Thursday was a busy day. The National Hurricane Center prediction for Gustav still points towards landfall somewhere along the northern Gulf Coast and the conditions in the Gulf look favorable for a big storm, probably category 3, but on the NHC discussion they said a category 4 or 5 isn’t out of the question. The tracks look like landfall west of us, not good because the west side of the storm is where the surge is worst.
Because we are in the preparation stage for evacuation I called a couple clients I was to visit in Pearlington to delay my visit. They were more than happy since they were in the midst of preparation themselves.
I went to the office to organize the casework and construction schedule for next month and get all the critical papers into a file cabinet. All the while I wondered if this was a futile exercise, how many of he houses in that file were going to be there if this storm is as bad as it looks?
I finished around noon and headed to Pearlington to help take down and secure our village. Jeremy, the work site manager and I took down the walls of the big community tent, boxed up as many meal items, and small appliances as w could.
By mid-afternoon we got the power tools in a trailer for evacuation and I had all the chairs and tables broken down. All the loose goods are boxed and ready to go. I went and filled all the propane tanks. On the way back the radio reported the governor has declared a state of emergency.
About that time one of our clients came by, we had just completed the work on his house. He works for the electrical utility company and he is planning to stay in Pearlington. His new house may be high enough to avoid a Katrina-like surge but the wind is still an issue. I gave him some plastic storage boxes for his wife to use and some of out paper goods. His wife is taking the children north, so I slipped some packaged cookies and candy in a bag for the trip.
He told us, his wife isn’t doing too well under the stress. His daughter who was old enough to remember the storm three years ago keeps saying,
“Daddy, I don’t want another one. Why is this happening?”
I called my friend Jimmy Lamey to see what he and his family are planning. I helped put his metal roof on in May 2007, and spent a lot of time at his home.
He says he and his wife are packing up. Robin and the daughters will drive the motor home to Meridian to wait out the storm. That is our deployment destination, so I told him to be sure she has my cell number, assuming the cell phones work. Now I hope people understand why he took what little money he had to get that motor home.
Jimmy says he has to report to the hospital where he works. I told him Friday when I'm back in Pearlington to finish the work, I'll drop by.
I keep thinking how unsettlled he must be. He was at the hospital when Bay St. Louis was inundated by Katrina's surge.
After struggling to move all the surgical patients first from the top floors down because of worries over the roof, and then from the bottom floors up ove worry of the surge, he watched it come in from a window. He told me how the water rose up over the first floor doors and windows. The doors and windows bulged but held for a while. Then one door failed and then everything went and the entire first floor was flooded, leaving them an island in the storm.
Later talking with Jeremy, he related to me a conversation he had with another woman in town that we’ve helped and built a close relationship. Jeremy said it was a hard conversation.
“Jeremy, I hope this storm hits us again, I really do,”
“Why? What on earth do you mean? You can’t really mean that ?”
“I do mean that. Katrina was so bad and we suffered so much. I know what it is going to happen when it hits. I can’t bear the though of another storm like Katrina hitting someone else. That’s why I would rather have to go through it again that them.”
No comments:
Post a Comment