The aftermath of Hurricane Ike

In the aftermath of this terrible storm in Texas and Louisiana, Tracing the Tribe hopes that all our friends in impacted areas - individuals and the Jewish communities in general - came through safely without physical injury, even as we know that millions of area residents are without electric power and other services, and that property damage has been severe.

We hope that all services may be restored quickly and that life return to normal as soon as possible.

Jan Meisels Allen has written that JewishGen has been down since last night as the servers are still in Houston.Jewish genealogical societies hosted on the JewishGen servers are also not working nor are the site's staff emails - even though the individuals are based elsewhere. This situation has also effected some of special interest groups (SIGs) hosted by JewishGen and for some components on Steve Morse's website.

Bennett Greenspan of Family Tree DNA - also based in Houston - wrote before the storm hit, indicating that backups were being made every 15 minutes and no loss of data was expected.

As soon as Tracing the Tribe hears more concerning our friends in Houston and other impacted areas, we'll post the information.