Hurricance Gustav Hits

This was typed on Wednesday evening. Internet did not come back on until today.

We are alive and well (as well as we could be, considering). Hurricane Gustav hit us as a Category II hurricane, and we were here for every wind gust and rain drop!

This storm went down in history as the worst, strongest storm to EVER hit the Baton Rouge area. That is so our luck. We live here for TWO WEEKS and the strongest storm ever decides to blow through!

Monday:
We woke up to some stronger than normal winds, but not too strong. We just waited. Obviously, we did not want to go anywhere, knowing what was coming. So, we enjoyed as much electricity as we could. The winds gradually picked up for a while and then quickly started getting strong. And then there was the rain, too. Since there was no lightening or thunder, it was easy to think of it as just a rain shower with winds, for a while. There was never a time I was concerned for US, but there were a few times I was concerned for our house. Before we even reached hurricane strength winds we lost cable/internet/phone. We later found out that the cables-cables went down on the road right outside our neighborhood.

I got concerned about our house a couple of times. We watched a neighbors shingles flying off their roof. Watching things like this does not make you feel good about what YOUR OWN roof is doing! Also, there was a while in the worst of the storm where the east side of our house was REALLY getting pounded. The windows were bowing and rain was coming in them. Our back door had rain coming in the doorknob, deadbolt and windows, as well as under the door (it was not flooding – literally blowing in the door). The door was deadbolted, but the wind was so strong that it was pushing the door and we were feeling the wind coming in. Watching our landscaping was terrifying. Not because we were worried about losing it (which we obviously did not want to happen) but because, again, when you watch things getting destroyed like that you really wonder what is happening to your house that you CANNOT see.

We had sustained winds of up to 68 mph and gust over 95 mph. It is an amazing sight to watch. You watch tree tops (and elephant ears) begin spinning like a helicopter blades. If you look at our elephant ears, they are completely shredded. We watched (and got video of) a plastic dog kennel that went flying across the street. It broke in two in the air and barely hit the ground before it was getting thrown somewhere else. It hit houses, cars, fences, etc before it disappeared. We watched tree branches and plants flying. A small tree in the pasture behind us snapped in half (and again – became like a helicopter blade). I was in awww.

Hurricane Aftermath:
Tuesday, early afternoon, we decided we would go look for gas. We had four five gallon gas cans for the generator. After hearing it could be weeks before we got electricity back (that is right, WEEKS), we decided we ought to try to find something because we were down to about 30 hours of gas for the generator. We have been rationing the gas. We run the generator (which has the refrigerator, a window unit, fans for the bedrooms and miscellaneous things as we need them) for a couple of hours and turn it off for around 4 hours. Our main goal is to keep the stuff in the refrigerator/freezer, cold.

Tuesday we got pounded with LOTS of rain. Looking at the radar, we had a red band just stuck on top of us. We got over 9 feet of water JUST YESTERDAY. We really thought we were going to have to use our flood insurance (which we were told we did not need). The house was fine, but it was definently reassuring to know we had it!

So, we go to look for gas. We go to pull out and see that about 2 houses down there was water about half way up the mailboxes. So we went the other way. We took the Jeep – thank goodness! We went to make the circle of our neighborhood (there is only one way in and out of the neighborhood), and went through five or six pretty high water spots throughout the neighborhood. We got to the entrance and started to go out. The water was to the bottom of the stop sign. Paul drove through it because he was already in it and could not stop. We decided we were NOT going to go anywhere. The water at the entrance was about 4 feet high. It went OVER the hood of Paul’s Jeep.

The damage in the neighborhood was amazing, I guess because ours was so minimal, I was surprised at what I saw. There were fences torn apart and thrown around. Trees down. Landscape destroyed. Shingles gone and all over the roads, water everywhere. Porta-potty’s flipped over and thrown across the street and houses down (there are still a few houses being built in our neighborhood).

Tuesday evening when the waters finally went down, we ventured out again. The damage to the city was even more amazing than our neighborhood. There were houses half under water. Trees down EVERYWHERE! Power lines, transformers and poles down everywhere. Water everywhere. Electricity NO WHERE!!!!

The road right outside of our neighborhood, you can turn two ways on. We went out one end and tried coming home on the other end. It was under water and had power lines sitting in the water. We had to turn around and go around town and in the other end of the road. Seeing powerlines down on the street in water does not make you feel good about getting electricity soon.

Here are some tidbits of info about us right now:
We have not had electricity in 3 days and there is NO end in sight. This is one of the biggest problem the state faces right now. The two electric companies in our city both had 100% of their customers without electricity. 40% of the STATES transmission lines are down. Without transmission lines, the distribution lines (which are also down) are pointless. Let this kind of put things in perspective for you. Yesterday, the hospital here in town had their generator break down. Ambulances from Philidelphia (the Baton Rouge area as of yesterday still had 900 patients that needed to be evacuated from hospitals with no air conditioning and failing generators) came and evacuated from hospitals here to hospitals in NEW ORLEANS. The electric companies are telling us to expect at LEAST 2 weeks to get power back. We live on the outskirts of town. They will obviously take care of electric IN town to get stores, gas stations, SCHOOLS, etc back on track. As of today, there was still 94% of customers without electricity.

We have a curfew. 6pm to 6am. If you do not have a legitimate reason to be out, you get arrested. There is NOTHING open. Roads are still flooded (as of today), trees still lay in roads. Powerlines are still over the roads in many places. There is no reason for anyone to be out.

Cell service is iffy at best. Usually you have to continuously dial numbers 10+ times until a call goes through. If you are ever in a situation like this….texting goes through much easier than calls. We can rarely use the internet on our phone or check our emails.

We went out again today to try and find gas. It took half the day, but we got gas. It is not that our cars need it, it is that our generator needs it. That is the story everywhere. Noone has power so we are in a gas crisis.

It is easy to watch from somewhere else and get an idea of the devestation in places like this. I watched from another state during Katrina. It was heart-breaking, and movie-like. It could get easy to watch clips and feel as though you are watching a movie and kind of disconnect from the human side of the devestation. It is eye-opening to be IN the devestation. It is like living in a third-world country right now. You take advantage of running to the gas station or the corner store when you need food or gas. To get gas – we waited in line for over 2 hours today. If you can find a store that is open – they are probably operating with a generator and they are only letting 3 or 4 people in at a time. More major lines. If you go to get the free water, ice, tarps, MRE’s from FEMA – you have to be prepared to wait 8-10+ hours. They are putting these supplies directly in your car. So, you have to have a full tank of gas to sit in the lines. If you don’t, you have to wait in line for gas (there are only a handful of gas stations even open. Most don’t have electricity for their pumps to pump the gas), then sit in line for FEMA assistance. Every gas station had police organizing lines and keeping the peace.

I am not saying it is not worth the wait or meaning to sound unappreciative of what we DO have. I am trying to draw a picture of what is going on. It will be quite a while before we can run to the store for a gallon of milk and it not be an all day thing. When we left this morning for gas, we left at 8:15 and got home at 12:30. It was all driving looking for gas and then sitting and waiting for gas. We saw people who ran out of gas in line for gas and were pushing their car to stay in the line.

I have to say I am thankful for going through this POST Katrina. I won’t say they have done a perfect job, but compared to what I SAW with Katrina….miles ahead!!!! There are still kinks that need to be worked out. But overall, they have done a great job. People followed the mandatory evacuations. They were much more organized this time and did not mean that people had to leave animals behind. That is why we did not see the chaos and rescues we saw with Katrina (and the levees did not break this time). The strict curfews helped. The state was much more prepared for this storm than they were for Katrina. Most of the deaths in the state from the storm were things like carbon-monoxide poisoning from people running their generators in the house, or people cutting trees down and the trees fell on them, things like that. While these are horrible and tragic, it is much less tragedy than three years ago. The fact that it was almost 3 years to the day that Katrina hit, really hit home with people and made them take it that much more serious.

It is easy to get blue after the storm. I have told many people and stick by it, the aftermath of the storm is SO much worse than the storm itself. It started raining Sunday. It has rained everyday since. No sun. We have no electricity. The kids can’t go to school and are bored crazy. They can’t go outside because it is raining, thundering, lightening and there have been tornado warnings all around us. The last couple of days have been somewhat cool, because of the rain. Tomorrow the sun should be coming out and it will be getting in the 90’s again. We can’t run our window unit all day (means using more gas for generator) and the window unit is only in our bedroom. The humidity level has GOT to be about 300%. Things in the house are feeling damp and we always feel sticky and nasty! We can’t go anywhere in the car because we might need the gas in the cars for the generator. Bugs. Lots of bugs. Mosquitos will only be getting worse. It is just a miserable situation, and as I said – we are better off than many. I bought food for through this week. Supply is running low. I am down to half a loaf of bread. No milk for Andrew. About half a gallon of regular milk. A hot meal would be GREAT (one NOT fixed on the stovetop).

All of this complaining said. I am thankful. Very thankful. Our house faired great. We were planning on taking out some landscaping anyway – this just helped us decide what needs to be taken out. Our family is okay. We were fortunate enough to have the funds to go to the store on a moments notice (okay, four stores) to spend the $1000+ on the generator, gas and window unit). We were not evacuated. We do not have water in our house. We know where our property stands. Many people cannot even go back to their parish until Friday at the earliest, and are being asked to come back, look and leave again. We have water. We are able to shower, cook, use the bathrooms – many others aren’t. We did not have a tree land in our house (a co-worker of Paul’s did), our chimney did not blow off (another co-workers of Paul did).

The situation SUCKS, but we are blessed and lucky.

The boys throughout all of this were awesome (a little annoying, but hey…). After the near missed with the tornadoes this spring, they took it serious. The hurricane has been the talk of the town since beginning of last week. They discuss it at school. They hear us discussing it. They ran around town with us looking for generators and air conditioners and getting lots of canned and no-cook foods. They sat in the car for many hours today looking for and waiting for gas. This has not been easy on them, especially with all the other changes and stressed they have experienced the last couple of months (better yet, the last year). They asked several times a day toward the end of last week and over the weekend “is this the day the hurricane comes?” The hurricane came. They looked out the window and saw what was happening and went back to playing. Monday night, bedtime was pretty rough. Every night since the hurricane has been rough. They have been great!!

I know this is a long post, but this has consumed our life for two weeks. I do want to thank everyone for their calls and texts of concern and encouragement (and even all the calls and text saying we should run).