Gulf coast residents tell their stories live on the Web

[steve2470]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-08-29-katrina-blogs_x.htm

By Mark Memmott, USA TODAY
The Internet was a limitless source of information and talk about Hurricane Katrina on Monday, from eyewitness reports to prayers for those in its path. (Related story: Still-powerful Hurricane Katrina moves north)

Kaye Trammell. of Baton Rouge, set up a Web log, or blog, to let her family and friends know what was happening. "It sounds like someone is standing outside both my door & all my windows & shaking them. Hard," she wrote early Monday morning. She was one of a handful of people who kept "blogging" even as the storm knocked out power to their homes.

"I've got to" keep blogging, she said around midday Monday, talking on her battery-powered BlackBerry wireless e-mail and cell-phone handset, which she used to update her blog. "If I'm not posting (friends and family) will freak out, thinking something happened." Her Web address: www.hurricaneupdate.blogspot.com.. Trammell, 29,. is a communications professor at Louisiana State University. (Related video: Katrina's aftermath)

At the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the newspaper's staff joined with reporters and editors from NOLA.com, an affiliated Web site, to produce stories and blogs about the hurricane. Dan. Shea, managing editor for news at the newspaper, said it could be a week or more before power is restored to the 265,000-circulation. newspaper's printing presses. In the meantime, it will post a daily, 20-page PDF file at www.nola.com and print copies of that report in Baton Rouge.


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