Today’s news is full of the evacuation of New Orleans. From what I can see, hurricane Gustav is not expected to make a direct hit on the city, but it will pass close enough to cause major damage. Hopefully the local and federal authorities will manage to make a slightly better job of managing the situation this time. Possibly the threat of major loss of life due to a badly managed natural disaster during the Republican National Convention will succeed in concentrating minds.

As for us, the Northwest web site shows that the ticket re-booking restriction waiver is only in operation for flights up until Wednesday. We are booked for Thursday, so we have to go or lose our money. In any case, the terms of the waiver only allow re-booking for times when we won’t be able to travel, so we are screwed either way. Given that, I suspect we might as well go anyway, though we won’t know whether the city will actually be open for business next weekend for a few days yet. As much of the point of going was to give New Orleans some badly needed tourist traffic, I’d be happy to go, but if the storm causes major damage the city authorities might want tourists to stay clear for a week or two while they clean things up. There’s no point in going just to gawk and get in the way.