Hurricane Harvey/Irma

[spooker]

Should the Canadian government give aid to the islands that have been damaged by Irma? How about Cuba? Should the Canadian Red Cross be allowed to give money to Cubans?

Give aid? yes ... give money? no, we should be supplying materials and workers to alleviate critical suffering ... just like the rest of the world came to our fires we should be going to their floods (and bring back some souvenir bags of water)

[GordonH]

Jose appears to be staying away of making landfall (that could change).
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphics_at2.sh ... e#contents

Added: there is another disturbance west of Cape Verde, it has not formed into hurricane

[Because_They_Lie]

Off topic

[Queen K]

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41175312

Real overviews of before/after images from the destruction of Irma. Very disturbing actually because you can see that it looks like there is nothing that can be done yet about dwindling supplies on the islands. Food has to be brought in somehow and there looks to be no power yet.

[Queen K]

This thread is sinking down the line, but I assure you all that it's not nearly even started to be over.

I have an American facebook friend who is down there, a lovely person whom Irma has hurt as badly as anyone living there. Here is what she has to say about living in the Everglades right now:

"I've never been through anything this bad. Still no toilets or electricity. The pictures are of some of our books. One was signed by Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and another by Totch Brown. Trash. The other photo is of my photography exhibit I provided at the Nationsl Park last year. I had packed them up in bubble wrap and they were sitting in bus on the floor. They were all knocked over by the water and filled with mud. They are also trash.
The Red Cross is finally here and providing meals. Churches are here and kids are asking what we need help with. The ambulance has been going in and out of Everglades City all day. Respiratory illness, heat exhaustion, infections. It is bad here. We need to wear face masks and have wet towels around our necks. Haven't seen FEMA yet and it's been a week. The people here are desperate for a place to live. Some are still sleeping in their cars. Fortunately David Jeremy and I are able to drive to N Naples and take a shower at our sons home."

It's still bad down there and not getting better right now.

Random acts of Kindness:

Here's a more uplifting post,

I need to post these random acts of kindness to keep my sanity. Today our friends from CT who also live in Tampa drove all the way to Everglades City with a camper full of desperately needed food and supplies. Thanks to so many of you who quickly donated to their efforts. We greatly appreciate this. We are all walking zombies and are having trouble taking care of our own basic needs. They jumped into action and organized the dining room in the Ivey House. Setting up an eating area, organizing the food they brought and anything else we had which was just in piles. They also cooked lunch. Thank you all for your random acts of kindness.

[Catsumi]

The damage is truly horrific and just can't imagine how awful it must be "living" in those conditions.

Rebuilding is a staggering proposition which will take a long time.