It's as though, in some perverse manner, worlds are falling apart left and right.

Natural disasters occur. In places in which it was thought to be unthinkable.

And then...the infrastructure fails the people it was intended to serve. Which isn't old news, unfortunately.

It sounds all too familiar to me. It is one of those reasons why I blog, why I've been a tad more into the disaster preparedness than I usually have been. I don't want any of what has happened to close friends in my home to happen again to anyone else, anywhere else. If it does, they should be prepared.

I know that no one in Bay Ridge or on Staten Island could have seen a tornado coming. But, for public transportation to be leaving people in the lurch? Not good, in a city like New York. Not good for the massive population of the five boroughs.

I ask you to ponder the photo below, taken by a Brooklyn resident named Michael Gaffey. More photos can be seen here (one picture was taken not far from where we used to live in Queens), but the caption on this one is especially poignant.

Two signs of a very bad day for a car owner on Second Street between Beverly Road and Avenue C in Brooklyn: a destroyed windshield and a parking ticket.

Judging from the condition of the ticket, it probably got stuck on there before the storm blew through. The way things have been going infrastructure-wise, though, I'm sad to say I wouldn't be surprised if it were the other way 'round.

I have friends in flooded apartment buildings who need our support and good wishes right now. Be well and safe, Forest Hills residents. Hugs to our Queens synagogue friends from us.

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Update: Not only has New Orleans made it to the cover of Time magazine, it has also made the front page of today's Wall Street Journal, this time for reasons I've touched on previously. Get thyself to Madam Dangerblond's, read, and weep for those whose houses are gone due to bureaucratic bungling. Then get angry on behalf of those folks, and of those whose homes are wrongly on the chopping block. See which properties are facing the bulldozers over at Squandered Heritage. Vent your anger out on the city government. This should NOT be happening to good people who just want to live their lives in their homes.