Disaster
Posted on | September 6, 2005 |
The disasterous effects of Hurricane Katrina have, of course, been on my mind constantly for the past week. With each new story of loss, I am stricken once more with the absolute unfathomableness of the disaster. There are many individual situations, stories, and anecdotes throughout the news related to the losses the area has sustained, but today, Matt Mullenweg reminded me of yet another instance of loss due to Katrina — that of data, servers, and hardware at Tulane University. This may seem small in comparison to the grand scheme of things, but as someone who has worked in web development for universities/colleges for the past 5 or so years, this is indeed a devastating loss. Tulane has lost its servers and its website, a web developer’s worst nightmare. It’s just insane. They currently have a basic site up to address institutional issues in addition to a WordPress blog aimed at gathering information and keeping Tulanians up-to-date.
Here’s to hoping there were backups of all data (including the years and years of administrative data) stored offsite in a fire- and water-proof location. Best wishes to Tulane and all of those in the affected areas.
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September 7th, 2005 @ 9:03 am
[...] For what its worth, spare a thought for the lives lost, the businesses, the schools and colleges and the livelihoods of those caught in this tragedy.
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September 12th, 2005 @ 7:59 am
Ouch! From personal experience losing all your servers and data in one fell swoop is the closest thing on earth to hell! I sure hope they had offsite backups!