Gah.
The latest news reports about the hurricane are bleak, with most of New Orleans flooded or under the water since a levee gave up, the victims in Biloxi and Katrina's own spawn (tornadoes, storms and freak weather) still wreaking havoc.
Normally I hate cliches, but the analogy is fitting - by sheer magnitude, this emergency is rivaling the tsunami crisis that struck Asia early on this year, and the terrible floods coming down on parts of central and eastern Europe just a scant two weeks ago (Austria, Romania and Switzerland allegedly got the worst of it).
Of course I'm relieved to be hearing good news from friends who were either close or directly in Katrina's path, but it doesn't ease away the worry, and the grief for the literal ten of thousands of people who found their lives changed by the hurricane.