More from Alexandria and Pineville...this is a combination of my personal observations and stuff from the Alexandria Town Talk and live newscasts on KALB Newschannel 5.
Yesterday, we ventured out and got a bite to eat. We saw lots of destroyed billboards, broken branches, cable and power trucks everywhere all over Pineville. We didn't know about the boil order for Alexandria at the time we ate there and drank coffee and ice water. Today we ate breakfast in Pineville instead.
Today was much worse, though. When we left our apartment complex in Pineville, we made a right turn onto our street instead of the left turn we made yesterday and the difference was a total shock. We had no idea that almost every house in the neighborhood had tree breakage, including one tree completely uprooted that crashed through the garage of a home just down the street from us. From the looks of things, we really did have a tornado here after all. I'm extremely grateful to have been inside an apartment building instead of one of those damaged houses. Thanks again to everyone who sent prayers our way this weekend!
Mayor Ned Randolph has just ordered every non-essential business in the City of Alexandria to close at 1:00 pm CDT today due to the severe water pressure problem. The FEMA building closed despite the long lines outside, and they brought in the Alexandria Police Department and National Guard for crowd control because everyone was so angry.
There are many people still without power, and to make things worse, there is a heat advisory for today. No air conditioning and heat indices creeping toward 110. It was reported that many of the people who were cluttering up roadways yesterday were simply aimlessly riding around to take advantage of the air conditioning in their cars. Considering how difficult it is to find gas at the moment, those people must have been pretty desperate.
I've got to find a gas station myself right now. I'm so annoyed about this. Last month, I told you that my car was burglarized on the same night Katrina hit. I've been going through one hassle after another trying to get my car repaired. I can't believe it's taking this long. First my insurance company sent me to a glass place, then another to get the window tinted. Then I had to wait for their vendor to ship me the replacement car stereo parts, including 3 wasted days in a row chasing a DHL truck that never got around to delivering the shipment to me. Then I couldn't get a rental car to drive while the car was in the body shop, because Enterprise kept losing my reservation in their computers and the evacuees had all their cars out on the road. I finally got the car into the body shop on the second try. *After* I had gassed up the rental car, I got a call saying I had to return the rental immediately because several employees of the body shop quit and there wasn't anyone who could work on my car until today -- they found out they could earn a lot more money doing recovery work in the southern parishes. So now they've got my car back again, but it has a full gas tank -- and I've got to top off yet another rental car. To date, I'm $325.00 out of pocket -- just so some crackhead could steal my used CD player for maybe a $10 hit of dope. God, it makes me furious!
OK, rant off -- thanks for letting me vent!
I've had to chase those idiots too. I don't think they do so well with rural delivery.