Mike Rohde just sent me a link about a guy who is still in downtown New Orleans and he’s blogging and hosting a web cam. He goes by the name of Interdictor and from reading his profile he’s a bit extreme, but I guess you’d need to be in times like this. To quote is synopsis of his blog:

This journal has become the Survival of New Orleans blog. In less perilous times it was simply a blog for me to talk smack and chat with friends. Now this journal exists to share firsthand experience of the disaster and its aftermath with anyone interested.

Now you might be wondering just what the hell this guy is doing staying in New Orleans. Well, it seems he works for a company called DirectNIC, which hosts hundreds of thousands of web sites and their data center is located in downtown New Orleans. He’s on the 10th and 11th floors of a corporate high rise on 650 Poydras Ave right near St. Charles. They are running a diesel generator to keep power going and the police have been using their building as a staging area, so that’s good news.


If you’d like to read his blog from the start of the storm, simply select this link. There’s navigation towards the top of each post with arrows to allow you to navigation forward and backward in the timeline. It’s interesting to start from the beginning knowing what we now know concerning the flooding and looting.

He’s also posted some pictures here and here, but the best is his live web cam. You have to use Windows Media Player, but you can view it at either mms://204.251.3.10:3349, or at http://old.mises.org:88/NO2. I just saw four military vehicles in a wide convoy go down the street looking pretty serious and a Coast Guard helicopter flyover.

This whole Katrina thing is just freakin’ crazy and now to have blog and web cam at ground zero of the aftermath just takes things up another notch. Incredible.

One last note – the content on LiveJournal, where his blog is hosted, can get a little rough. Language can get a bit harsh in a hurry and there’s even some nudity in the comments, so if those types of things offend you, you might want to steer clear.