Apparently, the coming storm has the potential to essentially destroy the city of New Orleans. Sadly, it looks like if this is the case, many will suffer and perhas die, just because they can't flee:

" Fleeing to safety was not an option for some people, especially in New Orleans, the below-sea-level city where more than 1.2 million were warned to get out of the metropolitan area.

"Got no place to go and no way to get there," said Latonya Hill, who waited out the storm Tuesday sitting on her stoop. Hill, 57, lives on a disability check and money she picks up cleaning houses or baby sitting.

"They say evacuate, but they don't say how I'm supposed to do that," Hill said. "If I can't walk it or get there on the bus, I don't go. I don't got a car. My daughter don't either."
- http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=st...rricane_ivan_13


Amazingly, there's no shelter option for the people left behind. From the same article:

" No shelters had been set up in the city because of concerns about flooding and capacity, Mayor Ray Nagin said"

That's amazing to me, that a city that's got such potential for flooding would have "no shelters" because it's prone to flooding.

I'd have to say that for the folks in New Orleans who ARE prepeared, this is truly "Go Time" as we all imagine it could be. I can see that of all the go-kit items one can have, transportation and fuel are - by far - the most important item to have. I can assure you that I'm carefully re-thinking my own go-kit, especially in terms of cash and mobility options. I'm also making more of my vital papers portable, and of course, lightening my load of non-essential crud. I''d imagine that a good drill would be to say you have 1 day to pack everythign you'll want to keep, because all the rest will be destroyed. What do you bring, what do you leave?

Point of interest: If you're computer is a desktop system and it's not backed up and you don't have time or ability to back it up, just pull the hard drive out and bring that with you. You can always get the data off the drive later in a new computer if your old one is lost.

Pulling the hard drive is very, very easy. It's the silvery box connected with a flat grey cable inside your computer.