Re: New Orleans Phones Are All Out, Also

>> Has anybody heard from Mark Cuccia? Hopefully, he either got out of

>> town, or is keeping his head above water.
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You might wish to try the Tulane
> University library, where he was employed, and ask them what they
> know, if anything. I do not know how badly, if at all, the flood
> affected the library and its book collections. Obviously, the phones
> are out, but perhaps someone with some imagination can find a way to
> reach the library staff. PAT]

It may or may not help you, but the web site of the Times-Picayune (the New Orleans newspaper) has a public bulletin board that's had traffic asking and reporting about Tulane departments (among, of course, lots of other postings). The material isn't threaded so you may have to scroll through literally thousands of postings hoping that the subject lines of what you're looking for stand out. The board for Orleans Parish is:

According to the sources I've seen the area just beyond the far western edge of the campus (corner of Willow and Broadway) has (or had) a few feet of water but the area roughly bounded by Broadway, Freret, Jefferson, and Magazine is (more or less) dry. The library sits just off Freret unless it's been moved in the past few years.

FWIW: reports I'm getting (both from anonymous boards like the board I cited above, and from some contacts within the city) indicate that Tulane (and its next-door neighbor, Loyola) were spared the floodwaters. There is obviously significant wind damage in the area, but I'm getting inconsistent reports of the degree of damage on the campus. I no longer have any direct contacts in the Library and my indirect contacts haven't mentioned it.

Joe Morris (awaiting confirmation that my sister's house still exists)

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another good source of information in and about New Orleans is at where they maintain forums with open postings of people looking for loved ones. They were asking people to use the accelerated indexes according to family name, etc but posters seemed to just be putting notices everywhere on the board. I tried going through it, reading the various postings yesterday, but it was tough going, not only from the disorganized way the postings appeared (I think the postings were appearing faster than the sysadmin caretakers could re-arrange them) and emotionally (at least for me). WWL Radio and WWL Television have been attempting to cover this 24 hours daily, but they did have to sign off for a few hours the other night (coming back on the air at 5:30 AM) because of maintainence needs. Use for a direct video/audio feed 24/7 from their newsroom. The usual technological pitfalls (bandwidth shortage) is apparent. PAT]