"I'm Giving up Hope"

Gasoline is creeping up to $4.00 a gallon here in California, and the lines are getting longer at the pump, but I may have the following engraved and mounted on my dashboard, to remind me just how much worse things could be.

Millions of people spent a third night without water, food or heating in near-freezing temperatures along the devastated northeastern coast..."I'm giving up hope," said Hajime Watanabe, 38, a construction industry worker, who was the first in line at a closed gas station in Sendai, about 60 miles north of Soma. Just then, an emergency worker came over and told him that if the station opens at all, it would pump gasoline only to emergency teams and essential government workers.

"I never imagined we would be in such a situation" Watanabe said. "I had a good life before. Now we have nothing. No gas, no electricity, no water."

He said he was surviving with his family on 60 half-liter bottles of water his wife had stored in case of emergencies like this. He walked two hours to find a convenience store that was open and waited in line to buy dried ramen noodles.

And those are the lucky ones...

H/T Weasel Zippers

Cross posted at LCR,
Lady Cincinnatus , Say Anything.