More Katrina

I remember the last conference call of the day. One of our customers, a pharmaceutical company I will call Birdie, was upset that we had closed so many offices and that we wouldn't drive an 18 wheeler from Baton Rouge up I-55 to them. Common sense would tell you that high winds tip trucks, but they seemed offended we wouldn't risk the life of our driver for their product. We ended up agreeing to send a couple of cars from the Jackson office to them to hot shot orders to a hospital in Lafayette and Alexandria. We agreed to close the Baton Rouge and Mobile offices the next day. Everyone else would play it by ear. I was concerned about staffing at our office after the hurricane passed because people had evacuated all over. One of our larger banking customers would have been very upset if we were not ready to roll immediately.

I can't remember what time we went to bed, but I was happy because it looked as if Katrina would be making a turn towards Mississippi and that was good for us in New Orleans. I remember thinking that God had spared New Orleans again and that was awesome. I slept in Kevin's son's room and he had a typical guy room. No lamp to read by. I had gotten a pissed off call from my Mom sometime around bedtime thanks to the fact that Jen, the refugee, had neglected to tell Lisa that she also had to evacuate her mother. Basically my mom now had Lisa, the dog, Jen, Jen's 8 year old daughter, and Jen's mother at her house. Mom was not happy. I told her Lisa never told me about the grandmother (I could hear Lisa in the background saying she doesn't know - don't be mad at Nikki) and I was sorry, but that I was in the middle of the mess down there and I couldn't do anything for them. Mom and Lisa were nervous for me, but I explained I was in Baton Rouge and unless the Hurricane took an extreme shift to the west, that we would be fine. I went to bed with all kinds of bizarre images in my head. In my dreams that night, Katrina was the wicked witch and Lisa was Dorothy was the Wizard of Oz and she and Holly (our dog) kept getting chased by Katrina. I wanted to protect them, but I couldn't. I woke up in a cold sweat about 3am. By that time, we had lost power, so I just went back to sleep. I was also reading the book Wicked so that could explain why I was having the freaky Oz dreams.

I woke up around 7 on Monday August 29 - still no power and that meant no TV either. The winds were picking up, but nothing crazy. We had a conference call at 7, and it was the SSDD syndrome again. I think I actually went back to sleep in the middle of it. Kevin got this headphone radio thing and hung it from the lamp so that I could listen to. Mostly it was people talking about all the people at the Superdome and how the cops were trying to get people off the streets. They were getting ready to just go to the shelters and people were going to be on their own. WWL was reporting that some moron in a Porsche was flying down I-10. WWL was the voice of New Orleans, but then they switched to their Baton Rouge affiliate as they had to take shelter in New Orleans also. The wind was blowing the trees completely over outside. That was scary. Also branches were just snapping off trees and falling on cars. I had one land on the Jeep, but it wasn't large enough to do damages. We napped and then Kevin's neighbor came and knocked on the door and wanted him to go look at the fence. We walked out back in the yard and Kevin's fence had completely blown over. I took pictures on my cell phone and sent them to Lisa. Then I noticed Kevin's pool actually had whitecaps in it. The wind had to be at least 70 mph. He and his neighbor got an ax and cut the fence the rest of the way down to keep it from flying off. I got bored with this and went back inside and went back to sleep.

I woke up to the sounds of the ambulance. I sprung off the couch and headed outside. I opened the door and saw a crowd of people gathered up the street. I headed that way and Kevin's daughter told me that the old lady that lived in the house had been injured. Apparently her fence had blown down and her husband had gone out in the middle of the high winds to try and fix the fence. This is totally something my grandparents would have done. He was messing with the hammer while she was supposed to be holding the fence. Of course the inevitable happened, a gust of wind blew into the fence and literally picked her up out of her shoes and threw her backwards into the concrete. Her shoes were sitting on the sidewalk. I kept thinking of the Wizard of Oz again. I have pictures of this too. Morbid, I know, but I am fascinated with the ugly little details of life. The lady was lying in the street unconscious. Kevin helped the EMT's take her into the ambulance and then she left. Her daughter lived 2 houses away and was pretty upset. I can't blame her. I learned from Kevin recently that the lady never regained consciousness and passed away around Christmas. That makes me sad. Katrina caused devastation that can't even be directly tied to the storm.

I went back inside and couldn't sleep. I read Wicked again and played Texas Hold'em. I felt okay about New Orleans because from all the initial reports we had made it through just fine. Normal hurricane damage. I felt relieved and let my family know we were okay. We had another conference call about 5pm. Everyone was commenting on the extensive bad weather. Mobile was getting some bad weather and Jackson, too. I believe every office ended up closing except for Montgomery and Birmingham.