Brian Oberkirch became a national figure last year when he covered the Hurricane Katrina disasater real time on his blog, slidell.weblogswork.com. The blog was linked to heavily by bloggers and news sites looking for the latest news on what was happening. Doc Searls linked over and over, and Jeff Jarvis, Fred Wilson, Tom Evslin, Business Week, The Washington Post and others also linked. The Slidell hurricane blog was an important resource for people during the crisis, and is an important historical document going forward.

That’s why I’m extremely unhappy to see that the blog has been deleted, apparently due to a spat between Brian and his former partner, which hosted the blog. Brian’s side is here, and the WeblogsWork side is here. The details are irrelevant, I just hope the blog is put back up immediately.