The Storm aka Katrina Part 2

To catch up go here and read about The Storm aka Katrina Part 1

We woke up Sunday August 28 and prepared for a long day of waiting. If you have never evacuated for a hurricane basically you hurry up to wait! You try and get the heck out of dodge before it hits only to sit around and wait for the storm to hit and pass.
After discovering that Katrina had been upgraded to a Cat5 and was going to hit some time the next morning we began to realize that even this far inland we were going to see significant rain as well as wind and we were going to be with out electricity for at least a couple of days. This is when we realized that we had left behind a very large industrial sized fan that would come in very handy plugged into the generator. So what did we do? Hubby and I drove back to our house to retrieve the fan (Thank GOD we did!!).
Sitting in the car on the way back to “Mayberry” listening to the radio -FYI by this time NONE of the local radio stations were playing music, they were all news all the time now. They were all giving updates as to when the storm was anticipated to hit, where to go to get water, what schools would be open for shelters, as well as taking calls to try and answer questions as best they could. Several of the Parish presidents were coming on the air stating that Katrina was going to be a very BAD storm and they wanted to let the citizens of their particular parish know that they need to take every precaution necessary to protect themselves and their families. I’ll never forget this, one Parish President stated that if you were going to be foolish and try to ride this thing out then you needed to make sure you had an axe or a claw hammer or some sort of tool because you were gonna need it to break out of your attic to get on to your roof. He was not playing around and wanted all of his citizens to know that this storm was not to be taken lightly and that even many of the “ole timers” were getting out of the way of this thing.

We were all awoken by the wind and rain BRIGHT AND EARLY Monday morning, the day Katrina hit. Naturally, we lost cable first, there went our connection with the outside world so we put in a movie to pass the time. The movie had not even started when a HUGE tree branch went through the window in Sissy’s old room. We (my mom, my dad, Hubby and I) all go and clean up the glass, etc. We return to try and watch the movie. We push play and again before the movie even started we hear this great big “THUWUNK” on the roof of the house. WTF?! It seems that one of the large oak trees in the front yard got tired and decided to lay down on top of my parents house. (slight damage-not much) Taking out the electricity in the process. Well, "I'll be a monkey's uncle" here it is barely 9:00AM and we are without power and someone is already doing shots of Tequila in the kitchen. This is going to get really interesting!
We had a generator so we were able to use the fan (you know the one we went back to get) as well as hook up the deep freeze, the refrigerator and a small t.v. With the help of rabbit ears we were able to watch a little t.v. (Thanks to digital t.v. we will not be able to do now) My dad or Pop Pop as Tay likes to call him loves to cook so we knew that we were going to eat like kings during our evacuation to "Mayberry" and he did not disappoint. With the help of a gas stove we ate Trout Almondine twice. He needed to try out two different recipes. We had survived a very windy and rainy day and night.

Tuesday August 30 Hubby and I were dressed and up and at 'em in the car on our way home by 7:30am! After seeing the damage that occurred around us in "Mayberry" I was starting to get very concerned about our little house. I was really starting to question my choice to finally unpack our wedding crystal the week before. Note to self-do not unpack anything during hurricane season. Why unpack when you might have to repack? or clean up the mess.
When we arrived into town we headed straight home. Well this proved much easier said than done. We tried and failed to get into out neighborhood several different ways. As we are driving around trying to get to our house we notice lots and lots of trees are down on the road, on cars, on houses. We also kept hearing "shhshshshhshshhhhhhh". Continuing on our quest we discovered that the "shshhhhhh" noise is from the gas lines that have been pulled away from houses by the downed tree. Good Grief. There was just too many trees, too many power lines and too much debris to make it in the car. So, we walked about a mile to our house. Over power lines, under limbs, over tree trunks-it was a virtual obstacle course just to get to our street. The closer we got the more nervous we got. I lit a cig and after about 5 drags remembered the "shhhhhh" noise. Brilliant-leaking gas and I lite a cig. We finally made it to our neighbor's house and saw that she took 3 trees through her house. (Eventually the house was torn down-Unsalvageable!). By this point we were reminding ourselves that we had insurance-homeowners and flood, thank you very much-and if need be we could start over. This is the EXACT reason we have the insurance in the first place. Right?!

To be continued....
Did I fail to mention that my in laws live one house from the lake?
Thanks for caring,
K