Is it raining in New Orleans?

The big story over the weekend was Katrina. The Category 5 hurricane heading straight for New Orleans. This is the biggest storm this town will have seen in its residents' lifetime. So big, they called for an evacuation of the city. It will be catastrophic and devastating when it is finished.

So, first - This was on the news all weekend, and there were massive amounts of people leaving. So what remained are the people lacking common sense. People who decided that evacuation just wasn't for them. I actually heard someone report that people there were sick of evacuating every year, and they just weren't going to do it. What kind of sense does this make? It's not like they are being told to do household chores - something that people get sick of doing. It's being suggested that they save their life. If they don't want to evacuate, then I suggest that they do it one more time, and then move.

One gentlemen decided he was staying because if it was his time to die, then it was his time to die... again, I don't dispute that everyone may have "their time," but at the same point, should you put yourself in harm's way to tempt it? "I'm going to dress as a deer and crawl around in the woods on opening day of hunting season. Don't worry, I will only get shot if it's 'my time.'" They were talking about a surge of over 20 feet of water, for a city already below sea level... just get out, man.

Then I heard analysis - and the most disturbing was this: They do not bury the deceased underground there. Because it it under sea level, and the ground could not handle it. So they have above ground crypts. With that type of surge and wind power, someone was talking about bodies - corpses -floating around, and actually eventually contaminating the water supply. Ew.

So, a Category 5 hurricane Katrina is heading for New Orleans, one that will devastate the city, probably produce a death count, even cause the currently deceased to be uprooted from their tombs. People are fleeing the city in thousands. There's only one thing to do: Send a weather correspondent and a camera man to stand in the middle of it.

This has to be one of the worst jobs ever. The topper of it all is they stick these people smack dab in the middle of a storm that was called "catastrophic," and everyone asks the same question: "What's it like?" This morning, while watching the news, one correspondent was standing in the middle of it; wind blowing so hard you could barely hear him; and was saying how the rain felt like thousands of needles hitting his face. Wow - that's painful... and someone made him go there.

And they end with "stay safe." Uh-huh. Now if anyone was really concerned about this guy's safety, they wouldn't have sent him there. Couldn't they have set up cameras around the place and have people comment on them from a remote location? "Look at that rain. Man, I'm glad I'm not in that."

Because that's exactly what I'm saying.