Slow recovery
Well, my cable internet has been up for 2 days in a row so maybe it is up for good. I hope so.
Life here on the Coast is still like like living in wet cement. Everything moves so slowly and the recovery efforts sometime seem like they have ground to a halt. We drove up to Illinois to spend Thanksgiving with family and when we came back down, the same piles of debris were still on the streets. Including the large one in front of our house.
I went back to work at my former job recently. The wife of the owner had died not too long before Katrina hit, leaving a hole in the business. She had done all of the bookkeeping and office work for the Biloxi shop since they had been in business. They had another shop in Gulfport and I had done the bookkeeping for that shop for 8 years before I quit. Hurricane Katrina completely destroyed both shops with flood waters as high as 8 feet. Shortly after the storm, the owner died leaving what was left of the business to his son. My former co-worker asked me if I was interested in coming back to work and I agreed. The business is now being run out of the garage of the former owner with several of the employees working out of the back of their vehicles.
I had no idea what a chore it would be trying to get the office up and running. Luckily the owners daughter was able to step in and start working the office because she had been helping out there for years. The computers with all the customer and billing information had been lost in the storm. We are trying to piece together the missing information while keeping up with the current business. Since the business sells and repairs communication equipment for emergency personal as well as others, things have not slowed down for us.
Putting a simple invoice in the computer can take hours or even days. As you enter an invoice into the computer, you have to stop and add each item on the invoice into the inventory system. Before you can update the inventory, you have to go back and add each vendor back to the vendor system. Often that involves calling another business to get their information, only to find out that they too, have been relocated because of the storm. I have played phone tag for the last couple of weeks with a contact in the local police department to try to get some invoice information. They had lost their entire office too, and it was hard just getting in contact with her. When I finally reached her, I found that she was working on borrowed computers in a FEMA trailor and she had also lost copies of the invoice that I needed. Between us, we scraped together a little information. Hopefully, after almost 3 weeks, we will have enough information to re-create this one invoice.
We did finally get our roof replaced (although the fascia and gutters still need to be replaced). We are "dry", but only because we went ahead and paid $4000.00 out of pocket over and above what the insurance reimbursed for the roof. We were very lucky. Brad heard from a co-worker that some roofers were now charging up to $340.00 per square. The insurance companies are still only reimbursing about $150.00.
We are on the waiting list to get our fence back up, but they will not give us any sort of a time frame as to when they will start. I feel so sorry for our dog who has to remain chained up until the fence it back up. She has lost everything that was familiar to her in our backyard, including the deck that she used to enjoy sleeping on.
Going to a Doctor is something that is now to be attempted on in a life or death situation. Doctors were in short supply before the storm and now there are hardly any to be found. Hancock County, which is right next door to us, lost a mind boggling 98% of their Doctors. Most lost their business and many of them their homes. Many decided to leave and never come back. All of the people in that county now have to come here to Harrison County, but we lost 44% of our Doctors. You can not even get an appointent anywhere for anything. I have already posted above about the wait at the emergency room being 7 to 8 hours for emergencies, and longer for non emergencies. (If it is even possible to be seen there for a non emergency). I have been suffering from severe insomnia, only sleeping 4 to 5 hours each night. I would love to see a Doctor, but right now, I just live with it.
At least the really horrible dreams of being trapped in flood waters have stopped. Now they have been replaced with strange depressing dreams. Last night I dreamed I was in a crowded shelter and was given one piece of pizza for dinner. I walked away from my plate for a minute, and when I came back, someone had scraped all of the toppings of my pizza and left me with crust. Very reflective of life down here at the moment.
Depression is very common down here and I have been fighting it myself. When we went to Illinois for the week, it was such a huge relief. The roads were clean and clear. The traffic was non existant. People were outgoing and friendly. When we came back down to the Coast, it was a rude slap in the face. Within minutes of driving into town, I was almost hit by 2 different drivers running the red lights. Then I go to the post office to pick up my mail which was being held, only to find that all of my mail for the week had been lost and nobody there had a clue where to find it. They are overworked and angry and nobody was willing or able to figure out what happend to the mail. It is just gone. Yesterday after leaving work, I had to go to Walmart for a few groceries. I drove to the Walmart in Biloxi because it is much less crowded than the one in Gulfport. I shopped for 30 minutes, and then stood in the checkout line for 35 minutes. That was one of the shorter waits. I usually wait in line for 40 to 45 minutes. I then got on the road just in time to hit the worst of the traffic. If you can imagine the worst traffic in any big city during rush hour.....then multiply that by 3. Not only are the main roads bumper to bumper, but every single small back road is also like that. After I made it home and dropped the groceries off, Brad called me and said he was at the car rental place and he needed me to bring our son down there to drive one of the cars home. He had managed to finally get a rental and since he had been driving our son's car, we had to go down there in order to get both cars back home. When we finally got to the rental place, I was very worried about letting my 15 year old drive home in those conditions. He is still not very experienced driving on the highway and we never let him drive during the afternoon rush hour. I have a very low tolerance for traffic and stress, but Brad and I try to make a game of it. Brad would call me on the phone while we were stuck in traffic, and laugh about a crazy driver who passed sped past us driving north in the southbound lane. When we saw a police officer pull the driver over, we felt like cheering. When we got on the highway, drivers started cutting in between my son and I and we quickly lost track of him. I was very worried about him being in an accident, but he finally made it home about 10 minutes after we did. I keep telling myself that this is just our new life and I need to come to terms with it. Brad has a wonderful attitude and he helps keep me sane. He laughed about the lost mail, joked about the horrible traffic and tells me over and over how fortunate we are. I know he is right. I have seen a lot of people that could not cope with the changes, just up and leave the Coast. Those of us who are left, are becoming stronger and making our own opportunies.
A quick note about Christmas. There has been an ongoing debate in the local paper about whether people should put up their outdoor decorations this year. A lot of people want to see them up to get a sense of normalcy back, but others think it would be inconsiderate to those without homes. One person who was quoted in the paper said, "Sure, go ahead and decorate your house and flaunt it in our faces that we do not have a home." A very touchy subject indeed. I personally would love to see other people decorate, but I will not be putting up my decorations this year. This is partially because I am tired and it is just too much work, but mostly because I still have hopes of getting a contractor in to replace my ceilings. The ceilings have to be torn down, all the insulation replaced and then the sheetrock replaced and blown. This is a huge mess and everything will have to be stored or covered in each room. If I have Christmas decorations up, that will be a lot more work to put everythng away. It is probably not even a valid point. I can not find any contractor to even come in and give me a bid on my ceilings. There is a huge shortage of sheetrock hangers and sheetrock itself is almost impossible to find. I probably will not be getting new ceilings for a long long time.
I have so much more I want to say and catch up on this journal, but it will have to wait until later. I have insurance supplements to file, contractors to call, cleaning to do and a dog to walk.
***Updated to add a bit more***
After re-reading this post, I realized that it sounded a lot more negative than I wanted it to. I do not want to paint a rosy "everything is beautiful" picture of life down here, but I do not want to paint it as all depressing either. I am striving to post a balanced realistic view of life on the Gulf Coast after Katrina, so I am adding a few more upbeat things that I neglected to post above.
Our main shopping mall down here opened back up a few days ago. I have not been there yet, but I heard that about half of the stores are open. This is a big deal because there are so few places to shop right now. The mall, Edgewater Mall, is right on the beach and was completely flooded. It must have taken a heroic effort for them to rebuild and get half the stores open after a little less than 3 months. Another noteworthy event (at least to me) is that we are having a beautiful showing of Fall color right now. Since the weather is pretty mild down here, we don't usually get the gorgeous Fall colors in our trees. Right now, perhaps because of the recent cold, or perhaps because of the stress the trees suffered, the colors are glorious. Our Crepe Myrtle tree is so bright orange that it looks like it is on fire in the morning light. The most wonderful thing that has happened recently, I was not able to post about because our internet was down for so long. As of November 11th, Brad was able to come back down to the Coast for good. He came down that day, but we did not know until the last minute if he would be staying or flying back to Chicago. They got the system up and running and he will be working in a temporary office here on the Coast until the bank can rebuild their data center.
Life here on the Coast is still like like living in wet cement. Everything moves so slowly and the recovery efforts sometime seem like they have ground to a halt. We drove up to Illinois to spend Thanksgiving with family and when we came back down, the same piles of debris were still on the streets. Including the large one in front of our house.
I went back to work at my former job recently. The wife of the owner had died not too long before Katrina hit, leaving a hole in the business. She had done all of the bookkeeping and office work for the Biloxi shop since they had been in business. They had another shop in Gulfport and I had done the bookkeeping for that shop for 8 years before I quit. Hurricane Katrina completely destroyed both shops with flood waters as high as 8 feet. Shortly after the storm, the owner died leaving what was left of the business to his son. My former co-worker asked me if I was interested in coming back to work and I agreed. The business is now being run out of the garage of the former owner with several of the employees working out of the back of their vehicles.
I had no idea what a chore it would be trying to get the office up and running. Luckily the owners daughter was able to step in and start working the office because she had been helping out there for years. The computers with all the customer and billing information had been lost in the storm. We are trying to piece together the missing information while keeping up with the current business. Since the business sells and repairs communication equipment for emergency personal as well as others, things have not slowed down for us.
Putting a simple invoice in the computer can take hours or even days. As you enter an invoice into the computer, you have to stop and add each item on the invoice into the inventory system. Before you can update the inventory, you have to go back and add each vendor back to the vendor system. Often that involves calling another business to get their information, only to find out that they too, have been relocated because of the storm. I have played phone tag for the last couple of weeks with a contact in the local police department to try to get some invoice information. They had lost their entire office too, and it was hard just getting in contact with her. When I finally reached her, I found that she was working on borrowed computers in a FEMA trailor and she had also lost copies of the invoice that I needed. Between us, we scraped together a little information. Hopefully, after almost 3 weeks, we will have enough information to re-create this one invoice.
We did finally get our roof replaced (although the fascia and gutters still need to be replaced). We are "dry", but only because we went ahead and paid $4000.00 out of pocket over and above what the insurance reimbursed for the roof. We were very lucky. Brad heard from a co-worker that some roofers were now charging up to $340.00 per square. The insurance companies are still only reimbursing about $150.00.
We are on the waiting list to get our fence back up, but they will not give us any sort of a time frame as to when they will start. I feel so sorry for our dog who has to remain chained up until the fence it back up. She has lost everything that was familiar to her in our backyard, including the deck that she used to enjoy sleeping on.
Going to a Doctor is something that is now to be attempted on in a life or death situation. Doctors were in short supply before the storm and now there are hardly any to be found. Hancock County, which is right next door to us, lost a mind boggling 98% of their Doctors. Most lost their business and many of them their homes. Many decided to leave and never come back. All of the people in that county now have to come here to Harrison County, but we lost 44% of our Doctors. You can not even get an appointent anywhere for anything. I have already posted above about the wait at the emergency room being 7 to 8 hours for emergencies, and longer for non emergencies. (If it is even possible to be seen there for a non emergency). I have been suffering from severe insomnia, only sleeping 4 to 5 hours each night. I would love to see a Doctor, but right now, I just live with it.
At least the really horrible dreams of being trapped in flood waters have stopped. Now they have been replaced with strange depressing dreams. Last night I dreamed I was in a crowded shelter and was given one piece of pizza for dinner. I walked away from my plate for a minute, and when I came back, someone had scraped all of the toppings of my pizza and left me with crust. Very reflective of life down here at the moment.
Depression is very common down here and I have been fighting it myself. When we went to Illinois for the week, it was such a huge relief. The roads were clean and clear. The traffic was non existant. People were outgoing and friendly. When we came back down to the Coast, it was a rude slap in the face. Within minutes of driving into town, I was almost hit by 2 different drivers running the red lights. Then I go to the post office to pick up my mail which was being held, only to find that all of my mail for the week had been lost and nobody there had a clue where to find it. They are overworked and angry and nobody was willing or able to figure out what happend to the mail. It is just gone. Yesterday after leaving work, I had to go to Walmart for a few groceries. I drove to the Walmart in Biloxi because it is much less crowded than the one in Gulfport. I shopped for 30 minutes, and then stood in the checkout line for 35 minutes. That was one of the shorter waits. I usually wait in line for 40 to 45 minutes. I then got on the road just in time to hit the worst of the traffic. If you can imagine the worst traffic in any big city during rush hour.....then multiply that by 3. Not only are the main roads bumper to bumper, but every single small back road is also like that. After I made it home and dropped the groceries off, Brad called me and said he was at the car rental place and he needed me to bring our son down there to drive one of the cars home. He had managed to finally get a rental and since he had been driving our son's car, we had to go down there in order to get both cars back home. When we finally got to the rental place, I was very worried about letting my 15 year old drive home in those conditions. He is still not very experienced driving on the highway and we never let him drive during the afternoon rush hour. I have a very low tolerance for traffic and stress, but Brad and I try to make a game of it. Brad would call me on the phone while we were stuck in traffic, and laugh about a crazy driver who passed sped past us driving north in the southbound lane. When we saw a police officer pull the driver over, we felt like cheering. When we got on the highway, drivers started cutting in between my son and I and we quickly lost track of him. I was very worried about him being in an accident, but he finally made it home about 10 minutes after we did. I keep telling myself that this is just our new life and I need to come to terms with it. Brad has a wonderful attitude and he helps keep me sane. He laughed about the lost mail, joked about the horrible traffic and tells me over and over how fortunate we are. I know he is right. I have seen a lot of people that could not cope with the changes, just up and leave the Coast. Those of us who are left, are becoming stronger and making our own opportunies.
A quick note about Christmas. There has been an ongoing debate in the local paper about whether people should put up their outdoor decorations this year. A lot of people want to see them up to get a sense of normalcy back, but others think it would be inconsiderate to those without homes. One person who was quoted in the paper said, "Sure, go ahead and decorate your house and flaunt it in our faces that we do not have a home." A very touchy subject indeed. I personally would love to see other people decorate, but I will not be putting up my decorations this year. This is partially because I am tired and it is just too much work, but mostly because I still have hopes of getting a contractor in to replace my ceilings. The ceilings have to be torn down, all the insulation replaced and then the sheetrock replaced and blown. This is a huge mess and everything will have to be stored or covered in each room. If I have Christmas decorations up, that will be a lot more work to put everythng away. It is probably not even a valid point. I can not find any contractor to even come in and give me a bid on my ceilings. There is a huge shortage of sheetrock hangers and sheetrock itself is almost impossible to find. I probably will not be getting new ceilings for a long long time.
I have so much more I want to say and catch up on this journal, but it will have to wait until later. I have insurance supplements to file, contractors to call, cleaning to do and a dog to walk.
***Updated to add a bit more***
After re-reading this post, I realized that it sounded a lot more negative than I wanted it to. I do not want to paint a rosy "everything is beautiful" picture of life down here, but I do not want to paint it as all depressing either. I am striving to post a balanced realistic view of life on the Gulf Coast after Katrina, so I am adding a few more upbeat things that I neglected to post above.
Our main shopping mall down here opened back up a few days ago. I have not been there yet, but I heard that about half of the stores are open. This is a big deal because there are so few places to shop right now. The mall, Edgewater Mall, is right on the beach and was completely flooded. It must have taken a heroic effort for them to rebuild and get half the stores open after a little less than 3 months. Another noteworthy event (at least to me) is that we are having a beautiful showing of Fall color right now. Since the weather is pretty mild down here, we don't usually get the gorgeous Fall colors in our trees. Right now, perhaps because of the recent cold, or perhaps because of the stress the trees suffered, the colors are glorious. Our Crepe Myrtle tree is so bright orange that it looks like it is on fire in the morning light. The most wonderful thing that has happened recently, I was not able to post about because our internet was down for so long. As of November 11th, Brad was able to come back down to the Coast for good. He came down that day, but we did not know until the last minute if he would be staying or flying back to Chicago. They got the system up and running and he will be working in a temporary office here on the Coast until the bank can rebuild their data center.
posted by Nancy at 5:51 AM
4 Comments:
Nancy, it is SO GOOD to see you posting more!! The video is really, really good. Heartwrenching. I love the photo of the "drop" box. LOL
Hang in there! Remember that, even without decorations, it is still Christmastime. Keep Him in your heart, even if you don't sport decorations on your walls. Brad is a wise man; I hope I have the opportunity one day to give him a hug!
A big cyber ((((((HUG)))))) to you!
Karen
Nancy - I am glad to hear the things are very slowly coming back to you all. Now that the hype has died down, we do not hear too much about what is going on.
Thank goodness the hurricane season is "officially" over. Here in Minnesota the snow season has started. We have the bumper to bumper traffic too, because of the snow and ice, so I understand the frustration. I think it would drive me bonkers if it was day after day.
Please keep updating, I am interested to hear what is going on.
Lori in MN
Nancy, I'm so glad to have an update from you. What troopers you all are - so amazing. I never feel like you are complaining here, only telling it like it is. It is a bleak picture, but I still hear bright spots from you.
I'm a bookkeeper, too, and have always lived in fear of a fire. I do my best to keep a current disc of my quickbooks (what would I do if that was gone?!?!) off site in two places. Extra cautious, but I cannot imagine starting over.Sounds like you are keeping up while taking baby steps to bring up the missing stuff. Take care,
Kirsten
Lori, I feel for you and others who live in snow country. I have heard that this season may bring record storms and snowfall. Stay warm and safe!
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