As of noon, local time, the Louisiana death toll from Katrina is 832. This brings the total number of dead to about 1040. Still a lot less than anticipated, but a lot more than needed to be if…and there are so many ifs that can be filled in here. If the levee system had been updated and fortified to withstand a category 5 hurricane, if environmental degradation had been halted and reversed, if FEMA had not been crippled and had been under the leadership of a professional and not a politcal lackey, if there had been better organization in the entire evacuation process, and so on.

On another note, Louisiana is trying to bring patients and doctors together. Displaced patients and physicians can reach each other by going to www.mdtechnologies.com. Physicians can go to this website to their new contact information or they can call 225-343-7169 or 1-800-290-1657 if they do not have Internet access.

What do two hurricanes have in common with the Manhattan Project? For those of you unfamiliar with the name, no, it has nothing to do with urban renewal in NYC or Mayor Guiliani’s prostate. It was the code name for the atomic bomb development, during WW II.

So if you’re curious, Kaslog explains the connection. Very thought provoking, if I do say so myself.

At least the authorities are learning and have learned something from the disastrous preparation and response to the aftermath of Katrina. And admitting you made mistakes and attempts to do it right this time may save lives. For example, the idiocy about not evacuating people with their pets. Of course, many said that they would not leave their pets. But this time, the powers that be seem to have gotten their head out of their underwear and are using common sense.

People love their pets. To many, pets are the only family they have left in the world and possibly the only friend.

At the Galveston Community Center, where 1,500 evacuees had been put on school buses to points inland, another lesson from Katrina was put into practice: To overcome the reluctance of people to evacuate without their pets, they were allowed to bring them along in crates.

“It was quite a sight,” Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said. “We were able to put people on with their dog crates, their cat crates, their shopping carts. It went very well.”

It went very well. So how hard is it to have compassion for people who may be losing their home and everything that they own, to say nothing about their job and source of income–and allow them to evacuate with their pets?

Anyway, Galveston is just about a ghost town now. Read the article at the Galveston Daily News.