One month after the storm

After I got back from Chicago, things were starting to get better for most of us on the Coast. The electricity was on in most parts of the city and was now staying on. Because of this, the stores with no major damage were able to open for business. There were huge lines at all of them (and there still are 2 months later) but at least we were able to find supplies more easily. The phones were working but it was still hard to get long distance service on a reliable basis. More gas stations were open so the lines were a little shorter. There was even a McDonald's that was able to open, but the lines were so long there we never tried to go.

I was talking to my sister 5 weeks after the storm and all of a sudden I noticed it was strangely quiet. At first I could not figure out what was going on and then I realized that I was not hearing the sound of helicopters that had been constant background noise since Katrina hit. My sister, who lives 2 towns over, said she too had just noticed the absence of helicopters overhead. This was a big deal because it meant that they were no longer searching for bodies.

Another thing that happened 5 weeks after the storm, was that we started to get mail again. Even though most neighborhoods had cleared their own streets pretty quickly, the mail had not started back up and the post office was not open to the public. We saw a story in the newspaper about how the dedicated mail carriers were going from empty slab to empty slab on the destroyed beach front, delivering the mail through the most difficult conditions, and yet nobody I talked to had received any mail. Finally Congressman Gene Taylor chastised the post office on a visit down here, and suddenly the mail resumed. We never received the missing mail, and for 2 months after the storm we only received bills, but it was still a sign of hope.

Our trash pickup had resumed only 2 weeks after the storm, which was amazing to me. They not only had tons of extra trash to pick up, but they were having to deal with the rotten meat that everyone had cleared out of their freezers. These guys did a fantastic job and I sure hope they received credit for it.