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August 31, 2005
WWL TV, Baton Rouge real estate bubble
I'm at work this morning and I can get streaming video from WWL TV pretty easily now.
You have no idea how comforting it is to hear real New Orleans accents, real New Orleans voices.
I don't know if it's just better connectivity today, or if my powerbook just wasn't dealing as well as my XP box at work, I don't know, but the quality is good and there's real information there, if not any new news.
And even as I speak, WWL lost all lights in their studio. Still on the air. I heard a guy on ESPN Radio this morning (the only station in Austin with any Katrina news during my commute) say that every single person at WWL TV has lost their home. And they stay at their jobs.
They. Fucking. Rock.
The big issue with my family now is the real estate situation in Baton Rouge. There is a panic/bubble going on there right now, people buying and renting houses and office space way above market price, sight unseen. Corporations are buying up huge blocks of housing for their employees. We're trying to sort out something for Mark but having trouble reaching him, since his cell phone is a New Orleans number and thus useless, so we're playing constant phone tag on the hotel voice mail in Houston.
Governor is holding a prayer service on TV right now.
Posted by ray at August 31, 2005 8:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: [baton rouge | katrina | new orleans ]
Comments
Tell your brother to get his butt to Best Buy or Circuit City or just about any drug store, HEB, or Randall's and purchase one of those cheap pay-as-you-go phones from Virgin or Cellular One. Get a local number, use it for the time being, and get rid of the thing in a month or two. No contracts, and the phones cost less than $100. Defintiely a good stop-gap solution.
Christ, Blanco just announced the mandatory evacuation of New Orleans due to the flooding, and I saw Nagin speaking on GMA this morning saying that his best case estimates are 12-16 weeks until people can return to the city.
So many people just don't grasp the simple fact that suddenly we have the equivalent of a third world country in our midst, and hundreds of thousands of our own citizens are its population.
Posted by: Gregg P. at August 31, 2005 9:22 AM
I don't grasp that we have the equivalent of a third world country in our midst.. Gregg's comment kind of make me ill. It's all so sad and frustrating that there is not really any way I can help
Posted by: melanie at August 31, 2005 12:30 PM
(and that I'm so clueless about what's going on in the world right now)
Posted by: melanie at August 31, 2005 12:36 PM
I don't mean to make anyone feel any worse, Melanie -- I swear. I've been talking very bluntly with people about how bad this is, though, simply because so many folks have sort of shrugged this off since (so far) the body count is low, as is the amount of factual data available to the media. People need to understand just how bad this situation is, and they need to stay focused on this so that people will loosen their pursestrings enough to help pay for the aid that the people of NOLA need to survive the next few weeks and months. I think the "third world country" phrase works, just because it elicits exactly the sort of response you describe -- and it should.
Posted by: Gregg P. at August 31, 2005 12:36 PM
You're dead on with the third world country description, Gregg. It's exactly what it's looking like down there, and that needs to be said. This scale of distaster has reduced a modern america city to primitive, hellish conditions over night; and it's not going to get better without a massive intervention.
I've never seen anything on this scale. If I really thought I could do something useful there I'd be in my 4x4 heading for the flood zone right now.
Posted by: Karl Elvis at August 31, 2005 2:39 PM
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