Hurricane Katrina Damage

It is almost inconceivable to image what people are going through in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I am sure that everyone's hearts go out to the people there. I have made a donation to the Red Cross and it seems that the least we can do.

Yet, whatever problems they are facing in New Orleans they have been compounded by the problems with violence they have experienced after the storm. I did a rough calculation of the murder rate in the Superdome in New Orleans, and it was amazingly high. It appears that at least 12 people were murdered there on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. I keep on getting conflicting numbers on the number of people who were in the Superdome, but if there were 20,000, that is a two day murder rate of 60 per 100,000 people. If there were 10,000 people, that obviously raises it to 120 per 100,000. By comparison, the US murder rate for the year is 5 per 100,000. New Orleans in for the entire year 2003, it was 58 per 100,000 people (or about 2.3 murders for a three day period). In other words, the murder rate seems over 100 times higher than normal for the city.