Photo from MG Miller Facebook post
Reposting this from last night. And adding this update to the mix.
ByFrom there, the organizations can arrange safe transport for donated items.
Looking for ways to help pets? You can find those specific needs by clicking here.
Out-of-state and looking to mail items? Get that info here.
Volunteer Louisiana is another source for those looking for state-wide opportunities to volunteer or donate funds. The state-run website includes links and information on a variety of organizations.
Photo from Jeffrey Major Facebook post
My Facebook page has been full of tragic photos, so I asked Louisiana commenter jacy if she could put together information on donations and general information.
Photo from MG Miller Facebook post
While the news is preoccupied with Hillary’s emails and Donald Trump’s racist world salad of the day, Louisiana is drowning. I’m here in the middle of it, and I’m telling you that this is a genuine, epic disaster that is still unfolding. It’s hard to describe the scope of it, but here are some numbers:
11 confirmed dead.
40,000 homes destroyed
30,000 people rescued by boat, helicopter, and high water vehicle
20 parishes (that’s a county if you’re not in Louisiana) have been so far declared federal disaster areas.
Denham Springs (pop. 10,000) 90% underwater. More towns, large and small, devastated.
There are more than 20,000 people in shelters across the area. (That doesn’t count people who have been displaced and have been taken in by friends, relatives, strangers with an extra cot, or are staying in hotels)
Uncounted business, large and small, completely flooded or damaged enough that it will be weeks before they reopen.
4 days of closed Interstates, so no movement of supplies or people in or out of the area.
30 feet above flood stage for the Amite and Comite Rivers, which has no historical precedent. Some of the rivers will not crest until Wednesday. Smaller tributaries won’t crest until the coming weekend.
The Baton Rouge metro area is home to 830,000 people – and it has been brought to a standstill.
Tens of thousands of displaced critters – the Lamar Dixon Expo Center, which has a giant livestock barn, is full to the seams with dogs and cats and other animals plucked from the flood waters, stacked in kennels awaiting a reunion with their owners.
I’ve heard it said that the this hasn’t come to the forefront of the national consciousness because it was a storm that didn’t have a name. No hurricane, not even a tropical storm. But in many ways the fact that it wasn’t a recognized storm system increased the scope of the disaster. You see, it was just some rain. But it didn’t stop. It didn’t stop for days, just sat over Southern Louisiana and inundated it. Nobody was prepared. Nobody saw it coming. They’re calling it a once-in-a-thousand-years event. And because it’s flooding places that have NEVER flooded, a lot of people didn’t have flood insurance.
And on the national news, the few minutes dedicated to it almost make it seem like a passing human interest story. Charming little stories of the “Cajun Navy” out in their bateaux, paddling up and down what used to be neat residential streets and plucking people and pets out of the water. What you don’t know is that these people, and a lot of the first responders, are out there with little or no sleep, without eating or stopping, because their homes are already lost and they don’t have any place to go back to. So they just keep going forward, ferrying more lost people and animals to the nearest patch of dry land.
It’s overwhelming. If you want to help, there are a couple things you can do. First of all, spread the story. This is a major disaster – close to a Katrina-level disaster. (And I lived through Katrina too, so I have a reference point.) If you are anywhere close, volunteer. If you want to donate, the Red Cross is one way.
My suggestions:
- If you want to find a way to volunteer or donate visit http://volunteerlouisiana.gov/
- Second Harvest Food Bank does good work: https://give.no-hunger.org/checkout/donation?eid=91189
- This happened just as school was about to start and many classrooms were destroyed or damaged. I have several friends who belong to the Associated Professional Educators of Louisiana, and they have a disaster relief fund here to help teachers throughout the area replace their supplies: https://apel.site-ym.com/donations/donate.asp?id=14775
- The Denham Springs Animal Shelter is the only municipal no-kill shelter in the area. Their facilities were totally destroyed, and it was only through the efforts of their staff that they got the animals out as the floodwaters were rushing in. They have a Go Fund Me page here: https://www.gofundme.com/2jdh3xg4 (You can also visit the website of Louisiana SPCA for more suggestions on how to help other critters throughout the area.)
I was very fortunate to be located in one of the few areas in Baton Rouge that did not flood at all, but there are tens of thousands of people who are devastated. The extent of the loss of life, loss of property, damage, and destruction won’t be clear for a week or more, when the flooding stops and the waters recede. Keep the people of Southern Louisiana in your thoughts.
Devastating photos, if you click on the photo links you should be able to see many more without a FB account. Meanwhile An Inconvenient Truth is streaming on both HULU and Netflix. But hey, Al Gore is fat, so it doesn’t matter, right?
I’m in meetings most of the rest of the day, but I’ll check back and see if you need any other information. Add any updates to the comments as you get them. – TaMara
CONGRATULATIONS!
Where’s FEMA? The Feds?
Christ, DO NOT let this be a repeat of Katrina on a Dem president’s watch.
Punchy
Amazing that this storm could dump more rain than a severe hurricane. Minus the insane winds, natch, but it’s rarely the winds that cause so much damage. Basically, this is the equivalent of getting hit by a major ‘cane, but without much of the publicity and weather pr0n that accompanies those Cat 4’s. That likely means LA will soon be forgotten for anyone not living in a parish or speaking Creole.
peach flavored shampoo
@CONGRATULATIONS!: Unpossible. In an election year, with a Dem pres and Dem govnah, I suspect this region will get as much assistance as possible. Caveat: unless Congress intentionally blocks it, attempting to “hurt” the WH, because everything is political and fuck the poor Negros and their houses (wait, whites are affected, too? HOLD ON…..let’s rethink this!)
/end rant
OldDave
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Here’s a New Orleans Times-Picayune story on FEMA assistance.
sherparick
@CONGRATULATIONS!: They declared several parishes disaster areas 3 days ago. FEMA works through state governments and the cots, water, and food being supplied to evacuees often done by FEMA contractors. As far aid and rebuilding assistance, they can’t do much until the water starts going down.
Louisiana’s politicians, oil industry, and most of the folks now sleeping on cots might not believe in “climate change” and “global warming,” but apparently the climate and sea does not care whether they believe it or not, but will act in accordance with atmospheric physics. https://www.skepticalscience.com/extreme-weather-global-warming.htm
lowercase steve
I have a bad feeling we are going to be seeing a lot of “unprecedented” and “thousand year ____” weather events in the coming decades.
raven
I gave to the Denham Animal Shelter last night. I keep looking at their gofundme page and, even though people seem to be giving all the time, the amount doesn’t seem to move much.
eta Well that was wrong, it is moving.
raven
NOLA page on how to help
CONGRATULATIONS!
@lowercase steve: Yeah, we are. The media loves to blather on about “climate change” as being something that’s coming soon. Well, I’m a SoCal native and you know what? My climate changed. Already. Not as “will” but “has”. 1996 was when we got our first humid summer. 2005 was when they became permanent. Couple of years after that, it stopped raining here, as you may have noticed by all the news footage of everything being on fire here at the moment.
Southern Beale
I seem to recall a lot of Katrina survivors relocated to Baton Rouge. So sad. At least this time people haven’t been forced to abandon their pets because the shelters won’t take them. If I couldn’t take my best friend with me to the shelter it would be like dying twice.
Keith P.
I feel bad for that kid on the roof. Right now on the Gulf Coast, if it’s not pouring rain, it’s blistering hot with a ton of humidity. I won’t even get on my roof to clean gutters right now.
Dennis
@lowercase steve: I’ve already heard of about a dozen “thousand year storms” in the last couple of years.
sherparick
Meanwhile, in other news that the National Media (a/k/a the 24-hour Trump Channel) is ignoring, approximately double the number of people in California are fleeing their homes because of fire as who have been forced from their homes by flood. http://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/california-wildfire-forces-evacuation-thousands (and well below the fold at the Times) see http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/17/us/california-fire-san-bernardino-blue-cut.html?module=WatchingPortal®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&pgType=Homepage&action=click&mediaId=wide&state=standard&contentPlacement=2&version=internal&contentCollection=www.nytimes.com&contentId=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2016%2F08%2F17%2Fus%2Fcalifornia-fire-san-bernardino-blue-cut.html&eventName=Watching-article-click
I note that the weather will always produce floods, droughts, and fires. What has changed is the frequency and severity of events. The odds are no longer 1 in every 1000 years or 1 in every 100 years. Now it is more like 1 in 10.
Jay C
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
I’m sure they’re on the job, but I get the questions. Usually, in big natural disasters (hurricanes, especially), we see FEMA out in front on the news every night making sure that help is getting done (and being seen to be done). I haven’t seen/heard a lot of mentions of Federal assistance on news reports of the LA floods, so I guess it can give the impression that they aren’t doing much (a la Katrina). But I seriously doubt that FEMA is just standing around…
Pogonip
Can’t speak for TV, but on the corporate-propaganda–er, news–sites, Donald Trump’s antics are getting more coverage than this. Which is appalling.
mali muso
Thanks for highlighting this. My mom’s side of the family all live in the BTR area, but so far I haven’t heard of any of them actually getting totally flooded out yet. My aunt’s house is barricaded with a huge wall of sandbags thanks to some helpful neighbors. Their church is being used as a center for refugees of the flood and a FEMA staging area. Pretty crazy stuff. I feel like saying something snarky about how it’s a good thing they’re smart enough not to believe the “lie”beral media and the climate change hoax, but um, yeah…wrong time for that.
Matt McIrvin
@lowercase steve: Already happening. “Thousand-year storm” assumes a constant baseline.
lurker dean
thanks for this, info, esp the helpful (though sad) summary by jacy of the scope of the devastation. i posted the donation info link and jacy’s info to my fb, hopefully some will donate or at least learn more about how bad it is.
catclub
@Jay C:
Governor Bel Edwards made his statements yesterday with Fugate ( Head of FEMA) by his side.
raven
UGA flies paralyzed Southern U player and family away from flood.
Go Dawgs!
Timurid
@Keith P.:
If this had happened in California or on the East Coast, that picture would be going viral like Captain Trips.
But it didn’t.
#whathappensinFishtownstaysinFishtown
Soprano2
I just looked at the Baton Rouge monthly climatological rainfall data for August, squinted, and said ‘Damn, is that one-day number really 11.24?”‘ Then I looked at another story and said “Fuck, 6 inches per hour! Holy hell!” No wonder those people are under so much water. I don’t want to think about what my job would be like for the next year if that happened here, because I work in the sewer dept. You haven’t lived until you’ve talked to someone with 4 ft of sewer water in their basement from a heavy rainfall. Yuck!
If this had happened on the coasts or near a major large city it would be all over the news. These things don’t get much coverage on the national news if they’re outside those major areas unless it’s a storm that’s been followed on the news for days, like Katrina. Remember a few years ago when Nashville flooded? How about Sioux City, IA, about 10 years ago? Nah, you probably don’t.
Another factor in the increasing damage these floods and fires cause to humans is the fact that we’re moving closer to where they occur. I’ve read that people are moving further and further into the areas where wildfires occur, places they wouldn’t have lived ten or twenty years ago.
Arclite
Here is a vid of a woman and her dog being rescued.
It was a close thing.
Mnemosyne
Reminder for folks who, like me, work for a giant corporation: many companies will match your charity donations, so check the official list and see if you can request a match. The list at my GEC is surprisingly granular (post-Orlando, it turned out that the GLBT center there had been approved for years) so don’t assume you have to donate to the Red Cross or a similar conglomerate to get matching funds.
r€nato
On the bright side, queer hater for pay Tony Perkins’ house got flooded. Feel free to visit his FB page and gloat about how this is proof of his god’s wrath and judgment on him.
Aleta
Thank you for the information and donation links.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Matt McIrvin:
Yeah, that 0.1% chance per year is based on historical data, which may no longer accurately reflect the local climate.
It’s possible for this to be a freak event that isn’t representative of anything deeper, but you can’t know that immediately. In context of all the other changes in weather patterns we’re seeing, though, I’d expect that 0.1% chance to be revised.
Azelie
Here’s an Amazon Prime wishlist for the Louisiana SPCA to help with shelters in affected areas:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/2DO835VM28S4Q/ref=cm_wl_sortbar_v_page_1
seaboogie
Thank you Anne Laurie for re:FPing this, and thanks also to @jacy for painting a picture of the situation with words and numbers, and the useful links. I’ve donated to the critters and the kids (teachers’ fund).