Napa

The more the news comes in, the worse it looks. Here is a reasonable summary, with a CNN video. Here is a map. I am waiting anxiously for California friends and bloggers to check in, but I suspect those in the affected area may have other things to do, and may not have net connections... I won't assume the worst about them until I hear it definitively. Everybody please take care.

Sandy: What A Mess!

I spent an hour over dinner watching Diane Sawyer ramble on about the bravery of the rescuers... and the news crews... and it occurred to me that both groups signed up for this duty, many of them years ago. Some of them are brave indeed; I don't mean to minimize the dangers they face. I've wandered through thigh-deep water, pushing or carrying my bicycle (which I had ridden to work through the same park a few hours earlier), and you do really say your prayers that there are no downed electrical lines or poisonous snakes right where you happen to be.

This storm is bad enough; no doubt about it. But it is not worse than, say, Katrina, which got a lot less attention from the media and scarcely any from the feral gummint, thanks to the asswipe Republican president we had at the time, GeeDubya, who doubtless let NOLA drown because it was a "Democratic city." Tonight's most ironic line was a quote from Rmoney, who rambled a bit on what he would have had FEMA do in this circumstance, were he president. This is the same FEMA whose basic functions he would have offloaded (so he said a few weeks ago) onto individual state governments, who frankly mostly cannot afford to do what really needs to be done. But he expected us to forget he said that.

Dog help all of you who are in Sandy's path. Follow these simple rules.

• Rule One of Big Storms is the same as for Boy Scouts: "be prepared." 
• Rule Two is harder: "Don't do anything stupid." 

I'll never forget the story (true; I saw it on the local TV news) of the woman who worked in the Texas Medical Center, and tried to get home in the early part of Tropical Storm Allison, the biggest flood event Houston has ever known. She made it on sky bridges and elevated passageways from her hospital to the parking garage where she was parked... in the basement. Power was still working at this point. She unthinkingly got on the elevator, pressed 'B', settled in, rode to the bottom and waited for the door to open... only to be slammed full force against the back elevator wall by a wall of water that did not relent. Of course she asphyxiated.

I'll say it again: "don't do anything stupid."

This has been a PSA...