father got out to a shelter. My thoughts are with you.
Per the number of deaths reported:
We got official word of at least 40 deaths in Biloxi. No, they were not all in one apartment complex but yes, many came from the Cedar Point area. Not all.
We got no official word of deaths elsewhere.
We've heard rumors too. Terrible and fantastic rumors reach us regularly.
We will not be taking them seriously, nor posting them on this blog.
Again, we will be out and about quite a bit the next couple of days and will tell you what we can.
Thanks for reading.
Our hearts are with those affected.
We are honored to provide comfort to some of you.
For everyone concerned about Loved ones,
We are working hard to get information right now. We just spoke with the mayor of Biloxi and he doesn't know anything yet himself. All communications are down for the entire coastline except for emergency responders' radios and our satellite phone.
I'm sorry I have to tell you that you will be spending a painful night with no information. I promise we will get you the info as soon as it becomes available. Tomorrow morning the assessment will begin.
The only thing I can tell you for sure is that the houses of at least two people in our newsroom no longer exist and we only have a skeleton staff down here. We don't know the fortunes of many of our colleagues.
Check out the Sun Herald website and I'll also post it here.
Catastrophe
For whoever asked about Long Beach,
Their telephones went out around 10:04 a.m. and there were a few reports of trapped people in houses. Other than that, very little info out there.
For stories about Mississippi's Gulf Coast and the aftermath go to www.sunherald.com.
For up-to-date info getting fed in by more feet on the ground go to the Sun Herald blog at http://eyesonkatrina.blogspot.com.
Rachel L.-
Hope you're enjoying the trip. Maybe see you soon, though again your fabulous Beau Rivage destination was two stories underwater. As soon as I can, I'm going over there to check the casinos. By Mississippi law, they had to build the actual casino floor on a barge in the water. We'll see what happens later.
We can't get to our houses- trees, light poles, debris and downed power lines make lots of movement impossible.
Gotta run out to cover some stuff.
Melissa,
I'll try to get some info on Memorial Hospital. The only things I've heard are that hospitals are filled up and they are moving the injured between different ones. One hospital was damaged but I don't know the extent. There were calls over the scanner to put together triage centers, but again everything is chaotic right now.
2 dead in Biloxi, 2 dead in Gulfport and one missing in Gulfport from Civil Defense. Second Street in downtown Gulfport is devastated.
6:21 p.m. CDT
Sorry about the dropoff. We write when power and connection allows. The generator is back up thanks to the amazing work of the tech guys. Praise be to them.
Took the first walk around- the rats coming out of their holes. Destruction is everywhere and in many cases it is complete.
Looters/scavengers are walking the roads with bags of liquor and radios.
Our neighborhood bar used to be three or four doors north of the Gulf of Mexico. It would still be three or four doors if there were any doors left. The wall that used to separate it from the next place south was taken out. I could see the Gulf straight through the side of the place.
The local TV station was basically torn apart. Wind and trees sliced satellite dishes into shreds and power lines are hanging everywhere.
Martial law is in effect and the National Guard is about to roll through. They better get here soon or this nice southern town is going to rip itself apart.
Reports come through the scanner say hundreds of people trapped and bodies in sunken boats. As far as I know it is too early to start understanding how bad it is.
I pulled a circuit breaker box cover off of a light pole. I thought it was lighter because it was crumbled like tin and bent lengthwise. It weighed fifty pounds and was made of steel.
We'll post some photos in a bit.
2:52 p.m. CDT
The dispatch is telling everyone to watch out. Mississippi Power is not generating power right now, but high levels of electricity are resident in the line in something called "backfeed."
There are also reports of gas leaks near downed power lines. Someone just reported in yelling about needing to sift through the debris and there have been several calls of "signal 25,"meaning dead bodies. Someone just called asking if a rescue team was needed.
It sounds pretty bad out there.
If you are reading this outside of the coastal counties of Mississippi and are considering coming back, just hold on. They probably won't let you through.
Mark, the Reuters photog who camped out last night, just came back from a scouting mission.
He said there is no city of Gulfport anymore.
And we're back.
Man, there's nothing like letting your diet go during a natural disaster. Well, not that I was on anything but a beer and smothered pork chop diet anyways.
But damn, it's nice to say, "Well, the cement roof might cave in or get sucked out at any second, so f**k it, I'll go ahead and have that third rice krispie treat."
Seriously though, my partner in crime mooned the hurricane for me to take a photo for said blog. (Soon to come.) He recieved a piece of debris in his rear for his effort.
However, a reuters photographer, Mark the man, who hunkered down with us last night, was also standing there and snapped a lovely front angle. The photo is now on the photo wires, for those of you with access. Also, if you do have access to the wires, we don't, please send it our way.
I, however, got a crack-side angle. So for those of you with the faint of heart, you may want to turn away from my next posting.
Now we're waiting for the wind and flying sheet-metal and live electrical wires to disipate (sp?) a bit. I'll probably head out into the storm around 4:30ish central time on my bicycle. Yes, I will wear my waders.
To Jen in Natchez:
I have had been listening to the emergency response all night . No sounds coming out of Ocean Springs. The casinos near the bridge got hit real hard. The Beau Rivage supposedly is underwater up to the second floor. I haven't heard anything coming out of Ocean Springs Fire Rescue. No word yet on any communities out of Biloxi/Gulfport.
The rivers all crested above their banks and the bayous flooded. Some areas in Harrison County saw storm surge up to I-10.
Emergency crews are just trying to get in touch with each other and refueling.
I'll be headed east as soon as some of the wind dies down but I don't know how far I'll get.
There is also tin roof pieces all over the place and they are still whipping around hard. Like a couple hundred pounds of razor blades.
Anybody in the area-- just alerted that power is still running through transmission lines all over the county. Stay away- they are all hot. Some shelters have collapsed in Harrison County and several firehouses are flooded with firefighters trapped in them.
Sorry for the delay in coverage people. We made it through, probably better than most down here. No power, no landlines, no cell. We have a backup power supply and apparently God himself wanted this blog to go through because I amazingly have a connection, though I'm sure it is a fleeting one.
I'll send this one in case the power goes down then come back with some details.
In the meantime, some looting is already coming over the scanner.
The local tv station across the street got dismantled. Their tower is lying in their parking lot and their roof is lying in ours.
12:38 a.m. Tuesday CDT
Quick update.

Here's a number to call to say "I'm OK."

1-866-453-1925

If you've fled the area and can't get back or get in touch with your people back here, call this number. Your name and other info will be taken. It will then be printed in the Sun Herald to let people know that you are safe. I'm pretty sure it is up and running now.
10:15
All you can see outside the windows is white rain sheets. Good news is, there's a bare glimpse of the railroad tracks, which block us from the ocean and no water is spilling over the top. And the storm surge is supposedly at it's highest.
Now, if only the roof weren't making that strange noise.
Note to mom: we're fine and are going ot be fine. Sorry for the sensationalistic tone of the last one, we're all just a little worked up.
It's 9:46 am. We're holed up in a heavily concreted part of the building.
Panic is in everyone's eyes, but no one's saying it.
I've got my boots on, blue jeans, even though it's hot. Mike suggested I do it in case we have to run, but I cannot imagine to where.

Buildings are imploding in downtown Gulfport.
14 people were trapped in one.
Firemen in Biloxi were trapped in a Firehouse and can't get out.
Trees are falling like dominoes.
Casinos are underwater, some with roofs ripping off.
"This economy is crippled," said someone in the office.
The wind is roaring, screaming, pulling, bashing.
The water is rising, but it's not at us yet.
I wish I knew more.
We're glued to the scanners, but it's become garbled.
I just suggested a post-storm reporting plan, which, amazingly, no one had thought of yet.
I can't describe the amazing terror this force of nature plants in people.
The fire chief i went out with earlier is going nuts, because rescue vehicles are floating away and he's sure to die if he goes outside.
I don't know how we got an internet connection, as cell phones are spotty and it's down everywhere else, but I'll do what I can to let you know what happens a bare 40 miles from the eye wall.
I saw a seagull in the parking lot a little earlier. It struggled, rolled, but as we were walking back to the safe part of the building, it'd hunkered down in some grass, face to the wind and looked like it was okay.
Uh oh. We've got Australians replying to the blog. Look out! Australians are crazy. It must be from standing upside down all day long. All the blood to the head and whatnot.
7:00 a.m. CDT
Back online. I got four hours of sleep. I turned the scanner off just before passing out. The last I remember, the cops all along the shore were calling in to report as the roads became inpassable. When I turned it on this morning, it was silent.
I woke up to the sounds of the expansion joints in the walls and ceiling creaking. It's not black outside, but it's real dark.
The eye made landfall in SE LA about an hour ago.
Here the wind is gusting hard and blowing sheets of rain westward. It feels to me winds sustained in the mid 40's with gusts above 60 miles an hour. I ventured out to get a feel. There's lights out inthe parking lot that are starting to bend hard. One will rip apart a pickup truck parked near it, if the light's metal pillar fails.
There's a Reuters photog taking shelter with us. He went out and spied a sea gull sitting in the middle of the rain and wind in the parking lot. I don't know how it is staying situated there and whether it will survive.
It's only going to get worse from here- the storm seems to be drifting our way. It looks like it could be a direct hit, like Camille in 1969. The Weather Channel showed waves cresting over the coastal highway with a surge reaching 20 feet.
We're still dry here. Eight hours to go.
Alright, this really is the last post of the night. I just got a late night fax from Hancock County (on the La. border.)
Katrina turning north.
"Preparations to protect life and property should be rushed to completion."
Storm moving at 12 mph-the max speed of my KIA Spectra.
Maximum sustained winds at 155 mph. (down quite a bit, thankfully.)
Hurricane force winds extend 105 miles from center.
Bonne nuit, mes amis.
do i dare sleep? the wind and rain are starting to make noise now inside the building. i guess i should save myself for what will surely be a long day of playing scrabble, shouting above the din and fearing the storm surge.
ah yes. i suppose i oughta, even though there is more pound cake to be eaten.
damn, my brain hurts, maybe i am tired.
last look outside before sleep: torrents of rain and over an inch of water covering the parking lot.
here we go....
I would like to take this opportunity to apoligize for cursing. Mike told me I should watch my toungue, as there will surely be parents and other important people reading this.
I would like to say in my defense that one should be allowed to curse like a drunken sailor during cataclysmic natural disasters.
Sorry for the blogging delay. Mike is a lazy piece of shit and I was out reporting. (Sorry Mike, couldn’t resist.)
When I went out for a drive with a local fire chief around 10:30, it was dead.
The air was still. It was hot and humid. We started cruising smaller neighborhoods, looking for prowlers and telling people to get inside.
We stopped on a bridge in one of the back canals to see a group of shrimp boats out hiding from the storm. Supposedly they usually do very well on the back waters, no matter how bad the storm gets. Only the already dilapidated ones sink, the chief said.
I wanted to, but didn’t ask if there was any other kind of shrimp boat.
While standing on the bridge, a couple of strong gusts came up and the rain started.
Then a call came over the radio about an old man in cardiac arrest.
The house we went to had blue carpets. The old man’s wife had an orange hair wig, a red dress and she scooted around on a motorized wheelchair smoking Capri cigarettes while shaking.
“I knew this was coming,” she said.
When I walked in, I had what could easily be described as a ridiculous outfit on. (See photo.)
I had waders on, shorts, a floral print polo shirt and a rain coat. The small group of cops standing in the living room took one look at me and started giggling and whispering to each other.
I dared not miss an opportunity like that, so I walked up and asked them if they liked my get-up.
“Well, you’ll probably need it later,” one said while sniggering.
The old man was in the bathroom, on the floor, white as the tiles around him.
The EMTs got him on a stretcher and were giving him CPR while scurrying him out the door.
It was a striking image, watching his big belly puff out and jiggle every time they pressed down on his chest.
Orange wig was beside herself. She could barely keep her hands still long enough to move her wheelchair through the house.
They were new to the area and she said she knew no one, no priest, had nowhere to go.
She said he’d had problems in the past and had encouraged her husband to go the hospital.
The chief asked her if she wanted to go the hospital.
She said she didn’t want to be there and find out he was dead and suddenly be all alone, far away from her home.
The chief convinced her to call her daughter, in a far flung western state.
After talking to the daughter, she calmed down some and then she calmed down more later after talking to a doctor at the hospital where her husband was taken. An arrangement was eventually made to have the Red Cross help her a bit and take her to a shelter.
Katrina apparently has caused a lot of things like that to happen already. Perhaps the stress of the storm destroys old hearts.
When we got back outside, the rain had started in earnest.
The chief and I cruised a bit, talking about the Peace Corps, do-gooding, “the white man’s burden,” corruption in the third world, solutions thereto, beekeeping, the South, the orange wig and the storm.
We headed to a Best Western hotel near I-10 where I’d heard earlier that some dolphins from a seaside oceanarium had been deposited to be further inland and safer.
Sure enough, swimming around the hotel’s courtyard swimming pool were three four-foot long Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. They’d thrown some basketballs and ropes and things in the pool for the dolphins to play with. There was also some young, kinda cute employee of the oceanarium standing there in a sweatshirt in the now driving rain, talking to gawking hotel guests.
She said that no one was going to get in the pool with them because they would probably bite them, as they were generally unhappy with their current situation.
She also said she’d been told to stay out there till the last second possible to keep an eye on the mammals who were slowly circling, coming up for air as infrequently as possible. They were sleeping, she said.
I had no idea dolphins keep swimming while they sleep.
We left, cruised a bit.
The chief ran into a cop friend of his who said he’d put his gore-tex fishing gear on under his uniform and realized now that that was a mistake.
“Why, you sweatin’ a lot?” the chief asked.
“Hell no, I gotta pee damnit!” he said with a laugh. “I’m gonna run home and take this fucker off so I can go to the bathroom.”
We cruised so more. The rain was dancing on the road in some parts now. It would swerve and form Japanese sand design-like patterns on some of the flat parts of the road.
The gusts had picked up to.
We decided to check out the beach and ran into an emergency management official with a wind meter. 45 mph sustained winds.
A truck had been abandoned near a pier on a part of the beach that was sure to flood. The chief guessed the guy wanted insurance money.
As we sat there looking at it, a surge came up into the parking lot and smacked my door. I asked him if he would take me back now please.
“You scared?” the chief asked.
Sorry for the blogging delay. Mike is a lazy piece of shit and I was out reporting. (Sorry Mike, couldn’t resist.)
When I went out for a drive with a local fire chief around 10:30, it was dead.
The air was still. It was hot and humid. We started cruising smaller neighborhoods, looking for prowlers and telling people to get inside.
We stopped on a bridge in one of the back canals to see a group of shrimp boats lit up and hiding from the storm. Supposedly they usually do very well on the back waters, no matter how bad the storm gets. Only the already dilapidated ones sink, the chief said.
I wanted to, but didn’t ask if there was any other kind of shrimp boat.
While standing on the bridge, a couple of strong gusts came up and the rain started.
Then a call came over the radio about an old man in cardiac arrest.
The house we went to had blue carpets. The old man’s wife had an orange hair wig, a red dress and she scooted around on a motorized wheelchair smoking Capri cigarettes while shaking.
“I knew this was coming,” she said.
When I walked in, I had what could easily be described as a ridiculous outfit on. (See photo.)
I had waders on, shorts, a floral print polo shirt and a rain coat. The small group of cops standing in the living room took one look at me and started giggling and whispering to each other.
I dared not miss an opportunity like that, so I walked up and asked them if they liked my get-up.
“Well, you’ll probably need it later,” one said while sniggering.
The old man was in the bathroom, on the floor, white as the tiles around him.
The EMTs got him on a stretcher and were giving him CPR while scurrying him out the door.
It was a striking image, watching his big belly puff out and jiggle every time they pressed down on his chest.
Orange wig was beside herself. She could barely keep her hands still long enough to move her wheelchair through the house.
They were new to the area and she said she knew no one, no priest, had nowhere to go.
She said he’d had problems in the past and had encouraged her husband to go the hospital.
The chief asked her if she wanted to go the hospital.
She said she didn’t want to be there and find out he was dead and suddenly be all alone, far away from her home.
The chief convinced her to call her daughter, in a far flung western state.
After talking to the daughter, she calmed down some and then she calmed down more later after talking to a doctor at the hospital where her husband was taken. An arrangement was eventually made to have the Red Cross help her a bit and take her to a shelter.
Katrina apparently has caused a lot of things like that to happen already. Perhaps the stress of the storm destroys old hearts.
When we got back outside, the rain had started in earnest.
The chief and I cruised a bit, talking about the Peace Corps, do-gooding, “the white man’s burden,” corruption in the third world, solutions thereto, beekeeping, the South, the orange wig and the storm.
We headed to a Best Western hotel near I-10 where I’d heard earlier that some dolphins from a seaside oceanarium had been deposited to be further inland and safer.
Sure enough, swimming around the hotel’s courtyard swimming pool were three four-foot long Atlantic bottlenose dolphins. They’d thrown some basketballs and ropes and things in the pool for the dolphins to play with. There was also some young, kinda cute employee of the oceanarium standing there in a sweatshirt in the now driving rain, talking to gawking hotel guests.
She said that no one was going to get in the pool with them because they would probably bite them, as they were generally unhappy with their current situation.
She also said she’d been told to stay out there till the last second possible to keep an eye on the mammals who were slowly circling, coming up for air as infrequently as possible. They were sleeping, she said.
I had no idea dolphins keep swimming while they sleep.
We left, cruised a bit.
The chief ran into a cop friend of his who said he’d put his gore-tex fishing gear on under his uniform and realized now that that was a mistake.
“Why, you sweatin’ a lot?” the chief asked.
“Hell no, I gotta pee damnit!” he said with a laugh. “I’m gonna run home and take this fucker off so I can go to the bathroom.”
We cruised so more. The rain was dancing on the road in some parts now. It would swerve and form Japanese sand design-like patterns on some of the flat parts of the road.
The gusts had picked up to.
We decided to check out the beach and ran into an emergency management official with a wind meter. 45 mph sustained winds.
A truck had been abandoned near a pier on a part of the beach that was sure to flood. The chief guessed the guy wanted insurance money.
As we sat there looking at it, a surge came up into the parking lot and smacked my door. I asked him if he would take me back now please.
“You scared?” the chief asked.
The Weather Channel's Bob Stokes is a very sexy man. Not only is he a compassionate weatherman, he is also a gifted man of science.
This from www.weather.com:
"Bob's not fussy about his favorite weather: '... temperature between 60-75 degrees Fahrenheit with low humidity!'
A native of Taipei, Taiwan, Bob calls North Little Rock, Arkansas, home. He graduated from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a B.A. in Radio, Television and Film, and holds a Certificate of Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi State University. Bob is also a member of the American Meteorological Society and holds their Seal of Approval."

The Keller is tired. It is time to slip under my desk into my sapphire-blue sleeping bag. I'll hug my scanner and dream sweet dreams of 10-4's and signal 52's. When I wake up, hopefully the roof will still be here.

Sustained winds holding at 160 mph with gusts at 195 mph. Waves have begun cresting over the coastal highway a quarter mile south.
1:10 a.m. Monday CDT
Old people are dropping dead. Over the scanner, "cardiac emergency, cardiac emergency. We have a cardiac emergency just south of Pass Road." The fear is too much for them. Poor old people.

I've been trying to pull up surge data, but it seems that all the pertinent state websites are either overloaded or have been shut down.

awww, lil mikey is all tucked in Posted by Picasa
in case you were curious, signal 52's are peeping toms in scanner parlance.
I'd say mike is more of a signal 44 from a signal 75. (a mad animal from a ufo).

rising water Posted by Picasa

rising water and shrimp boats(sorry if captions are messed up. i'm working on it.) Posted by Picasa

2) Posted by Picasa

1)Girl in front of pool with dolphins. Posted by Picasa

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Naked mole rat said:
"There are 200,000 people that we know of who have not evacuated New Orleans and countless others along the Gulf coast. Most of these people would rather be elsewhere, but do not have the means. We really must consider using the very resources that we taxpayers have purchased, to save lives. How many C5 and C130 transport planes do we (military/national guard) have? Now how many of those are deployed to foreign soil? How many are right here in the US, and not being used for this cause? These resources should be reallocated in these situations to prevent the massive loss of life. Last year, the ocean rose up and claimed 283,000 lives in Asia. If Katrina unleashes her wrath directly upon New Orleans, we will witness death and destruction on a massive scale again. We really must revaluate how we (our government and military) utilize our resources."
Naked mole rat said it, not me. Clearly naked mole rat has some communistic tendencies. Perhaps naked mole rat thinks we would be better allocating resources if those C130's were used to bomb slightly soggy New Orleans with inflatable dinghies...or maybe lots of those little silica gel desiccant packs.

This from NOAA. This is a surface sea temperature composite image. It was compiled by a polar orbiting satellite. Red means bad. You can see how the storm generation machine works from the point that hot Saharan wind spins off the west coast of Africa. If the spin is good and the sea temperature is warm enough, the ocean feeds hot wet air into the storm system as it drags westward across the water's surface. There will be a test on this.
11:10 p.m. CDT
Rain starts and stops. It's silent outside except for the increasing wind. The rain is starting to tilt to the west with the direction of circulation. In the next few hours it should turn to an almost fully horizontal flow.
Harrison County public safety shut down two of the shelters on the western part of the county because the Wolf River just crested at 27 feet, well above its banks.
The scanner is full of dispatches to alarms going off all over the place. Either Biloxi or Gulfport PD is about to shut down its main dispatch center. Soon we'll be alone.
9:45 p.m. CDT
No rain, Light easterly wind. The low-lying clouds are moving fast southwest.
Curfew went into effect at 9 p.m. and the streets are deserted.
An old man just called into the newsroom from a payphone. He said that the VA home down here turned him away though they were allowing employees and their families in to take shelter.I'll check it out later.
Some of the shelters are filling up and the emergency management people said they are shutting down two shelters in the west of our county because of a fear of flooding.
Apparently 200,000 people didn't get out of New Orleans. Hopefully the storm will speed up.
Jim Higdon is smart and we are dumb. LONG LIVE JIM HIGDON! Josh will post as soon as he gets his lazy ass in gear and stops trying to get silly photos to the silly Knight Ridder people in DC. I am walking outside to check the weather. I hear there's a chance of rain.

Enhanced color satellite.
We can't figure out how to allow Josh to post along with me. So till someone smarter than us, I mean braver, tells me how to do it, I'm going to paste it in.

Josh Norman's message follows:

First off, I'd like to say that I am not dumb, but brave. Mike is dumb. And stoopid.
In all reality, I feel it is better to just not think too much about whether this is dumb or brave.
We have beer. We have beef jerky. We have Scrabble. Let's get it on.
Right now, it is lightly raining and dark.
Gulfport's Fire Chief, Pat Sullivan, stopped by earlier to drop off some photos and ask if anyone wanted to go for a ride around 10 p.m. (To which I said, "Hell yeah!")
So another update will come then. Weather Service is predicting Tropical Storm force winds at about that time.
Oy, the computer guys just showed up with large plastic bags to cover all the computers and equipment. And an administrator just came through and made us sign liability waivers.
A guy at Knight-Ridder Washington also just told me over the phone that we may be the only reporters on the Coast.
And on to cheerier things...
I had a good lasagna for dinner made by the same administrator who asked me to sign the waiver. Not quite mom's lasagna, but yummy none-the-less.
A guy from production brought his acoustic bass earlier and I lugged my guitar down here, so we can rock it out hurricane-style later. If only I knew how to rock it out.

Photos soon to come.
7:47 p.m. CDT
Squalls are spreading just south of us and the rain is constant, if light. Every so often a wind kicks up and rattles the trees across the parking lot.

The scanner reported scattered incidents of looting a bit earlier but now it seems that the cops are spending most of their time picking up homeless and knocking on doors of trailers to ask them to go to shelters.

Earlier, the emergency management heads begged people to leave the coast. Willie Huff, Mississippi Department of Transportation's law enforcement director said, "It is imperative that you get out of this area as soon as possible. Move to safe ground."

And to add some kosher salt to the wound, Larry King is yapping in my left ear about the storm. As a side note, I think it might be the greatest thing ever to happen to journalism if Larry switched jobs with Anderson Cooper, the great white hurricane hunter. That's the end of my side note.

Mike the Keller

Josh the Brave

The lovely Miss Katrina is visible as the dark mass to the far right of the picture. She was still about 300 miles south of the Mississippi River's mouth at that point.
6:17 p.m. CDT
Welcome to a window looking into imminent destruction. This blog is being brought to you by two guys too dumb to get out of the way of what is turning into one of the most destructive natural forces to hit the mainland U.S. ever.

We are both journalists working at the Sun Herald, a paper that covers all of coastal Mississippi. My name is Mike Keller, the environment reporter down here. My colleague is Josh Norman, a metro reporter who normally covers Long Beach. For updates, go to www.sunherald.com.

We are holed up in the newsroom. It is becoming dark outside and all the news coming out of the television shows a well-formed and dangerous Hurricane Katrina due south of us.

The National Weather Service's 4 p.m. update starts with "...potentially catastrophic hurricane Katrina headed for the northern Gulf Coast..." Her maximum sustained winds are topping 165 miles an hour with gusts possibly topping 200 mph. Hurricane force winds extend out over 100 miles from the center and tropical storm force winds go out 230 miles. Though the wind hasn't kicked up yet, it is definitely on its way. The storm is a category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the highest rating. It is registering 902 mb pressure at the center, the lowest ever recorded in the Gulf, and it is strengthening.

The newsroom is about a quarter-mile from the Gulfport/ Biloxi beach, so we expect to get the full force.

New Orleans began evacuating yesterday and it became mandatory for parts of LA and coastal MS today. Though we will get hit hard, I feel pain in my heart for those in New Orleans who couldn't leave. Many have moved into the Superdome, where the Saints play. The mayor of New Orleans said earlier that a 24 to 30-foot storm surge would be topped with 50-foot wind-driven waves. He said that the levee system that normally protects the city from the Mississippi River and storms like this would be easily compromised. New Orleans sits on average about 6 feet below sea level, making it a big bowl. The consequenses of this storm to the city will, in all likelihood, leave a large swath of the Gulf Coast in ruins.

I have not heard this many "God bless you all and God speed" in a long time.