What You See On TV ..is the Tip of the Iceberg.. It is much worse..

Watched the coverage on TV tonight with a few of my older kids who came over.

The son in Miami Shores lost power today during the mini-hurricane we had around 3pm. My daughter said they had 3 inches of rain INSIDE the school flooding into the classrooms. Not sure what the heck that was about ... just the heavens opened up and poured. Maybe the heavens were crying. Or maybe the heavens were warning us that the season is just beginning. Either way.. he is sleeping home and was watching coverage with me.

All I can say is this.. what you see is the tip of the iceberg. The reality of the situation is really more than most people could comprehend anyway.

There are dead bodies trapped in homes..the death count will go higher and higher day by day..week by week..this won't be over for a long time.

People ARE running around the streets with guns trying to protect their belongings and hoping the water doesn't rise in their streets and they have homes left to protect or they may have to be airlifted from their rooftops and leave the guns behind.

Imagine quite a few guns have been looted and they are running around trying to protect what they looted from someone else watching them.

It's not pretty.

People in the Superdome are watching the walking wounded and people on stretchers being brought in. Now.. put yourself in their place. They have been in that place for 4 days now? And, they are not as aware of what is going on outside.. they have little light at night, very hot humid air, no real food to speak of besides enough to get by.. noisy kids, people coughing.. people bitching.. people panicking and they want out and are told the water is rising. They can do the math and are wondering how they are getting out of there.. and then they start moving people in on stretchers and who are injured telling over tales of the outside. Oh, and the toilets aren't working.. they are filled.. not a picnic. Panic is setting in. I'd go crazy.. just thinking on it makes me go crazy and I am not claustrophobic..then again..they have a hole in the roof.. two..

The city is to be evacuated.. officially.

How??? I-10 is gone and highway 90 is out.. how do they plan on evacuating it?? Heard talk of using aircraft carriers like ferries.. is that possible? OR rumor.. What is rumor and what isn't?

Are the floating bodies old dead bodies or new dead bodies? Rumors floating about.

And.. personally tired of hearing reporters on occasion making fun of New Orleans being built there or with sarcasm in their voices say things like.. not sure of the quote..I did not write it down. "something about these people. southern ground....they insist on living here on the edge of the water" Lots of "theys" and "these people." Well ..this could have been avoided not by moving the town to Nebraska but by the town fixing a problem they knew existed back in the early 1980s when the first studies were done.. No one wanted to spend the money. No one wanted to be the one to make the decision. No one wanted to DO anything. A common illness in America...not specifically a Southern Trait.

Has anyone fixed the subways? They were made how long ago? They keep patching them up and they keep adding layers to Atlantic Avenue Station in Brooklyn.. one day it will collapse from the shear weight of additions and construction workers.. in their ongoing rearranging the station. It is an OLD system.

I heard it said today that NO new oil refineries have been built in the last 20 years..

The space shuttle was built in the late 1970s. You wouldn't own a car from then and drive it unless you were using it for Car Shows.

We maintain and hope our luck doesn't run out. Usually.. 9 times out of 10.. 99 out of 100 it happens.

Tell me please about all of "those people" up north who live in towns in the Mid-West that suddenly one summer or after the snow melts in the spring have those horrible floods. They know they live where it "could" flood but it doesn't.. rarely.. usually it happens to someone else's river.

This did not happen because New Orleans is built too low. It happened because the dikes ..damns.. were not built or fixed back in the early 1980s when they first knew there was a problem. I wish I had the newspaper I read that we bought while driving across the I-10. It was a FRONT PAGE story warning of the whole town being flooded if a strong hurricane were to hit and it outlined this very disaster in detail.

And.. there is no monopoly on stupidity. Miami's new financial district is built ON the water.. with barely room to stroll at lunch behind the buildings.. 10 ..20 ..30..40 story high buildings.. with a bank from every country. The new area to the north of the old Omni is being built up with cranes everywhere.. right on the water..big high-rises with wall to wall window views.. ceiling to floor.. they are called names like BLUE.. WATER FRONT.. etc.. lofts being sold starting at $600,000 or 2 Million being bought mostly by South Americans who are investing in America God Bless their South American Rich Hearts.

WE are over crowding the water front and gambling on life the way gamblers gambled in the water front casinos.

Neil Frank used to go door to door in newly built subdivisions and condos that were built on the water's edge and ask the builders.. posing as a potential buyer about what would happen IF a hurricane hit. After being told over and over they were in a hurricane proof zone.. and all the reasons it wasn't a problem he would take out photos.. of that same area..same lot after it had been hit by a hurricane..old photos.

The man ran the Hurricane Center back when Miami was being built up..when Condo Canyon on Collins was built and he saw those condos falling into the sea if a Katrina type storm surge was to have hit like it hit Bay St. Louis and Pass Christian.. and he lectured and complained and educated and he moved on.. sometimes in life we have to move on.

A lesson many were learn this week along the Gulf.

My kids ask where will they go?

They ask if we would move back here?

I tell them .. no. We rent. If we had such a storm and we survived we would .. go somewhere else. I would probably send a few kids up north to older siblings. (hello siblings reading this) and figure out what to do.. Sort of humbling for them to deal with until the 13 year old figured she could move to New York ...before high school. And, their father is there.. worst comes to worst I'd let him figure out what we would do.

What would you do?

This is not a problem of those stubborn Southerners who love to live along the water.

The water was America's highway inland..it still is. That is why it is called a PORT.

Every major city on the East Coast is there because there was a river.

How do you think people got up to St. Paul.. the Mighty Mississippi.

Yes.. I love the South. I love Southern Nights. I love Southern Boys. Smile.. I love Southern Food. Southern Flowers. Southern College Football. I love so many things about the South. So many things about my Grandma Mary.. something so special about Grandma Mary and her soft southern accent that sounded like honey. And, my Uncle who loved okra and had a great Florida Cracker accent and told folksy stories about the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.

If the New Madrid Fault were to wake up suddenly tomorrow..and shake, rattle and roll.. would people say what kind of crazy people build a city on a fault line that can go off at 8.0??? Because it has..not so long ago..

And, San Francisco was rebuilt.

Manhattan didn't stop being Manhattan because we are afraid someone will blow up the Empire State Building.

It is our nature. We are as a friend told me.. resilient creatures.

It is humbling...upsetting and frustrating.

And, the drama is just beginning.

And..so is the hurricane season.

No..don't run away thinking you will move to Dallas..it gets Twisters.

Not a place on this planet that doesn't get something.. so buckle your seat belts. we are in for a rough September.

Bobbi