New Orleans Microbiology Meeting in Doubt

The flooding and devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans and the surrounding areas is sure to affect at least one scientific conference scheduled for the city in the near future and calls into doubt the city's ability to serve as one of the country's great convention and meeting destinations.

Of course, given the massive devastation and heart-rending human loss the area is suffering, this is likely the least of the great problems the city, and the US, will face.

But, for the 16,000 members of the American Society of Microbiology expecting to meet there in just about three weeks, starting Sept. 19, there is no official word yet on the status of the meeting, the 45th annual Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy. The group's website says it is monitoring the situation.

It is quite likely that the city, rapidly filling with water from a breach in the defensive walls against the waters of nearby Lake Pontchartrain, will be in no shape to host visitors.

New Orleans, with some 38,000 hotel rooms and sites like the Ernest Morial Convention Center, the Superdome, New Orleans Arena, and other sites, is one of the country's top convention destinations, with 40 conventions listed on the website of the New Orleans Convention and Visitors Bureau.

The Washington Post today reported that a number of conference representatives have called the Georgia World Congress Center and the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau over the last few days to see if the city could handle their business on short notice if needed.

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Editors note: The devastation wracking New Orleans and surrounding areas has literally crumbled the communications infrastructure. New Orleans-based websites are unavailable with news reports saying that e-mail servers for big hubs like Tulane University are under water.

Even Google's cache feature can not call up archived versions of sites that are unavailable. News coverage has been spotty as on-the-ground reportage is limited by unsafe conditions and communications difficulties. First-person information is limited as computer connections are wiped out. The blogosphere and traditional media are an echo-chamber, reduced to repeating the same video and sound bytes, that are being produced by the on-the-ground reporters there.

The Craigslist New Orleans site offers heart-breaking messages from people looking for information about family and friends, and equally inspiring messages from people all over the country who are opening their homes to refugees, and offering money and resources. Shame that Amazon, Google, E-Bay, among others, are not responding to this calamity in the same fashion as they did to the tsunami.]