She keeps it locked to friends only. Sorry.
I was reading The Tennessean today, page 4 B, there was a couple of paragraphs in an AP story about it. That’s it.
Yo, Feddies! Where’s our fucking disaster declaration? The fucking storm was one week ago! The death toll is at 7 now! Governor Bredeson, Representative Ford, and Senator Frist were here five days ago, all promising help. Where’s our help? This storm is going to put a big old hurt on local government and businesses, not to mention all of the home owners who have major damage or who have NO HOUSE any more! I know people who haven’t been to work in a week because their places of business are closed. What’s the fucking deal?! I guess if it’s not on the news, it’s not on your fucking radar, huh? The Red Cross is even having trouble getting enough donations to pay for feeding and sheltering folks down here because there’s no news coverage.
And for all you ignorant fucking Memphians who are raking Memphis Light Gas and Water over the coals for not getting power hooked up fast enough, shut the fuck up. You’re a bunch of ignorant pigs. I know it’s hot–every one is hot. It’s hotter than blue hell in my house. But you don’t understand what these people are up against. They’ve rewired 80% of a city of a million people in less than a week, working 14 hour days to do it. This event is unprecedented in TVA history. The damage is much more severe than the big ice storm of 1994, and yet they’re repairing the damage faster. But it’s still not enough for you fucks. Look, pull together, OK? We’re in a tough spot here, and you’re shitting all over the people who are trying to help. All of the MLGW people I’ve talked to have that ghostly, exausted look of someone whose been working at maximum stress level for days on end. Please, please please cut them some slack. They’re doing the best they can.
And, give those utility workers something to drink (not alcoholic please!) if you see 'em. Until the front blew through today, it’s been hotter than blue blazes out there. And, come the weekend, it’ll be hotter than hell again. Help them by staying out of their way, and if you have a pole in your back yard, make sure they can get to it easily.
Keep your generators OUTSIDE, DAMN IT! Buy a chain to lock it to your meter, or something. Carbon Monoxide poisoning is claming more lives than the storm did directly!
Gah.
If you can people, help spread the word. The more who know about the situation, the greater the chance Memphis will get the extra help it needs at the moment to get back up on her feet.
<< Come to the Dark Side: we have milk and cookies! >>
I just left a message on the ombudsman’s answering machine at the Washington Post. The ombudsman is the guy you go to when you think the Post goofed up. As I said in my message, at this point the story is that, given the scope of the disaster, there has been no Washington Post story on Memphis’ tribulations. We’ll see if anything comes of that.
First, I’d typed “Memphis” into their site search engine to see what stories they’d done on Memphis since 7/22. Memphis was mentioned in a story about the new generation of vending machines; in the obituary of someone who’d graduated from U. of Memphis Law School many years ago; an incidental mention in a murder trial story; and finally, a squib in the “Nation in Brief” column on page A-22 on Thursday the 24th:
The preceding was the second of six such squibs, and Memphis only rated two sentences of that. Sheez.
This is pretty amazing.
I thought the Memphis Apocalyspe was some sort of rant about wanting to kill everyone in Memphis.
Now is Graceland was damaged that would make National News man!
Stay cool Memphis Dopers without power.
Thanks, RTFirefly. I’ve written to CNN, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and a couple other major news outlets.
Word, vibrotronica. Morons bitching about MLGW clearly have no idea what’s going on out there. Those guys are working their asses off. Yesterday, a crew from Alexandria, Louisiana was in the street in front of my friend’s place for about six hours, and eventually got his power back on.
Tomorrow we should have some news on the relief funds. Apparently we’re waiting for W to sign off on it; we shall see.
Somebody please send that front over here. We’ve been without A/C for a couple of weeks now, waiting to see if I could secure a loan to get it replaced.
We were officially delcared a disaster area this morning. More details available in the MPSIMS thread.
My girlfriend was accepting a delivery at her work, a downtown restaurant where she manages and serves, yesterday. Someone asked her if she had power, and she said no. The delivery guy laughed at her. She threw his ass out and had to be physically restrained from committing violence against him.
Wow. This is the first I’ve heard of the storm. I was at a conference last week, so was out of the loop, but have been paying attention to the news, and have seen nothing about it. Memphians,ya have my best wishes. I love Memphis; it was my home away from home when I lived in Oxford, MS. Since moving, I miss Me’fiss a whole lot. Thinkin’ the best for you guys, and the passle of folks I know and love there.
The media is mind-bogglingly fucked on this count.
It could have been worse. You could have been WITHOUT beer.
Somewhere in Oklahoma, either today or yesterday, some wind blew a roof off of a house.
They showed it 40 times on the nightly news here in Dallas.
I haven’t seen ANYTHING about Memphis.
What the HELL is going on here?!?!!!
Wow.
NBC News finally had a story on the storm tonight. You would think a story like this would have better media attention, but now I see that the media has spin on the story: why no one seemed concerned until now, and the previously mentioned suspicion of builders not working to code.
The poor woman who has to use her grill to cook in the yard got to me. I’m sure there are many more people suffering like this; I hope everyone gets relief soon.
I think the only reason why we are starting to appear in the media: because George W. signed the disaster declaration. Ugg.
I really hope my power is back on when I return today: a construction firm that was donating their services was working on re-doing the poles and re-stringing the wires this morning.