The Saga continues.....Aug 31

I am writing this blog from my handwritten journal I kept during and after the storm. At this point in the journal, I had been without sleep for several days. If you are looking for an exact timelime on the storm, you will have to look elsewhere because I was so tired I was mixing up my days. For the most part, I wrote something in my journal each day, but sometimes I would remember something later on and add it to whatever day I was currently posting on.

I had forgotten to post it before, but we are without any water from the faucets. That means no baths or handwashing. We had to conserve the drinking water that we had. Luckily we had the water still in the pool that we could use to flush the toilets. We also used it to wash off for the first few days, but it quickly turned dark green and scary looking. There was all kinds of debris in the bottom of the pool. Pieces of metal. Shingles. Nails. Splintered wood.

We had stocked up on canned goods before the storm, but you would be surprised at how fast the supply dwindles when you are eating canned goods for every single meal. I am not a picky eater at all, and for the most part, I could be happy opening a can of Beenie Weenies and eating them cold. Those kind of things ran out pretty fast and it was less appealing to open up a can of turnip greens and eat those cold. We did grill up the meat from the refridgerator/freezer but I wanted to keep the big freezer closed as long as possible, thinking that we would get power back within a few days and the meat would still be good. Boy, was I wrong.

Brad had to go back down to the bank again and Calvin and I went with him to see the destruction with our own eyes. I still could not believe it when I saw it. The storm surge had come all the way up to the interstate in some places. That is just South of our house, and 7 or 8 miles from the beach. The places where it came up that high were along the rivers and bayous that run up and down the coast. The actual waves from the beach had completely washed out the first floor of the bank building which is a block from the water. The police had blocked off access to everything South of the railroad tracks so we had to go through a check point to get to the bank. Since there was no power, we walked up the 5 flights of stairs to Brad's office. The stairway was dark and hot. With our flashlights, we could just barely see to walk up. When we got up there and stepped out onto the 5th floor, I was shocked. The windows were blown out and stuff was everywhere. It was scary walking around the open floor. I kept having the feeling that the wind was going to just blow me out one of the huge open windows. From up there, we could see the entire harbor and downtown area of Gulfport. There was not much to see. It was all gone. There was a large sailboat laying in the middle of the road a block north of the water. From higher up, on the 15th floor, you could see the casino barge where it had washed up. I had brought my camera and was able to take a lot of pictures. We got Brad's computer and everything else we could carry, then we walked back down the stairs in the dark with our hands full. I walked very very slowly.

We walked back to the temporary bank headquarters where Brad had a meeting to go to. The bank needed him to go to Chicago for emergency operations. He was put on a bus to Baton Rouge right after the meeting. From there, he caught a private jet to Chicago. I have no idea when he will be home. Calvin and I drive back to the house alone. We have no water, no electricity, no phones, no access to any gasoline aside from what is already in our cars. We have no police protection, no way to get medical help if needed and our food supply is going down fast with no way to replenish it yet. I get back to my house and find that one of my neighbors has just left town and two more of them are considering leaving. I went and sat out on my back porch with the dog. A man who is staying with the neighbors behind me walks out in their yard to urinate. I am really really depressed.

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.

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.