Dad's Perspective

Here's an email my dad recently sent to a friend of his:

Well...these past few days have been some of the most "memorable" of
my life. We went to bed on Saturday after talking to our Pastor, he said
church as usual it's only a catagory 2 might be a 3 and may go to the east
of us. I made sure my Sunday School lesson was done and Elise had her hymns
ready, (she plays the church organ), and we went to bed. When we woke up
and found out it was a catagory 3 and might be a 5 before it hits! We had
made plans to stay at a friends house who lives above the "flood plain" on
our side of Lake Pontchartrain. The local channel 4 "Weatherman" (John
Gumm) and his wife (Jennifer) are friends and were staying too. His wife
was 9 months pregnant and John was going to stay at the station until late
then come home until after the storm and go back to work in New Orleans.
Well as plans go Jennifer went into labor and had the baby at 3 AM by 9 AM
the hospital released her saying she was fine the baby was fine and we are
evacuating. John decided
they would go to Tennesse instead of our other friends house (Rick and
Karen), and they still aren't back. Rick and Karen said since it's a 4 or 5
hurricane "we're" out of here.
At about that time Elise's best friend said she was coming in town to
board up her Lake Pontchartrain Condo (as it turned out this was a total
waist of time and good plywood!), and needed our help. We packed up in a
hurry, mostly pictures, dog, Conure and my history books and left to meet
Sonja and her husband Tommy. They asked us to go with them to Tommy's
"Chicken Farm" in Northeastern Mississippi. We said yes and off we went.
Our 25 yr old son, Chris, stayed behind with two of his friends to
"keep an eye on things" for us. Our 21 yr old was riding it out in Baton
Rouge, (he goes to LSU), and has an apartment there. David (the 23 yr old)
and his wife are stationed in Whidbey Island, WA., so no problem.
We arrived in Clara, MS. late afternoon Sunday the 28th and was glued
to the weather channel. By the next morning we saw it was hitting Louisiana
and heading straight for Slidell and just to the east of New Orleans. Later
that day Katrina hit our part of Mississippi as a catagory 2 hurricane. We
sat on the side porch of Tommy's house and saw over a hundred trees snap
like matches. All six of his 100 yard long chicken houses were damaged, but
luckily he sold his 250,000 chickens the week before. For the next three
days we heard very little of Slidell, mostly Biloxi, Gulfport, and of course
New Orleans. The only thing we heard of Slidell was that it took a direct
hit and hasn't been heard of since. We were out of our mind for our son,
finally our daughter, (Jeni), in Chicago, heard from him and got through to
us and told us he was all right. Since then we stayed on the farm for 5
days with no power, no water, and enough food. We used "pool" water to
flush with, gas stove
to cook with and finally got bottled water and sodas to drink. We decided
that we were pushing our welcome there since Tommy was ill at ease about his
farm and "providing for guests" so we left and came back to Slidell.
Chris told us that we had two trees on our house and one managed to
find its way into the living room. We had only 3 inches of water on all the
floors and all our "stuff" was fine. The water receded and left a smelly
film on the floors. "Luckily" we have wood and tile floors with throw rugs.
The wood has buckled and the tile was just coated. We found that we had
no electricity but the water was on for flushing and showers and counted our
blessings. Then that first night we discovered that we had hot water!!!!!
Since that first night, last Saturday, I have started work, people need
their money from ATMs, cleaned the floors in most of the house, (even in the
closets), and the power came on last night and with it came the air
conditioning. We are still getting rations from the military, since the
stores still haven't received their meat and dairy products, and bottled
water because it should still be boiled, (too much work). Phone service is
better but still on the fritz
most of the time.
Thanks for your offer but overall we are doing pretty good, Elise says
camping is suppose to be fun though. As far as damage goes it looks like
World War II happened here. About one third of all Slidell trees are down,
about half a mile around Lake Pontchartrain is just gone, including Sonja's
house, a 25 foot wall of water hit the water front and by the time it
finished, 5 miles away we had 3 inches in our house, and the church across
the street didn't have any. About 85% of Slidell homes are damaged to some
degree. Well, so much for this book, thanks for thinking of us, Love to you
and yours from Me and mine. Dave P.S. Check out
www.myfirstfetus.blogspot.com my daughters perspective.

By the way, this friend was inspired to donate to Noah's Wish by my post on the charities. I'm such an activist.