The levee's breaking.

I'm obsessed with the New Orleans hurricane. This could be a really, really bad scene. There are some insane quotes in this story. I cannot believe a city can be in such direct danger of total devastation, what I've seen called a "toxic stew of chemicals, rodents, and poison", but I think we're all quite lucky that we're standing on solid ground, as much at the mercy of the elements as we are. This CNN article refers to Katrina as "our Asian tsunami", and the article web address includes the word "doomsday", although I don't see that word in the article.

We pretend we're not at such mercy, though. I think suburban/urban and to a lesser extent, rural, Americans have no concept of how little holds us back from death on a daily basis. I am sure that scientists who study such things are aware of why there seem to be so many more severe hurricanes in recent years. It's no joke. And no place means that much to me that I'm going to stay in it, praying I don't drown:

"Tony Peterson leaned over a balcony above Bourbon Street, festooned with gold, purple and green wreathes as Katrina's first rains pelted his shaved head.

"I was going to the Superdome and then I saw the two-mile line," the 42-year-old musician said. "I figure if I'm going to die, I'm going to die with cold beer and my best buds."

I guess that's one way to look at it. There's also this way (also according to the AP):

"Tina and Bryan Steven, of Forest Lake, Minn., sat glumly on the sidewalk outside their hotel in the French Quarter. "We're choosing the best of two evils," said Bryan Steven. "It's either be stuck in the hotel or stuck on the road. ... We'll make it through it." His wife, wearing a Bourbon Street T-shirt with a lewd message, interjected: "I just don't want to die in this shirt."

The worst part of the stories is the people who aren't leaving because they either don't have any way to get out, or anywhere to go. There are more than 20,000 people in the Superdome. I have to wonder why Greyhound didn't send a ton of buses to the outskirts to just start motoring hordes out of there. Couldn't W mobilize something at this point? He is so ridiculously silent on things close to home. I still think, though, that if I were threatened with drowning in a downtown full of floating coffins and rats, if I had breath in my body and any sort of mobility, I'd be hoofing it up the highway. Sometimes you just have to go with what you got.

Here's another one from the Post. Now I'm going to check CNN and see if that tool Anderson Cooper is standing outside somewhere in a windbreaker. My guess is that he sits this one out.