When the helicopter's camera finally zooms out, we all gasp.

[Poll_Blind]

The announcers gasp, I gasp- I think everyone watching gasps. Because for those of us watching TBStv on UStream over the last couple of hours a helicopter has flown over just a tiny portion of the destruction- and we have just been reminded of how large that destroyed area is. Following where the shore meets the ocean, the helicopter will occasionally point inland and I can't see and end to the destruction. Mostly it just zooms in, way in, until you can make out individual houses or buildings.

Sometimes there are people there, waving things desperately. But the helicopter is so far away and does not stop. More often, there are no people. Just uneven mud and trees and mountains of trash which were lately dozens of houses or buildings, all twisted and broken and mixed with seawater and flushed over the countryside, scouring it.

The helicopter has turned inland now, maybe we're a mile inland, maybe more. There are a collection of ships which are eye catching in that everything else is a muddy gray brown and the ships have white sides and red bottoms. And at least two of them I saw were absolutely enormous, one on its side, the other sitting perfectly right-side-up with the bottom part of the bow just breaking into the front of a small building or large home.

The camera is zoomed in, now, to the enormous ship on its side. It would have had a crew of fifty at least. Where did they go? The camera on the helicopter, a wonder of modern optics, is able to zoom until you can almost make out the inside of the bridge past the broken glass. It scans and we strain but there is no sign of people. No bodies, no survivors. Lost in thoughts of what kinds of things can throw around ocean-going ships like tennis balls the camera zooms out.

I hear the announcers softly gasp, hear myself gasp. When zoomed out the ship looks as small as a little white paper-clip in mud. The landscape, save the tiny wrecks of enormous ships, is mud and pools of water reflecting the indifferent sky for as far as the eye can see.

PB

[yawnmaster]

1. The power displayed is incredible. eom

[AngryAmish]

7. A yulgar display of power

[Swede]

2. Thanks for the link

[riverwalker]

3. children being rescued now

by helicopter....gawd

[Poll_Blind]

4. What link are you watching? I could really use a hopeful thought at the moment.

PB

[SaveAmerica]

8. Take care and take breaks often, I made myself sick watching Katrina before and after

Mother nature sure can make you feel really really helpless.

[Poll_Blind]

9. I'm way more worried about those nuclear plants right now but you're right.

:hug:

Thanks. I think we've lived through enough news in the last 10 years to last two lifetimes of worry.

PB

[SaveAmerica]

11. I guess that's why I wanted to comment, watching the footage from the air that was on the news

tonight made my stomach hurt. It didn't let up and it reminded me of how I felt mentally and physically after 9/11.

[Poll_Blind]

12. I know what you mean. I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth and thinking about it all and...

...the thought occurred to me that this was sort of a horizontal 9/11, with the sea heavily perched above the coast and then, with a crack, crumbling down like the towers and gathering up the buildings and cars and trees and bricks and people and grinding it all together as it went down or rather, inland, like the towers did. Remember the fireman after the WTC collapsed who said the largest thing he found was part of a keypad from a office telephone? I had the same vibe as I wondered where all the people had gone. That that grinding sea had done the same as the collapsing towers and not just killed them but, for the most part, erased all easily identifiable physical traces of them.

For me, somehow, that was worse than being killed. Just being erased by nature like that.

Somewhere out in that mud, out in those broken things that used to be cities with roads and street ligths and bars and everything else- out there, there are shivering people and crying babies and worried dogs and freaked out cats and I know some of them won't make it but I know some of them will. And to both groups I am sending out the best wishes I can. I've...I've just not seen destruction like that before, even after the Indian tsunami and all that. That onslaught was absolutely without mercy.

PB

[Maru Kitteh]

5. Thankyou for the link.

[msongs]

6. thanks for the live link. (all the stuff overlaid on news screens these days is annoying tho) nt

[malaise]

10. It's unbelievable

We're no match for nature.

[defendandprotect]

13. Anyone had enough of patriarchy, capitalism and elite running things yet?

If Obama goes forward with subsidizing a new generation of nuclear power plants here

I want a RECALL!!

[K Gardner]

14. Just wanted to say what an absolutely incredible talent you have for writing. Aside from what you

wrote about, the writing itself is breath-taking.

[Liberal_in_LA]

15. does it remind your of Katrina? or worse?