RPM,
This IS a "real emergency". Seriously. A nuke or 1000 plane carpet bombing raid wouldn't have caused this much widespread damage. A guy at work who has done *ahem* research *ahem* on nuclear warfare made a direct comparison between this disaster and a limited nuclear strike. That's from someone who could be considered an expert in the field.
Pretty much the entire city of New Orleans will need to be built from scratch (not an exaggeration at all), and they can't even start, let alone continue to rescue trapped people, if they don't start diverting fuel to the area NOW, and start maxing out production in other regions NOW. That means opening up the national reserves and diverting fuel trucks to the region, causing localized shortages and corresponding price increases anywhere within a day's drive of the gulf coast.
This may be the biggest homeland disaster any of us will ever see in our lifetimes, but we're too jaded and cynical to recognize it. Plus the media isn't helping, spending all their airtime replaying an interview with a single victim and asking a helo pilot how he felt not being able to rescue everyone after a 30 hour flying surge. Can anyone GUESS how a pilot who's flown rescue missions for 30 straight hours is going to feel? Ya think? Geeze what a retarded question to ask. The media has no clue how to dig out the actual news because they're all racing to beat the other reporters to whatever is the most spectacular show.
How about interviewing other state governors about what they plan on doing to help? Or maybe thoroughly documenting and reporting the creation of the on-scene consolidated emergency response command center? Or get a real construction engineer on the tv who can explain what infrastructure will survive after sitting in 20 ft of water for anywhere from a week to 3 months, and what parts of that infrastructure will have to be rebuilt before anyone can go back to where the city used to be, and how long it will take to rebuild enough infrastructure so they can start rebuilding the city itself.
I know for a FACT that this is going to be worse than every Calif earthquake in US history combined. In LA and SF, they had to rebuild stuff that fell over or burned, but this time they have to rebuild from scratch entire cities, including basic stuff like sewers, power generation/distribution, water treatment/distribution, etc.
