As the comments to the post below indicate, my friend Rob made it well out of New Orleans and has reason to believe he'll find his house in OK condition when he returns. His neighborhood was apparently not badly flooded.

Looking for news of my old hometown of Long Beach, late last night I went to the Biloxi Sun-Herald's website and found their hurricane blog -- and discovered that my childhood friend Don is a writer for the paper now, and one of the reporters chronicling the devastation.

That prompted me to email him, and while it was great (and surprising) to hear back from him, I'm sad to report that he's one of hundreds of people who lost homes to the storm.

There's not too much detail on Long Beach proper, but the Sun-Herald's town-by-town damage page says that the First Baptist Church -- where something like 50% of my elementary and junior high school classmates attended -- was "leveled." Pretty horrible.

As if you needed it, here's the Red Cross Donation Page.