Re: Gustav
Yup, got out of "Dodge" for Katrina. I have been through a number of hurricanes, but that wasn't one I was going to fool with. I left at 7:00 am on Sunday (the day before) and went east, instead of west. I was in north central Florida before the folks who went west arrived in Baton Rouge, which is normally a 90 minute drive.
My house survived - shingles all over the yard and some seepage into the house but not too bad, all things considered. The rest of the house, with the exception of my front porch, which faced the brunt of the winds, held up well. I also had a lot of tree damage, with limbs on the ground pretty much all over the place. My back yard abutts several thousand acres of woods (I live SW of New Orleans, in a rural area), and the damage is still very visible.
One of the things that I did that proved to be a good idea, was to board every bit of the house up, including the front and back doors. I used a lot of screws so that it would be unlikely that someone without a screw gun would want to try to get in. I had no looting at all, and I believe that is why.
I was also home in a week, with about $3,000 in supplies in. on, and hanging off the back (trailer hitch carrier) of my van. I had to run the house off of a generator for a couple of weeks, but was actually pretty comfortable - A/C, potable water, washer/drier, shower all functional. I didn't even have to eat MREs because I brought back plenty off groceries and had refrigeration. I also snagged a pass that allowed me to get in and out of my Parish, so I could restock on generator gas, fresh veggies, etc. I had to drive about 100 miles round trip to do this, but it was worth it.
Many of my friends lost everything that they owned, including a woman who I took in for about three months. She showed up with her car, a cat that she picked up off of the street on her way out, and so few belongings that it took us about 10 minutes to move her in. Her home in New Orleans had 14 feet of water in it. In her extended family, a total of about 30 homes were lost. Even now, she is the only one out of that extended family who has returned - the rest are scattered from San Antonio to Atlanta.
The good news is that all the agencies, from local to Federal seem to have it together this time. FEMA is already here and buses, trains and airplanes are lined up to take those w/o transporation out of the region. We have a staggered evacuation plan for those with their own cars, which empties areas south of New Orleans first. This was in place for Katrina too, and worked well. Its objective is to prevent those people from getting gridlocked into the low lying areas that they live in. The list of changes since Katrina is long, but suffice it to say that most of the problem areas have been addressed.
The one remaining problem is that we still have many weaknesses in the levee system. If this storm doesn't build up significantly, however, I think we will be OK. So far, Gustav is a small storm in terms of width. That is a big difference in comparison to Katrina and Rita (hit La. a month after Katrina), both of which were huge storms. Rita hot Lake Charles, 225 miles west of New Orleans, and we actually had areas that reflooded. My town actually came closer to flooding from Rita than it did from Katrina.
Time to go back to work - the windows are waiting!
