One thing I'm surprised the Katrina disaster has yet to generate is lawsuits, or at the very least talk of lawsuits. Its a target rich enviroment for potential litigants, with the federal government, the Louisiana government, the city of New Orleans, various US government agencies and more all being potential respondents in lawsuits. Of course it may simply be the case that lawyers are having trouble getting in touch with potential clients because the disaster is ongoing. Until the displaced have found permanent or semipermanent places to live it will be nearly impossible to have consistent contact with them.

I would guess that con artists are already working to exploit the charity angle. If you're interested in donating money to the relief efforts it would be best to donate to a well established charitable organisation like United Way or the Red Cross. I'm sure the Nigerian scam crowd and their emulators will soon be sending out letters claiming to be from some poor victim of the disaster who really needs your help to get that 20 million bucks out of his bank account, and he'll share 10 percent with you to thank you for your help.

Many New Orleans residents will not be returning to the city, including many of its poor. And some people in the city are saying good riddance to the latter. They see this as an opportunity to get rid of the lower classes who they say cause crime and hurt the city's image. The fact that the city's underclass is heavily black of course leads one to suspect racism plays a role in some of these attitudes, although I would suspect you'd find such thinking amongst some of the city's well to do blacks as well. As is often the case with such attitudes those who hold them apparently have no problem with these people continuing their supposed evil ways, just as long as they do it in someone else's backyard.

Speaking of racism those idiots at the New Order, who I mentioned in a previous post as a source of some of my e-mail spam, have been more active of late. They see the disaster as a perfect excuse to spew more of their poison. I would imagine their fellow travelers in other such groups have been doing the same thing.

And some responses to the Katrina disaster are just silly and tasteless. Some writers of fanfiction are already using the disaster in their stories. Take this example, courtesy of the Godawful Fan Fiction Forum, of a Harry Potter story where evil Chinese wizards cause Katrina. Riiiiight.