[Aaron C.]

I heard a report where a Nursing Home in New Orleans or the area was abandoned by the staff and there were approximately 100 residents simply abandoned.

There is certainly going to be an immediate need for volunteer nurses and very soon after a huge influx of nursing staff will be required to treat illness and disease that will soon follow this devastating hurricane.

Aside from nursing issues related to this disaster, I'm simply dumbfounded at the human race and it's wide range of character.

You have thousands of people volunteering to help on one hand, and on the other hand you have looters stealing 200 dollar TV's while their entire state will NEVER be the same, their families are lost, they have no food and water, and their entire world is surrounded, if not engulfed by water.

I posted on another site that "looters" should be shot on sight. Not referring to those who steal food and drink, but those who steal items like TV's.

Shortly after I posted that, a looter was approached by a police officer and another looter ran up behind him and shot him in the head. I believe it was captured on video and on WWLTV.com's website, but I'm not sure.

Where do you even begin to start here? The whole area is basically totally devastated. Homes are gone forever, businesses are gone forever, lives are gone forever. Entire towns will no longer function for weeks if not months.

Roads will ALL have to be totally rebuilt. The major roads-BRIDGES leading into N.O. and the area are entirely wiped out and will take a year to rebuild, at least. The levees have failed.

The marshland which absorbs some of the hurricane/storm damage is dissappearing at an astonishing rate. New Orleans is slowly sinking. It was predicted that it would, in the next 50 years be entirely under water due to a hurricane/levee break/etc.

Why even rebuild the city when it could so easily happen again at any moment?

How do you help these people? Where do you put them? Where do they go from here? What about education?

I think this will have an effect on our economy and our society in general that will be felt much harder, and for much longer than anyone currently imagines.

i could go on and on about any of 1000 differrent aspects of this disaster that I haven't even hit, but I won't.

I just hope things shape out in the end much better than I think they will, because if they don't, this will be 1000 times worse than 9/11.