Be sure to check out blogHouston.net where Anne Linehan and Kevin Whited are doing an excellent job of chronicling the local resources in support of Houston’s extraordinary Hurricane Katrina relief effort. Anne and Kevin have several posts relating to the relief effort, and they will be adding additional ones over the next several days. Check out their site periodically for updates. A great organization job by two of Houston’s best bloggers.
Update: Local blog The Lone Star Times is liveblogging from the Astrodome, providing a fascinating resource for keeping up with the unfolding developments within the largest refugee camp to be established on U.S. soil in many, many years. The Chronicle has also started up the Domeblog that is providing periodic updates from the Astrodome.

The following description of downtown New Orleans was posted about an hour ago from the Interdictor blog, the author of which is securing a building in downtown New Orleans. The description sounds as if it is coming straight out of a scene from The Road Warrior:

“Situation is critical.
I’m not leaving, so stop asking. I’m staying. I am staying until this shitstorm has blown itself out. Period. End of discussion.
Now for some updates:
1. Been too busy to debrief the police officer, so that will come later. Low priority now.
2. Buses loading people up on Camp Street to take refugees to Dallas, or so the word on the street (literally) is.
3. Dead bodies everywhere: convention center, down camp street, all over.
4. National Guard shoving water off the backs of trucks. They’re just pushing it off without stopping, people don’t even know it’s there at first — they drop it on the side in debris, there’s no sign or distribution point — people are scared to go near it at first, because the drop points are guarded by troops or federal agents with assault rifles who don’t let people come near them, which scares people off. It is a mess. When people actually get to the water, they are in such a rush to get it that one family left their small child behind and forget about him until Sig carried him back to the family.
It’s raining now and I guess that’s a relief from the heat. It’s hot as hell down there in the sun. Crime is absolutely rampant: rapes, murders, rape-murder combinations.
I have really cut back answering IMs. Not enough time. I apologize people.
In case anyone in national security is reading this, get the word to President Bush that we need the military in here NOW. The Active Duty Armed Forces. Mr. President, we are losing this city. I don’t care what you’re hearing on the news. The city is being lost. It is the law of the jungle down here. The command and control structure here is barely functioning. I’m not sure it’s anyone’s fault — I’m not sure it could be any other way at this point. We need the kind of logistical support and infrastructure only the Active Duty military can provide. The hospitals are in dire straights. The police barely have any capabilities at this point. The National Guard is doing their best, but the situation is not being contained. I’m here to help in anyway I can, but my capabilities are limited and dropping. Please get the military here to maintain order before this city is lost.
Doing what we can, this is Outpost Crystal getting back to work.”

In another development, CNN is reporting that the town of Waveland, Mississippi — a town of 7,000 thirty-five miles east of New Orleans — has been destroyed completely. The CNN story includes a grim video that indicates that there was a huge — but still undetermined at this point — loss of life in Waveland during the storm.
Update: The Chronicle’s Eric Berger passes along this daunting description of the conditions in New Orleans from Dr. Richard Bradley, a professor at both the University of Texas Houston Medical School and Baylor College of Medicine, who is assigned to the elite Texas Task Force One Urban Search and Rescue team that was deployed to the News Orleans disaster area on the evening of Saturday, Aug. 27, a day before the hurricane hit the area.

As the effects of the worst natural disaster of our time continued to become more apparent with each passing hour, Houston opened its arms to tens of thousands of New Orleans citizens who lost virtually everything but their lives.
Houston’s venerable Astrodome — the subject of a local debate over what to do with aging landmark — was prepared yesterday to receive as many as 25,000 evacuees from New Orleans, many of whom have spent the past five days inside the deteriorating Louisiana Superdome in downtown New Orleans. The evacuees are expected to begin heading for Houston this morning in a caravan of almost 500 buses provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As if to underscore the desperation of the situation, two of the three first buses to reach the Astrodome from New Orleans early this morning were “renegade” buses that did not contain evacuees from the Superdome. The Astrodome went ahead and took in the evacuees from all the buses, anyway. This earlier post provides links to blogs that provide up-to-the minute updates on the situation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Unfortunately, the chaos in New Orleans has delayed the evacuation of the Superdome on Thursday morning. The Associated Press is reporting the following as of 7:15 a.m.:

The evacuation of the Superdome was suspended Thursday after shots were fired at a military helicopter, an ambulance official overseeing the operation said. No immediate injuries were reported.
“We have suspended operations until they gain control of the Superdome,” said Richard Zeuschlag, head of Acadian Ambulance, which was handling the evacuation of sick and injured people from the Superdome.
He said that military would not fly out of the Superdome either because of the gunfire and that the National Guard told him that it was sending 100 military police officers to gain control.
“That’s not enough,” Zeuschlag. “We need a thousand.”

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