Since we have been home...

Preparation and Results of Hurricane Gustav

It was Monday when landfall was projected by the news and media sources. Since our vacation was to end and we were scheduled to return to the Mid City area Sunday evening. We thought it would be safer to stay in Conroe until the storm hit and then assess the damage and plan our return. As you know or actually those in Texas may not know the brunt of the storm took a very bad toll on East Baton Rouge Parish…many say that the damage here is extremely worse than Hurricane Katrina. The only way we got the true information about the damage was by watching Louisiana News online where they reported about the true problem with power outages, food shortages, water contamination, gas shortages and road closures. We ended up watching the news and realizing that it would be better not to rush back until things were a little more stable. Things did not become more stable until about Friday when more gas stations were available and some grocery stores opened for limited hours and most of all the hospital power was restored so that meant Jordan needed to return to work.

(This is me and my mom shopping at Wal-Mart in Conroe for 14 days worth of nonperishable foods and water…just in case we prepared for the worst) We called Jordan and told him all that we could find for meat was SPAM and VIENNA Sausages and Sardines. My mom bought a can and handed it to him to see what his reaction would be. I think that is the most serious face he has ever given me, when he told me he would not eat sardines. Hehe!

We returned to Mid City Saturday evening around 9:00pm to discover that all of our preparation of buying 14 days worth of non-perishable meals, 10 gallons of water, borrowing a tent, and buying an air mattress…would not be needed this time around because our power had been restored. YEAH! You may be wondering about the tent and air mattress…we live in a very old house so we have windows that are painted shut with no screens so we had planned to camp out and sleep on our porch in order to be able to endure the Louisiana heat through the night. We are tempted yet to have a campout on our porch just for fun and since we have it all….why not?

Today was my first day to see everything in the light of day. Jordan headed off to work at 8am this morning and will be on call until tomorrow morning so I spent much of the day just getting things put away from our trip, putting our patio furniture back in it’s rightful place, and cleaning out the refrigerator and freezer. You see our electricity was out from Monday afternoon till Friday or Saturday morning so our freezer had something with purple liquid that exploded all over the freezer and then when the power came back on froze to the bottom of the freezer and ran down into the refrigerator to hide under our crisper drawers at the bottom. I spent about 2 hours cleaning the mystery gunk out and throwing away all of our food. I must say we do have the cleanest fridge in the parish and the most sanitary fridge as well.

After taking care of the house I ventured out to take some photos of our fallen tree and broken limbs in the yard. I didn’t get many of the broken limbs in the yard because a mystery man came and cleaned them up while I was cleaning the fridge, but here is a shot of the tree that use to be in our back yard. Thankfully it did not hit anyone’s house or damage anything except for the fence. We will miss the shade on our porch though… I drove to our landlords house to drop off our rent and on the way the tree limbs that residents have gathered from their yards and trunks of trees that have been cut up lined the streets 3-5 feet high. There were a few big trees and power lines still blocking the streets. Several power lines lay across the streets so that you can drive over them.
Albertson’s grocery stores have opened their powered back up and open their doors for limited amount of hours. I decided to save some of our non-perishable meats and get some real meat. At the entrance of the store there are towers of water jugs and bottles. The freezer section is roped off and completely empty, but they did have milk, meat, cheese, and most non-perishable foods. The common question at the check out of most patrons was, “do you still have ice?” There are still several streets around us that have not yet restored power so there is still a need for ice to keep food cool. The sound of generators running is a familiar sound on the streets.
I visited Jordan at the hospital for dinner; well I went to the hospital and we were suppose to eat together but just as I got there he was needed in the ER and ended up getting caught up there so he made me walk back home before it got dark. It was pretty cool how they had the triage department set up to better facilitate the need. The national guard has established a tent triage outside of the ER and they have a check in station outside to determine the persons level of severity. They either send them into the tent to be treated or if they are serious they are sent into the hospital ER to be treated. It’s like what I have seen on TV except it’s here.

This whole experience is surreal. Now we are attentively watching IKE as it just hit the Bahamas this evening and we await to see what it will do when it reaches the Gulf of Mexico. My Mom said she wouldn’t mind us evacuating again to their house…she said it has been to quiet around their house the past two evenings.

P.S. I apologize for the lenghty writing, but there has been so much that has happened in the past two weeks that I want to be sure to share everything.