Although I personally do not know anyone from the gulf coast area, and live in michigan, I find that I am going numbly thru the motions of my daily routine, which is very similar to how I reacted to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This natural disaster is unfortunately much more widespread in land area and it will no doubt take many months, if not years, to clean up. That is if no other hurricanes cross the gulf in the near future. It is known that due to global warming, tropical storms and hurricanes will increase in number, size, and category. This fact may cause most of the southern atlantic and gulf coasts of the U.S. to be uninhabitable in the future.:sigh: D. D. Lang