Chris Boese's Weblog

Katrina refugees in Tallahassee kicked out to make room for football fans

It appears the milk of human compassion is less than an inch deep.

Link: Inside Bay Area - Argus - News.

Article Last Updated: 09/01/2005 07:09:16 AM

Refugees must make room for football fans

By S.V. Date, COX NEWS SERVICE

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — First it was Hurricane Katrina chasing them away. Now it's college football fans.

Hundreds of refugees from Hurricane Katrina are being evicted from Tallahassee hotels to accommodate fans coming to town for the Miami-Florida State game Monday night.

"There is absolutely no compassion here whatsoever," Lynne Bernard wrote on a bulletin board on the Web site of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans. "The Hampton Inn in Tallahassee is pretty much throwing us out because of a football game."

A message left for the manager at the Hampton Inn was not returned, but other hoteliers said there was little they could do to help those who fled homes in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama because they had to honor long-standing reservations for the football weekend.

[...]

"This weekend has been booked for a couple of months," said Antwan Hinkle, the Quality Inn's front desk manager.

Hinkle said people who have planned trips for months would not take it well if they were told just days before the game that the hotel could not provide rooms. "We're going to have a whole bunch of angry people," he said.

Christian Heritage Church announced plans to open its doors for as many as 200 refugees for four nights starting Friday, then began referring people to the local chapter of the American Red Cross, which is planning to open shelters for as many as 3,000.

[...]

I guess folks in Tallahassee (home of the president's brother, the governor) have their priorities on straight, huh?

CNN correspondents' observations on the hurricane damage

I sort of OD'ed watching the long form TV programs tonight on Hurricane Katrina. It's just so awful, but I can't look away. I never could. It feels strange not to be working the story in the newsroom, I've been there for so many of the big ones.

Jeanne Meserve's reporting really struck me the other day, she had just become so emotionally involved, it was wrenching. And her observations here below are the ones that hit me the hardest as well. I always worry about her in those hurricanes, she's so tiny, she looks like she'd just blow away in the wind. When she was out in St Augustine in one of the big storms last year, I was wishing they'd just tie her down or something.

Link: CNN.com - CNN: Heartbreak and destruction in small towns and large - Aug 31, 2005.

New Orleans destruction recalls past tragedies

Posted: 4:12 p.m. ET
CNN's Jeanne Meserve in Baton Rouge, Louisiana recounting her time spent amid the destruction in New Orleans

On the way out of New Orleans, it looked like the dust bowl. You've seen the pictures of the dust bowl, of people piled onto the backs of tracks and moving their lives. That's what is happening here. It's extraordinary to witness.

I truly believe that apart from 9/11 this is one of the most significant events that has ever hit this country. Anybody who tells you this disaster is going to be rectified in a matter of months hasn't seen the situation.

People are carrying their children, trying to get them to safety. A woman coming down to the police, close to hysterics, saying, "My elderly mother is in a building over there, she needs dialysis. She can't get it. She is dying. Can you help me?"

And the police had to say, "There is absolutely nothing we can do. We don't have a precinct house. We don't have communication. There is absolutely nothing we can do for you."

That was amazing to me.

The other thing that struck me was the looting. The police were standing in the middle of the street and right in front of them stores were being ransacked. And they didn't even make an effort to stop it. I don't think they could, under the circumstances.

They were totally outnumbered. They couldn't call for any reinforcements. And frankly, the priority now isn't property. The priority has to be people and people's lives. The police are there protectively, I think, in case things escalate even further. But they are powerless. They're powerless in this situation.

We did see tree removal trucks, electric trucks. So help is beginning to come in.

[...]

So the tree removal trucks couldn't get a person who needed dialysis closer to medical help? I suppose, if they were clearing pathways to get emergency workers through, but if they were just clearing trees while PEOPLE were still in danger, I'd have real issues with that. I'd also have an issue with all those journalists standing around filing stories while people were calling out for help, but I know from Meserve's reporting that she went far beyond any such thing, helping people to the point that she was just emotionally wrung out. She just impresses the hell out of me.

New Orleans a refugee city

Posted: 3:46 p.m. ET
CNN's Jim Spellman in New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans has fast become a refugee city. Thousands and thousands of people are seeking shelter on the highway overpasses looking for some sort of help, some sort of information.

They are screaming out to us and anybody around for water and for help. They are looking for information and for a way to get out.

On the highway overpasses and underneath the highways as well, people are trying to find a spot for themselves.

[...]

This struck me on the television programs tonight too, all those people screaming for help. It has to be distressing. But arguing with the TV, as I like to do, I also found myself wondering if the apocalyptic landscape wouldn't have triggered more of a self preservation instinct in some people, as I imagine (here from my safe and comfortable distance) it would with me.

If I became homeless overnight in that landscape, I think those shopping carts are the way to go. But I can't imagine NOT leaving my house/rubble with whatever I could grab, extra shoes, a jacket, something to catch water when it rains. People were screaming for water, and then later the reporter observed that it had rained that kind of hot hard rain New Orleans often gets.

Rather than sitting and demanding help, why aren't more people making makeshift camps, water catchers, little shelters of scrounged stuff instead of acting like nothing could happen until help arrived? One woman admitted she was in a hurry to get out of her house, but didn't even think to take anything with her. The day late rising water would have afforded some opportunity to prepare to live as humans did before technology took care of so many of our needs.

Another woman on one of the programs tonight stood and demanded a FEMA trailer right now, complaining that she had to sleep on her brother's front porch.

Of course the need is great, but is her brother begrudging her houseroom, making her sleep on the porch? Immigrants to the US often think nothing of surviving with too many family members in a small space, and this was certainly a matter of survival. I supposed the brother's house could have been structurally damaged, so no one was sleeping inside, but it would have probably been cooler sleeping on the porch anyway.

I was just struck, in an unkind moment no doubt, by how ill-equipped so many of us are to live as people did even during the Depression, we are so dependent on technology. Even the reporters continually referred to not having electricity as "primitive." Yet for many in the rural U.S., there was no electricity for much of the past century, and Victorians had no electricity as well. I'm sure those people would bristle at the idea that they were being called "primitives."

New Orleans airport becomes makeshift hospital

Posted: 2:20 p.m. ET
CNN's Ed Lavandera in Kenner, Louisiana

I just spoke with one of the officials here who is in charge of organizing the entire logistical situation at the Louis Armstrong International Airport here in New Orleans. This is where over the last 12 hours a team of FEMA workers have been setting up a field hospital, one of about 40 or so that have been set up across the region.

To give you a sense of just how massive this operation is, consider that in the four major hurricanes that hit Florida last year there were never more than five of these field hospitals set up at any time.

[...]

That is about the most mind-boggling thing I've heard so far. Wow.

Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu's plea on TV to hotels to open up as Red Cross refugee housing was also telling. If that doesn't happen, people will run out of money and end up wandering the streets. Massive refugee camps would have to be set up, while the hotel rooms stood empty, waiting for paying customers. There's this massive outpouring of charity, but it will remain to be seen if real charity opens up somewhere where it could make the most difference, at the hotels and motels so many people have evacuated to.

New Orleans will be a ghost town, they're saying through December. An empty place with a broken down infrastructure. My god, that will be something like out of a freaky apocalypse movie.

New Orleans getting worse by the hour

Posted: 1:03 p.m. ET
CNN's John Zarella in New Orleans, Louisiana

[...]

In New Orleans, there's no sanitation any longer. The knee-deep water in the hotel lobby is just full of stench. It is a miserable, deteriorating situation in the city and it is growing worse by the hour and the water is rising.

The fact of the matter is this bowl, as they call it, is filling up. The estimates of time that it's going to take to get the water out of the bowl are three to six months. You could be sitting there in absolutely untenable conditions, in water that is filled with disease and germs, for months to come, walking through it, slogging through it.

With the looting that's going on and with the deteriorating sanitation conditions, it is a situation where you can't cover the story because you can't venture out from the hotel. It's so dangerous, one, because the water is getting higher, and two, because of the disease factor that is beginning. There's no food, there's no water.

I'm hearing they fear cholera. Hell, that even FEELS Victorian.

One man on TV righteously screamed about how long it took officials to come out and cover up his dead neighbor, out in the middle of the street, two days. I hollered right back at the TV on that one... WHY DIDN'T YOU GO OUT THERE AND COVER UP YOUR NEIGHBOR?! Sheesh. You needed an "official" to cover up the body of someone you knew?

Maybe we are MORE primitive, with our electricity, technology, and infrastructure dependencies.

Shreveport hospital in dire need

Posted: 12:36 p.m. ET
CNN's Deborah Feyerick in Shreveport, Louisiana

We had a conversation with one family who had left New Orleans. They are desperately trying to get in touch with their sister. She is a college nurse at the Memorial Medical Hospital on Napoleon Street. The story they told us of what is going on at that hospital is quite dramatic.

According to their sister, looters are trying to get into the hospital. There's no electricity. The nurses, the doctors and their families have virtually locked themselves into the medical center and they don't know when they are going to be able to get out.

The story they were telling us is that the hospital administration was telling the staff there it would be five days until they might be able to be rescued. They are telling us that people in the hospital are dying because there's no electricity.

One nurse walked outside to get a breath of fresh air. She was robbed at gunpoint. There were National Guard that was around the hospital, but apparently we are told they pulled out in order to help with the prisoner uprising that happened yesterday.

[...]

That is a horrific thing, and I'm hearing other similar stories. Hospitals under attack by armed gangs, folks inside fearing for their lives.

Hannah Arendt I think it was wrote about Mexico City after the devastating earthquake, about the spontaneous appearance of an organically democratized civil society, of people helping each other and pulling together in the complete absence of any kind of official help or relief. Maybe those observations were anomalous and not generalizable to the larger human condition.

Homes flattened in Biloxi

Posted: 12:15 p.m. ET
CNN's Ted Rowlands in Biloxi, Mississippi

Many structures along the Mississippi coast have been literally flattened by Hurricane Katrina.

It is difficult for search and rescue crews to wade through this. This is expanded over miles and miles, including some larger cities like Biloxi and smaller cities and townships.

Vast stretches have been flattened by Hurricane Katrina. The death toll continues to rise here. People have been trickling in against the advice of authorities to see if their homes withstood the hurricane.

[...]

This is one foreboding thought I had the day the hurricane came ashore and initial reports were far too innocuous. I thought, "No, this can't be true." I had the same feeling at work that Sunday of the Asian tsunami, knowing as an Alaskan that with a quake that big, there had to be a lot more we weren't yet aware of.

What I went through my mind with Katrina was, "Oh no, someplace is going to get 'Homesteaded.'" I wish I'd been wrong, but seeing the images of Gulfport, even though it is far worse than Andrew, I'm struck by the resemblance to the matchsticks Homestead, Florida was reduced to.

This was it, though. The one they've been predicting for many years, people who study the recent overdevelopment of coastal areas. At least one TV report did touch on that, the link from the severity of the devastation to the destruction of the marshes that provided something of a buffer zone for the worst of the storms.

The one thing that didn't happen that those doomsayers had warned of, the bullet we did dodge, related to the lack of adequate evacuation routes for the overpopulated newly developed coastal areas. The nightmare feared was that cars could have been backed up in a massive traffic jam for miles on the evacuation routes even as the storm was actually hitting, and the people in them would be swept away as well, like so many segments of those Gulf coastal bridges.

Water is pouring into the French Quarter

Coming from a broken levee at Lake Ponchartrain.

It looks like Gulfport got some of the "Homestead" treatment, and that's what I was bracing myself for yesterday. The first reports out of a devastating hurricane (or a tsunami) come from the less damaged areas, because little communication comes out of the areas of total devastation. Watching the images coming out of Katrina's aftermath this morning, that pattern seems to be holding.

Link: CNN.com - Katrina kills at least 55 in Mississippi - Aug 30, 2005.

Katrina kills at least 55 in Mississippi

New Orleans levee breaks; 80% of city flooded

Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Posted: 9:59 a.m. EDT (13:59 GMT)

[...]

New Orleans levee breaks

Water poured into New Orleans from Lake Pontchartrain after a two-block-long breach opened overnight in a section of a levee that protects the low-lying city.

Nagin had said that about 80 percent of the city was flooded and that some areas were under 20 feet of water. (Watch emotional account of New Orleans' devastation)

"My heart is heavy tonight," Nagin said in the interview on CNN affiliate WWL-TV. "I don't have any good news to share."

In the city's 9th Ward neighborhood, rescue efforts continued throughout the night, with authorities in boats plucking residents from submerged homes after water topped another levee.

CNN's Adaora Udoji, monitoring the rescue efforts, said authorities had ferried at least 500 people from their homes, flooded with as much as six feet of water. Some residents reported water rose so fast they did not have time to grab their shoes.

Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco told CNN Monday that a 50-inch water main was severed during the storm, cutting the supply of drinkable water.

[...]

I'm taking stuff out of order in this story...

[...]

The storm is blamed for at least 68 deaths and that toll is almost certain to rise. Mississippi officials said at least 55 people were killed there, including 30 who were killed in an apartment complex near the Biloxi beach. Alabama reported two deaths. The storm killed 11 people last week when it made its initial landfall in Florida.

While Louisiana officials have not yet confirmed any deaths there, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said there have been reports of bodies floating in the floodwaters.

'This is our tsunami'

In Mississippi, streets and homes were flooded as far as six miles inland, and the eastbound lanes of Interstate 10 between Gulfport and Biloxi were impassible because of debris deposited in the roadway by floodwaters.

"This is our tsunami," Biloxi Mayor A.J. Holloway told the Biloxi Sun Herald newspaper, referring to the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed more than 226,000 people in the Indian Ocean region.

[...]

And from a related story:

Link: CNN.com - When can I go home? - Aug 30, 2005.

Red Cross launches largest relief effort in its history

[...]

"It's too dangerous to come home," said Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who ordered state police to block re-entry routes to all but emergency workers. (Full story)

A Louisiana public health expert described conditions in New Orleans that are probably typical in all the stricken areas:

"No sewage, no drinking water, contamination, threat of rapid increase in mosquitoes, roads are impassible, downed power lines everywhere, trees, debris from houses in the roads, no way to go shopping, no gas," said Ivor van Heerden, director of the Center for the Study of Public Health Impacts of Hurricanes in Baton Rouge.

The American Red Cross' relief operation would be the largest in its history, the organization's president, Marty Evans, said on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now" -- larger than for all four of last year's Florida hurricanes combined.

More than 75,000 people were being housed in nearly 240 shelters across the region, and "we expect that to grow" as people who can't return home seek somewhere to stay, Evans said.

Baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice are being rushed into hard-hit areas by the federal government, along with doctors, nurses and first-aid supplies, The Associated Press reported.

Experts to help with search-and-rescue efforts have been dispatched by the Pentagon, the AP said.

I suppose it would be nice if there were a full compliment of National Guard troops to keep order, but significant numbers would have to be brought back from Iraq to do that.

MILLIONS of people could be homeless for quite some time. Here's some initial National Guard numbers pulled from the top CNN story cited above.

The Alabama National Guard activated 450 troops to secure Mobile. Two other Alabama battalions, or about 800 troops, were activated to assist in Mississippi.

My thoughts are with New Orleans

An AP headline:

Experts expect Katrina to turn New Orleans into Atlantis

Here's an interesting bit from a Miami Herald article:

[...]

Some people have no intention of leaving New Orleans, even in the face of the mayor's mandatory evacuation order.

''It's been there for a long time,'' said John Martin, 60, of the circa 1824 Creole townhouse he lives in on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter. Martin, a druid and voodoo priest, lives on the third floor of the building, which houses a voodoo museum on its first floor. The brick walls are nearly two-feet thick, Martin said, pointing to them from the tropical interior courtyard of the building.

It's not easy for Martin to leave, anyway. He has four snakes, including a giant Burmese python, Eugene, who has gone into hiding. The snake senses something coming, Martin said, something horrific.

''I don't believe you're going to go until God takes you,'' Martin said. ``I've lived a good, full life and I'm not worried about it. You've got to take life as it comes.''

''Well, if you need any alcohol, just kick my door in,'' said neighbor Christy Franchi, 35, fleeing on a 5:30 p.m. flight to New York. ``I have plenty of wine.''

[...]

I've heard the Hurricane Katrina has sped up slightly and will come ashore near the Big Easy sometime overnight. Having ridden through last year's hurricane season at a distance in Atlanta, getting the strong arm of Ivan, and this year the strong arm of the weaker Dennis, my stomach just hurts when I think of what could happen to one of my very favorite cities on Earth. So many good times in Naw'lins, I even published a poem about it in the Santa Clara Review, also archived here.

Potentially catastrophic, maximum sustained winds at 160 mph. I just don't want to think about it. And it's a big one too. The entire Delta is going to be swamped.

Jeff Master's blog at Weather Underground says Katrina is now stronger than Camille, from 1969. Only three others stronger. And he says it now rivals Gilbert (1988) and Allen (1980) as the largest hurricanes recorded, in terms of size. Masters gives New Orleans a 70% chance of levees getting breached and the city swamped, with a possible death toll in the thousands. That sounds high to me, given the evacuations, but I sure do hope I'm right, not that I'm an expert or anything.

He says people who ride out the storm should wear life jackets and helmets, because a 25-foot storm surge could still knock down steel-reinforced high rise buildings.

This is from the National Hurricane Center, via Weather Underground:

Hurricane Katrina Intermediate Advisory Number 24a

Statement as of 7:00 PM CDT on August 28, 2005

...Potentially catastrophic Hurricane Katrina now moving north-northwestward toward the northern Gulf Coast...

a Hurricane Warning is in effect for the north central Gulf Coast from Morgan City Louisiana eastward to the Alabama/Florida border...including the city of New Orleans and Lake Pontchartrain. Preparations to protect life and property should be completed this evening.

[...]

At 7 PM CDT...0000z...the center of Hurricane Katrina was located near latitude 27.2 north... longitude 89.1 west or about 130 miles south of the mouth of the Mississippi River.

Katrina is moving toward the north-northwest near 11 mph...and a turn to the north is expected over the next 24 hours. On this track the center of the hurricane will be near the northern Gulf Coast early Monday. However...conditions are already beginning to deteriorate along portions of the central and northeastern Gulf Coast...and will continue to worsen through the night.

Maximum sustained winds are near 160 mph...with higher gusts. Katrina is a potentially catastrophic category five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale. Some fluctuations in strength are likely prior to landfall...and Katrina is expected to make landfall at category four or five intensity. Winds affecting the upper floors of high-rise buildings will be significantly stronger than those near ground level.

Katrina is a large hurricane. Hurricane force winds extend outward up to 105 miles from the center...and tropical storm force winds extend outward up to 230 miles. Sustained tropical storm force winds are already occurring over the southeast Louisiana coast.
A NOAA hurricane hunter plane reported a minimum central pressure of 904 mb...26.69 inches.

Coastal storm surge flooding of 18 to 22 feet above normal tide levels...locally as high as 28 feet...along with large and dangerous battering waves...can be expected near and to the east of where the center makes landfall. Some levees in the greater New Orleans area could be overtopped. Significant storm surge flooding will occur elsewhere along the central and northeastern Gulf of Mexico coast.

Rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches...with isolated maximum amounts of 15 inches...are possible along the path of Katrina across the Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley. Rainfall totals of 4 to 8 inches are possible across the Ohio Valley into the eastern Great Lakes region Tuesday and Wednesday.

Isolated tornadoes will be possible this evening over southern portions of Louisiana...Mississippi...and Alabama...and over the Florida Panhandle.

[...]

I'm new to Montana, but this is gross even by Alaska standards

I've been quiet in blogland recently, undertaking a cross-country haul (as in U-Haul) to Missoula, Montana, a beautiful and serene place with a wonderful river running through it. Unpacking and setting up my household takes some time too, but I'm finally unpacked enough to go online. (I think this is the longest I've been unplugged from the Internet since 1993, nearly two full weeks. What a freaky feeling!)

Anyway, I grew up in Alaska and learned to live with the idea of massive bears showing up on your camping trips or around salmon streams, but they say this hasn't happened in Glacier National Park in a long time. A mama bear with cubs is the most unpredictable thing, however. I remember a similar scalp hit just like this on a guy in Alaska when I was much younger. Knocked him down a steep hill too, while all the others in the party were chewed up and killed. The hill saved the one man's life.

One local TV station is the only place where the more gruesome details are showing up. I just heard about it on the 10 pm news. On TV they're saying the hikers came around a blind corner and surprised the she-bear, only five feet away from her.

Link: NBCMontana.com: Bear Attacks.

Bear Attacks in Glacier National Park

By Dax VanFossen
8/26/05

Officials said the man was taken to Seattle and will probably need plastic surgery.  A doctor we spoke with said he suffered a lot of deep skin injures, near scalping and a lot of deep puncture wounds and lacerations.  He also broke his neck in a couple of places and broke a few ribs but he remained conscious throughout the entire ordeal.

The woman is still at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.  Officials tell us her injuries were much less severe. She received a cut on her face and a large wound on one of her shoulders. Officials have not released the names of either victim.

It was another hiker that came across the bloody scene after the two people had been attacked. That hiker then ran to find a ranger who radioed in for help

Rangers were the first to give the man and woman who had been attacked medical help before the Alert Helicopter was able to get to them.  The helicopter was not able to land because of the rough terrain. "We had to hover overhead and use one hundred and fifty foot cavalier logging line to deliver the medic and the litter to the patient.”  Ken Justus, Alert pilot.

[...]

Here's the older, more restrained AP version:

Link: Glacier park visitors injured in likely bear attack.

West Glacier

Glacier park visitors injured in likely bear attack

Aug 26, 2005, 09:19 AM

Two hikers who surprised a grizzly bear and her cubs in Glacier National Park are hospitalized in Kalispell today.

Park officials say a man and woman were hiking along a popular park trail when they apparently encountered the sow and two cubs this morning.

Spokeswoman Amy Vanderbilt says it appears the hikers' injuries are not life-threatening. 

But she says both apparently suffered bite wounds, along with other injuries sustained rolling down a hill trying to escape the attack.

[...]

My mom is an amazing photographer!

Photo by Joyce Boese, © Copyright 2005

I really mean it. Look at the light play here. My folks just got done driving home, up the Alaska Highway, something they do several times a year, it seems like. This is just a snapshot she took along the road, somewhere in Alaska.

My brother and I both became photographers of sorts, but it is easy to see we got it from our folks.

Here's what she says about the location:

These are finally the mountains in Alaska. The snowmachiners were still going in for one last trip. It was pretty warm however and road was clear and in good shape. The picture shows a glacier, Tonsina or Tolsona, or Christochina, they are in the same area and I can't remember which it was.

Here's another one. Sorry about the load time, but I can't stand to run such cool pictures small. It may be my monitor, but the character of the sky and the light just looks unearthly wonderful to me.

Photo by Joyce Boese, © Copyright 2005

Here's what she says about this second location:

This one is coming down off the pass. We are probably about 100 miles or so from home. But the mountainous areas are snow-covered. When we got home it was pretty nice. We now have the swans coming in and out of our lake. It hasn't completely thawed but very rotten ice and more goes each day. It was 82 degrees somewhere in Alaska yesterday. We had about 70 yesterday and today. Nice!

70 degrees in April, with rotten ice still on the lake. Back in the day, that would mean we'd be wearing our breakup boots. With less permafrost, it doesn't get as muddy as it used to 25 years ago.

Chris

Whoa! Wild times in Death Valley

I really wish I could see this! Take the links for some very pretty pictures. My mom had mentioned that desert blooms after a rainy year were spectacular. So here's the upside of all those mudslides and storms in California.

Link: The New York Times > Travel > Escapes >

Journeys: In Death Valley, a Technicolor Season

By FINN-OLAF JONES Death Valley, Calif.

CROSSING over the Jubilee Pass on Route 178, drivers expect to encounter the monochromatic wasteland of Death Valley National Park unfurling before them. But these days they see something very different: Technicolor plains of primroses, larkspurs, poppies, verbenas, lilacs, orchids, phacelias and other wildflowers. It raises the question of whether Death Valley even deserves its name.

The same rains that have brought mudslides and destruction in one of California's wettest seasons on record have also brought an early and spectacularly kaleidoscopic spring to Death Valley.

"We were shocked when we saw this," said Lew Friedman, a visitor from Old Chatham, N.Y., as he stood before a fragrant carpet of gold sunflowers that curved over the desert floor toward the Black Mountains. "It certainly doesn't seem like Death Valley," his wife, Jackie, said. "It smells like a floral shop."

The coyotes and the tiny kit foxes that have the run of the valley during the summer months, when 120-degree weather deters human visitors, are now out of sight. Instead, on a recent day when temperatures in the 60's prompted the wearing of a jacket, the usual silence of the valley was broken by a constant hum that at first seemed impossible: the sound of bees pollinating flowers that had sprung from the basalt.

"This could well be the bloom of the century," said Tim Croissant, a National Park Service botanist. "We have many years where we don't see any blooms at all, which makes this all the more extraordinary."

The wildflower bloom this year began in early February, as much as two months sooner than in normal years. As the early spring moves into the national park, the southern part of Death Valley, much of which is below sea level, is awash in a sea of flowers. The upper valley is a pointillist landscape of opening buds. And as the season progresses, the plants farther up the surrounding mountains will also start blossoming, extending the wildflower season into May or even June.

Death Valley averages less than two inches of rain a year, but in the past seven months it has received more than six inches, on pace for a high since record-keeping began well over a century ago. The rains were so extreme that last August, flash-flooding washed away part of Highway 190, one of the main roads into the valley, killing two people and closing the park for 10 days. The highway is not scheduled to reopen until late April.

Death Valley's narrow roadways are heavily bordered by thick paths of flowers, as if each roadside mile had been highlighted with a full set of crayons. "When the Park Service grades the roads, they're inadvertently spreading plants," Mr. Croissant explained. "These disturbance areas become prime areas for growth."

[...]

The sheer surrealism of Death Valley's current appearance is overwhelming. The normally black walls and terraces of the basalt hills in the valley are now etched in yellow and white flowers, giving the terrain the appearance of a photo negative. Clusters of chias with their strangely shaped purple flower float above the desert floor like a vision from Dr. Seuss. Drab-colored shrubs are entwined in what appears to be screaming-orange-colored silly string: dodder vines hitching free rides for the nutrients of their captive hosts.

And then there's the enormous lake that suddenly appeared. "This is the first time I've ever seen Lake Manly," said Alex Cabana, who works in the park, referring to the 90-mile-long lake that covered Death Valley 10,000 years ago but that today is normally dry desert flats. "Legend has it, it only shows up every hundred years." The winter water run-off has collected in Badwater Basin, 282 feet below sea level and the lowest place in the Western Hemisphere, creating a vast reflecting pool extending more than 100 square miles from the eastern roadbed to the base of the Panamint Range on the western side of the valley. Although the temporary lake is only a few inches deep (two and a half feet at its deepest point), a group of park rangers recently took the rarest of trips: a canoe excursion across Death Valley.

Here are some links from deep in the article, to other pictures and places to go:

The Joshua Tree in Bloom, and Other Desert Flora

SOUTHERN California's unusually wet winter has caused an unusually rich flowering in several of the state's desert areas.

Digital West Media maintains a Web site that provides frequently updated overviews and field reports on California desert wildflowers: www.desertusa.com/flora.

The California Native Plant Society is a nonprofit organization that studies and preserves California's native plants. Its Web site is full of interesting descriptions and photographs of local desert wildflowers: www.cnps.org.

DEATH VALLEY To obtain information about when and where the best blooms are occurring in Death Valley National Park, or for information on the daily wildflower walks conducted by the Park Service, call (760) 786-3200 or visit www.nps.gov/deva.

OWENS VALLEY Owens Valley is one valley to the northwest of Death Valley, but it is startlingly different in terms of scenery and wildflowers. Not only does the Owens Valley have beautiful high desert plains with the snow-clad Sierras as a backdrop; it also has the picturesque Gold Rush town of Independence, which still looks like the set of a cowboy movie.

Because Owens Valley is 3,000 feet above Death Valley, the desert bloom usually occurs a few weeks later. This year, the wildflowers are expected to peak in April and May. For more information, call the ranger station at the Interagency Visitor Center (760) 876-6222 or visit www.fs.fed.us/r5/inyo.

JOSHUA TREE As with Death Valley, Joshua Tree National Park is witnessing a spectacular early spring. On the western side of the park, creamy white blossoms are beginning to appear atop Joshua tree cactuses. When they come into full bloom, these clusters of cactuses, some of which reach heights of 15 feet, resemble natural candelabras, an unforgettable sight against the desert background.

The Joshua tree is expected to be in bloom through April. Other cactuses will be in bloom all the way into May. The national park also features many of the same desert wildflowers that exist in Death Valley, but because Joshua Tree is at a higher elevation, the blooms are expected to peak a few weeks later. For visitor information for the park, call (760) 367-5500 or go to www.nps.gov/jotr.

ANZA-BORREGO DESERT STATE PARK A two-hour drive east of San Diego takes you to the 600,000-acre Anza-Borrego, where winter rains have brought an outstanding wildflower bloom. The park is aflame in desert sunflowers, brown-eyed evening primrose, lupines, mustard, Spanish needles and popcorn flowers. The higher elevations should be in bloom within two or three weeks, and beavertail, hedgehog and barrel cactuses are expected to be in bloom from the end of March until June. Wildflower information: (760) 767-4684 and www.anzaborrego.statepark.org.

UK Independent: "In Delhi, recycling has nothing to do with conscience. It is all about survival"

Link: In Delhi, recycling has nothing to do with conscience. It is all about survival.

One of the most amazing trips of my life took me to Delhi, and on one particular adventure there, I found myself out, downtown, in the rain and fog at night trying to find a phone that would reach the U.S., stepping around the people around small fires on the roadside. I fell instantly in love with the country, but I also saw much of what is described below, just not that particular dump.

When I think of all the tech business and call centers located over there now, many in the time since I went in 1998, I find myself wishing some of that cash flow will reach more people, will distribute itself through the country somehow. But the divide between rich and poor is so wide, I don't even know if it could.

One day, I was on the tech support line with one of my ISPs, and I discovered it was a guy in Chenai (Madras, area hit by the recent tsunami). Had the most amazing conversation with him in the middle of the night. I don't know why India got under my skin the way it did, but it is never coming out.

Anyway, this article just blew my mind, brought it all back again.

Chris

In Delhi, recycling has nothing to do with conscience. It is all about survival

The hundreds of children sifting through the stinking mountain of rubbish on the outskirts of the Indian capital represent the bottom of a bizarre hierarchical heap. Justin Huggler reports.

25 February 2005

A sad-eyed boy in a red jacket stands on top of a rotting mountain of rubbish, his feet slowly sinking into the filth. Nearby, and oblivious to the overpowering smell, Musida Sheikh, 14, is happily chatting with her friends as she too picks through the debris. Musida has been scavenging up here since she was eight years old. She has never been to school.

Hundreds of Delhi children climb this rubbish mound every day. More than 1,000 people make their entire living scavenging here at the Ghazipur dump in down-at-heel north Delhi, where the city's refuse is consigned. They are recyclers of sorts. But, for them, recycling has nothing to do with environmentalism or the green movement - it is about daily survival.

Musida, for instance, is picking through the filth for plastic bottles. The fashionable guidebooks to India pontificate about the damage that plastic bottles are doing to India's environment, and urge tourists to refuse to buy them. But children like Musida depend on the bottles for their livelihood. They can sell them on at one rupee per kilogram - 1p.

The story of Delhi's rubbish is a tale of chaos, rule-bending and entrepren-eurial ingenuity among the plastic bottles, old clothes and food scraps.

[...]

It is hardly credible, when your rubbish reaches Ghazipur, that anything is left to scavenge at all. But it is. Ghazipur towers several hundred feet in the air, and stretches a mile or more across. It rots and oozes. Trails of slime seep down the sides. The vulture-like kites, ever-present scavengers over the city, circle overhead in a dense flock like Hitchcock's Birds. Stray dogs wander about, nosing in the filth for scraps.

When you try to climb onto it, you have to be wary of the places where the rubbish is like quicksand, and your leg slips up to the knee into the oozing filth. The stench is almost unbearable.

And at the top, the scene laid out before you is from the 19th century. Hundreds of children in bright and colourful rags pick over the surface of the mountain. Every few minutes or so they have to scurry out of the way as the bulldozers advance, trying to flatten the mountain.

It is a scene from Dickens' London, especially in the winter when thick fogs swirl in and the poor huddle around makeshift fires along countless roadsides. Like Dickens' London, Delhi is a city of the very rich and the very poor, where the former live in grand townhouses attended by retinues of servants, and the latter scavenge outside for whatever they can find. Ghazipur is the dust-heap of the Golden Dustman in Our Mutual Friend.

Delhi also has the rag-and-bottle shops of Bleak House. In fact, one stands at the end of the main road outside my house, run by Riyasat Ali, a 22-year-old who has inherited the family business. It is a small warehouse open at one end onto the street, filled with heaps of bottles, glass and plastic, and a large pair of scales to weigh it all in. The rag merchants like Mr Ali deal by the kilogram.

The room is also stacked to the rafters with 20-foot-high piles of old manuscripts and documents, dog-eared books and pages of accounting. It is impossible to say what valuable documents may lurk among these towers that teeter over Mr Ali's head. But it does not matter, as he can sell them to the recycling plant at seven rupees (8p) a kilogram.

And so I decided to follow what happens to the rubbish when it is thrown out of my house in the old Sufi suburb of Nizamuddin. In India, the rich do not have to put out their dustbins - and the rich includes Westerners. Rubbish is money, and someone comes round to collect your trash for you, usually in the early hours before you've even roused yourself out of bed.

Babu Choudry, the 18-year-old who collects our rubbish, comes on a cycle-cart, like a cycle-rickshaw for carrying rubbish instead of passengers. "I sort through the rubbish and separate paper, plastic, bottles, computer parts and iron," he says. "I sell those to the scrap-dealers, and only send the rest to the dump."

He works for Ramkrishnan and Mamta Balmaki, but they are known universally in the neighbourhood as Auntie and Uncle. They are responsible for keeping the street clean, and seeing that the rubbish is collected. It's not an official post, no one appointed them. They inherited it. But they get 4,000 rupees (£50) a month from the city council, plus 100 rupees (£1.20) a month from each house on the street.

[...]

From my back door, the rubbish is taken by cycle-cart to the municipal bins in Nizamuddin. There, city employees are supposed to sort it out for the blue and green trucks but, since they are on a city wage, they sub-contract a lot of this work to local boys, and act as overseers. Again, the rubbish is sifted through meticulously, and anything that Mr Choudry or the Balmatis missed is fished out and sold to the scrap dealers.

It's at this point that it ends up in rag-and-bottle shops like Mr Ali's. Iron is the most valuable commodity for the rag-pickers, so when they find some they really celebrate. Dealers like Mr Ali will buy it off them for 11 rupees (13p) a kilo. He then sells it on at 14 rupees (17p) a kilo.

Computer parts are valuable for the specialists who recycle them, but the rag-pickers rarely find a single item in good enough condition to fetch a good price, and they don't know what is valuable and what isn't.

After all this, what is left of the rubbish goes to Ghazipur. Though none of them will admit it, many of the ragged children who scavenge through the rubbish at Ghazipur are Bangladeshis. No individual rag-picker will ever admit to it, but they'll all tell you that many of the others are. It's because they are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who've overstayed their visa or never had one, and this is the only work they can get.

[...]

Up on the mountainside, a team of men are humping loads of old clothes into a flat-bed truck. These men are rag-pickers, literally. When everything else has been exhausted, the paper, the plastic, even dead animals' heads, they recycle old rags. The tattered remnants of clothing are sold to factories where they are used as free fuel to keep the boilers going.

Poondev Ram and his team collect a ton of rags a day here. The stench from the rotting rubbish where they are working is awful. "What can we do? We have no other job," says Mr Ram. "We have to work to make a living."

[...]

Mr Ram has been doing this job since he was 11 years old - now he is 44. "I came to Delhi to make money," he says. "I came with my father's permission." But he is adamant that his children will not follow in his footsteps. "My children are studying," he says. "I want my children to be educated and have a better job."

Because of men like Mr Ram, India has a recycling record that should be the envy of the West. Nothing is casually thrown away here. Nothing goes to waste, because the people simply can't afford it. But no one wants to do the dirty job of picking through the filth to find what can be recycled.