Aug 29....continued

After Brad and Calvin patched the roof, they went to walk around the block and see the neighborhood. I walked out to the road to talk to Andre and Traci who live across the street from us. As we talked we kept having to dodge large pieces of debris that were still blowing by.

We had wind gusts over 100 mph for hours after the main part of the storm had passed. As we looked at the damage to our home and then at the houses all around us, we realized how extremely lucky we were. Most of the homes around us had sustained major structual damage. Just in our block there 5 houses that lost entire chunks of their roofs, not just shingles and plywood. The neighbors and I went to check on a friend of Andre and Traci, and we found the back of their house caved in. Luckily they had evacuated. Around the block into the next neighborhood, we saw that the sides of almost every single house was ripped off. Those houses were covered with aluminum siding and I was suddenly very thankful that Brad had refused to let me replace our cedar siding with aluminum a few years back. The carports on almost every third house was collapsed and for those with garages, the doors were blown in. Brad had reinforced our garage door with big iron bars before the storm, and we only had minor damage.

We were not picking up the local news feed for some reason, but were getting the news from New Orleans and Mobile. Mobile was reporting that the Grand Casino in Gulfport had washed across the highway along with most of the casinos in Biloxi. New Orleans was reporting on their own problems. We assumed that our local stations were not reporting because of damage sustained. They were down close to the beach. I talked with Rhonda Weidner from WLOX a few weeks later, and found out that they had been reporting the entire time. We just were not picking them up for some reason. Evidently there were some reporters from CNN and the Weather Channel right here in Gulfport, so we were hearing a lot of our news on the Mobile station.

All of the neighbors came together in the streets right after the storm and it was almost like a big party. Everyone was just thrilled to be alive at that point. There was a teacher who lived on Second St that was staying with Andre and Traci. She was very anxious to get down there and check on her home, but we quickly found out that our neighborhood was completely blocked by fallen trees and powerlines. We could not get out right then, and nobody could get in. I spoke with my new next door neighbor for the first time. Her name is Tessi and she turned out to be a wonderful source of strength for me. She had a very positive attitude and proved resourceful in finding resources for food and water over the next few weeks.

That night when we went to bed, the reality of it all started to sink in. It was hot and humid in the house. Most of our screens had tears in them, so if we left the windows open, the mosquitoes came in looking for blood. The sound of dripping water coming through the holes in the ceiling was very creepy in the dark house. In past storms, the rain had washed snakes and rodents out of the woods by our house, and I laid in bed and worried about them coming in the house. Neither Calvin or I slept at all that night.