check out the email reports at CNN (and videos)

[bobbieinok]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WEATHER/08/30/katrina.emails/index.html

one example

Thirteen years ago, a hurricane turned my life upside down. I was 15 at the time when Andrew came plowing through Homestead. I remember my mom telling me to pack only necessities because we were evacuating. My mom's husband and one of my brothers were staying behind to keep watch over the house but my mom and I were leaving just to be safe. When we woke up the next morning we were trying to get any information we could, from the radio or TV, anything. News reports slowly trickled in that Homestead had been destroyed. We came home a few days later and driving down there was almost unbearable. I remember spray paint on all the houses with insurance information. I remember all the trees that were left standing with no branches. When we finally arrived at our house, I was speechless. The outer walls of our house were standing, but that was it. The insides were ripped to shreds and there was pink insulation all over everything. That storm tore our lives apart and there was really nothing we could do about it. Every time I see a storm on TV now, I get a little jumpy. I feel so much heartache for what I know the people of Louisiana and Mississippi are about to experience. It's nothing you can imagine until it's your things scattered all over the lawn. Something that you hope your children will never have to go through and hope that you will not have to go through that much devastation more than once in your lifetime.

[txaslftist]

1. Yet curiously, when our bombs inflict equal devastation in Iraq...

...it's collateral damage.