Some FReepers we have not heard from since prior to Hurricane Katrina's landfall. Some of them indicated their plans to evacuate. Prayers for their safety and Godspeed to them all. Looking forward to hearing from them soon:
ClearBlueSky
Prolifeconservative
Maury
juzcuz
mwp99
Thanks for the concern. I'm OK. Better than OK really, given the circumstances. My apartment building on the beach in Long Beach survived, by the grace of God. Scroll to the center of
this huge image and you'll find my building circled in red.
I was able to salvage everything except the mattress, box springs, and a bookcase that needed to be thrown out anyway. The apartment did have some minor water damage, as rainwater leaked through the places where the shingles were blown off. There was some mold, too, after 2 weeks of being couped up with no A/C. I'm still in the process of cleaning everything, so we'll see if the mold infiltrated my stuff or not. So far, most of it looks good.
A small piece of the ceiling fell down onto my TV and VCR and there were some water spots on the tops of both, but they fired right up on the first try!
I bugged out to Memphis initially with friends, before heading to my parents' houses in NC for a couple weeks after realizing it'd be a while before I could return. It is a mess down here, to say the least. Driving down a path cleared through a 15 ft. pile of rubble is not anything I ever want to do again.
Thanks for the concern as well.
We all did fine, and weathered the storm out here in Ponchatoula. House held up well, with only my wood floors warping up 5 days out, as we didn't know the storm had driven the rainwater up over the slab (no flooding) and took that long for the wood to warp.
Got my medical practice back up and running one week later (not counting all the inpatient work during the week of the storm. (had talks with the hospital admins about tying the emergency generators into the AC from now on!)
I actually screwed up and got out and drove to Hammond, east along I-10 when it was even with the eye of the storm. The car took a 100+ mph gust, and almost blew me off the interstate. I thought the worst was past, and the damage didn't look that bad driving in. After making rounds, it took me one hour to drive the 3 miles to my house as all the trees came down towards the end of the storm.
