Aug 30

At 5AM, I heard a howling outside my window. I looked out and saw that it was Mattie on the front porch. I have no idea how she survived the storm outside. I let her in, but she refused to eat. She went straight to the laundry room and hid behind the washing machine. I walked outside and looked up at the sky. Since there was no light pollution for hundreds of miles, you could see millions of stars in the sky. I poured some of the 2 day old coffee from the thermos and sat outside drinking it.

Today we started the process of cleaning up. Even though I had not slept in a few days, I still had plenty of adrenaline left. Brad and Calvin gathered up shingles from the ground and got some tarps and went back on the roof. We did not have nearly enough tarps to cover all the damage but they did a pretty good job with what we had. At one point they were putting the shingles back on so nicely, that I was afraid the insurance agent would not be able to see where the damage was. Luckily, I had already taken plenty of photos. I started trying to clean the mounds of leaf and tree debris out of the house. A lot of it blew in everytime we opened the door during the storm. Afterwards it was impossible to walk inside without tracking more through the house.

Brad had to go down to the bank to see the damage there. We knew it was bad because one of his employees who had evacuated to the bank, called us during the storm and told us the windows on the 5th floor had blown in. She and her family were in the stairwell. I can just imagine how terrified they must have been. Everyone with a chainsaw was already out trying to clear the roads, and Brad was able to find his way out of the neighborhood by a roundabout way. It took him over an hour to get to the bank. I could hardly believe the devastation he described to me afterwards. Our neighbors and the teacher from Second St also managed to find a way down to the teacher's home. It was completely destroyed by the storm surge.

The electricity was out in the entire state of Mississipi. Most of the phones were out also, and the few cellular towers that were left standing, were overwhelmed by the huge amount of traffic on them. Our cell service was dead as were most of the neighbor's service. Tessi's service was working, but she could only get a busy signal when she tried to use it. No family members could get in touch with us and there was no way to get a message to them. Even the police and fire had no communications. We quickly found out that we were on our own. Nobody could get into the devasted areas with any food or water. The emergency vehicles could not get out to help anyone who needed it. A lot of people did not have money to stock up on food and water before the storm and things started getting desperate for them. There were reports of mass looting all over the Coast. As neighbors made their way out of the neighborhood, they came back with reports of dead bodies all over the storm surge areas. One man even reported seeing bodies in trees. The stories were just too wild and I kept saying again and again that they must be exaggerating . I found out later that most of the stories were true.

That night I lay awake once again. I was afraid to go to sleep now. At one point, around 2:30 AM, I saw a flashlight outside and I jumped up thinking it was somebody looting. I woke up Brad and he looked around but did not see anything. The next day I found out it was just my neighbor. He could not sleep either.