Yeraze's Domain 3.0

So, I’m sure the big question on all your minds is “How did you weather Hurricane Katrina?”

Short answer: Pretty Well.

Longer Answer: It was still a mess.

For the full story, read the details inside…
We were really fortunate that we didn’t suffer any damage to our house. A section of our fence did collapse (post snapped, ironically 6 hours after Katrina passed.. Dunno how), but my brother-in-law helped me fix it up with a quick $12 Home Depot hack.

Still, power and gas were a disaster. We were without power for 7 days. We lost power at 3:30 on Monday, and regained power at noon on Labor Day (the next Monday). At first Entergy said we were the victim of a broken feeder line and we should have power back over the weekend. Keep in mind that from my driveway I could look 100 yards to the East at our old apartment and see they had power. I could look 100 yards to the south and see my buddies from work had power. We were in the dark tho, along with several others. Sunday afternoon they updated the info with the story that we were victims of a “broken underground”. Well, I never saw them dig anything up or move anything around, but somehow we got power back on Labor Day, and for that we were extremely thankful. I’m also extremely thankful to my Sister & Brother-in-law for letting the three of us stay with them in their 1-bedroom apartment once they got power back.

We had alot of downed limbs in our yard. The only way I know to describe it is that one big tree “molted”. I’ve got pictures I’ll post later, but basically I had 3 inches of leaves and limbs in my backyard to move. Here’s a picture taken at about 6pm, right when the winds started subsiding.

That’s just a small portion of my backyard. Multiply that space by about 8 or 10 to realize the mess I had to clean up around my entire house. Never seen anything quite like it, and it took a good bit of time to clean it up. In fact, the city just this morning sent a truck to pick up all the limbs at our house. So many were down they’re just driving a wood chipper around, hooked to a dump truck.

But the other real pain about all of it was the Gas situation. Between the sudden run on Generators, and consequently gas to power them, and the media frenzy on the broken gas pipes and damaged platforms, gas was more precious than gold. Two hours lines, with only 2 pumps in the city stocked at any given time. I have to give credit to the City of Clinton, tho, they handled it well. Every time a Gas Station got restocked, Police (and SWAT, I didn’t even know Clinton had a SWAT team until this happened) were there directing traffic and keeping things moving. Eventually they started enforcing limits like $20-maximum purchase and such, and that got lines down to 15minutes or so. After that first week tho, things pretty much returned to normal. Gas was available anywhere, with no lines, but only in the 87-grade variety. Today was the first time I noticed pumps offering the premium stuff, not that I would buy it anyway given the price. But it was intimidating to try & bypass the line to get to Burger King one day, and have a SWAT officer tell you “That’s fine sir, but if I see this car pull up to a pump, you will be arrested for disorderly conduct.”

Things are almost back to normal here. Entergy claims that Mississippi is “all on”, but I know several people are still in the dark around Jackson. We just got internet access back at work late last week, because our connection to the DREN was in New Orleans. We thought we would have to be rewired, but once they got a little power flowing back into New Orleans, we found our link was still active. Kinda funny to get an email stating that “Internet Access will be operational pending the availability of Gas to run the Generators.” Our sister site NAVO down at Stennis didn’t fare so well, tho. They took alot of damage, which I’m sure all of you NASA Junkies have heard, and have basic connectivity thanks to a Satellite Uplink. Today was there first day open since Katrina, while ERDC has been running since the Wednesday afterwards. In fact, ERDC never really stopped working, everyone just took a Sick day.

Perhaps the most interesting part of all this was watching from the Inside how the Media & such were handling it. I won’t get into all that right now, I’ll save that for tomorrow. In the meantime, just rest knowing that we made it through in one piece.. Relatively unscathed.