Unlike terrorist attacks, which are based on surprise, hurricanes allow for an unnerving level of advance speculation. In the case of Katrina, the predictions were the worst I’d ever encountered in the mainstream press, which warned of the whole of New Orleans being turned into a giant stagnant swamp filled with building debris, refinery chemicals, sewage, and unearthed coffins, leaving most of those who live in and around New Orleans homeless and creating a U.S. refugee camp of over a million people.

Then Katrina hit, and while the coffin-swamp didn’t materialize, the damage was tremendous and horrifying: Whole neighborhoods submerged to their roofs, power out to a quarter-million people, and at least 55 confirmed dead (which officials predict is the tip of the iceberg). It’s a horrible state of affairs, and if you’re so inclined, here’s where you can donate relief funds to the Red Cross.

That said, I must now mock the Seattle media for doing what it’s always done: Digging up some tenuous “Northwest connection” to any and all major tragedies. In this case, it was Northwest Cable News, which solemnly reported how “Katrina’s effects are being felt even here,” then cut to a Burien man with relatives in New Orleans (all of them safe), who sat in his living room watching random disaster footage on TV while saying, “Wow. Look at that. Wow.”