Harry:

He will never be hired by MSM. There is too much truth in his pictures and writing.

The picture of the prophet walking down the street yelling "Hell is coming" is kinda freaky.

The pictures inside the Winn-Dixie market are incredible. Just 3 days into the hurricane and people had already picked it clean.

I think he ended his hope of a MSM career with the comment about being afraid to be one of two grains of salt in a sea of pepper. That's RACIST, sir!

I'm still waiting for an example of someone that tried to get out and couldn't. We have a host of blanket statements that many people were in that situation, but every specific case I have seen thus far has involved people choosing to stay there and ride it out (and then later realizing that was a mistake).

I haven't read a ton of stories on this, so I'm not claiming there is no story like that out there, but I do think 75+% of the people who stayed did so by choice.

The Winn-Dixie picture reminded me of the Winn-Dixie I went shopping at after Hurricane Andrew. The difference was: we were all shopping, not looting. Even though the power was off the manager had opened the store and they were taking checks and marking everything down by hand. There was looting in other parts of Miami but it wasn't widespread.

"There was looting in other parts of Miami but it wasn't widespread"

cough*libertycity*cough

Cough Liberty City is a neighborhood in North Miami cough. And that area suffered little damage from Andrew. Most of the looting occurred in poor black neighborhoods in south Dade County, mainly in Cutler Ridge and Goulds. The Liberty City looting you seem to be referring to occurred during the riots in 1980, which were unconnected to any weather phenomenon.

For the record, I was born and raised in Miami and lived there until 1999. The Miami riots occurred the year I graduated high school. I lived in Westwood Lakes (an area just north of Kendall) during Andrew.

Andrea: I saw your very very favorite actor last night on Conan O'Brian, talking about his very very favorite website.

Andrea,

My memory isn't all that it used to be but I do remember Andrew and his aftermath. I lived in southern Palm Beach County so our lives were minimally disrupted but we did physically participate in the relief effort in Dade County.Looting was widespread and included Liberty City. The areas most affected by the storm actually saw less looting because many homeowner stayed and defended their property.

The 'cough' thing was an attempt at humor given the sensitivity of these issues lately. If I offended you, I apologize.

Brew,

Pravda in Paradise (i.e. the Palm Beach Post) is not a reliable source. That rag routinely distorts the hell out of news.

The Sun-Sentinel in Ft. Lauderdale is less apt to vet its news through a hard leftist filter.

How times change. I left West Boca in 1997 to return to the Land of Cheese. In 1997 the Palm Beach Post was the conservative newspaper in the area :) No offenses but I miss South Florida like I would miss a bad migraine.

Have just finished wading through this story. I agree, it is very good work, and puts some things in a very different perspective (at least for me, I'm a busy moron - you all no doubt have paid attention to all this).

Doesn't it seem like a long time between the hurricane hitting NO and the flooding?

I was surprised to see any Guard troops / vehicles at all on Wednesday, Aug 31. Am I understanding his timeline correctly?

The flooding seems like a post hurricane surprise, not the "it was a Cat 4/5 storm so no matter what it was going to flood NO" story I've been reading about for 2 weeks.

Did I just misunderstand this? It wouldn't be the first time, but this was a serious reorientation for me.

And the stuff about going to the convention center to be evacuated - that's another contentious point. I can't find diddley squat as to whether this was supposed to be one of the 12 refuges of last resort, but our reporter here tells us on Wed (or Thur) he was being told by multiple sources (police, 'rescue' teams) that buses would pick up people there and take them out, so go there.

That sound right?

Does it sound coordinated?

Brewfan: I remember there was some looting in Liberty City when the power was out. But it wasn't done all over Miami. True Miami is a much more spread-out town than New Orleans. There was no looting in my neighborhood, which was a working-class to middle-class mostly Hispanic neighborhood.

Great post, Ace. Alvaro's work is one more demonstration that news reporting as we've known it is obsolete. Maybe Geraldo and Shep can find suitable future employment as circus clowns. Good riddance to them.

Sorry--great post, HARRY.

The photo album has been removed. Any alternate sources?

Anybody got the pictures in their temporary internet files folder ? I have a hundred or so - no id, date, or comments though. Am looking for more.