Our lives, at least mine anyway, were turned upside down when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. I immediately went into help mode....I volunteered to help out at one of the local churches who was housing 100 evacuees, signed up to be a "Laundry Angel" and bought an unbelievable amount of supplies for all of the drives we had....The Boy Scout troop, neighborhood school, Kyle's school, Trey's school, *my* school, church, etc. My heart was breaking for all these poor people who lost everything. The thought that kept going thru my mind was "it could have been us!" I got some students who were Katrina evacuees in my classes, and they seemed shell-shocked. One young boy had lived through the horrors of the storm and aftermath at the Superdome.
Then last week it was our turn......Rita was heading into the Gulf, straight towards the Texas coast. At first it was towards Matagorda, which would have put us on the "dirty side" of the storm, with a HUGE storm surge (maybe 25 feet!) and the probability of several tornadoes. The mayor of Galveston and the governor of Texas decide to put mandatory evacuations in place. The mayor of Houston puts his orders in as well. Schools are canceled, businesses are closing and there is a HUGE run for supplies.
I went to Walmart to buy a few things (bananas for Kyle, milk, etc) on Tuesday night before we even know WHERE the storm was headed, and the place was PACKED. I had to drive around a bit before I could find a parking place and then it was utter CHAOS inside. I had Kyle w/ me, which may have helped because since I had a small child, I was able to get a shopping cart. The shelves were messy--a lot of food was gone, particularly soups, beef stews, etc. There was no water, no paper products (plates, cups, napkins, etc), only a few loaves of bread ( the expensive "gourmet" type breads). I was looking for the goldfish shaped noodle soup for Kyle and found ONE can towards the bottom of the shelves.....As I was reaching for it , someone grabbed it out of my hand. I grabbed a loaf of the gourmet bread and a woman actually had the nerve to ask me if I really needed that loaf of bread! Now, remember, I had my 3 year old son with me....And don't you think someone w/ a small child would NEED the bread???? I told her ," umm, yeah, unless I want to put my husband's sandwiches on Ritz crackers!" Stupid woman!! Then as we were heading towards the produce section, I mentioned needing bananas. The lady behind me hit me in the rear, and when I stopped to turn around and look at her, she went around me and grabbed the last bunch of bananas. I thought I was in a NASCAR race---it was the old "bump and run" move!!! LOL The bananas didn't look that good anyway, so she could have had them without crippling me! Since I'd gotten a prime parking place (first spot right in front of the door, ) I had several people fighting for my spot. I wasn't sure if they were even going to let me finish loading the groceries before they started crowding me...They certainly didn't give me much room to maneuver out of the spot! I was never so glad to get home!!!!!!
Wednesday we had school, and we were trying to go about business as usual---jr. high kids don't do well with change or new things. Obviously our principal doesn't know that because she kept coming on the intercom w/ updates about the hurricane! That left us w/ kids who had just studied about the 1900 hurricane that wiped out Galveston plus they'd just witnessed the devastation of Katrina. So they were scared and needed to be reassured that where we live, it will be ok. When the principal announced that the schools were going to be closed for 2 days, she should have gone ahead and ordered the buses to take them home right then and there. It was almost impossible to try to tech them after that point. By then we were thinking that Katrina maybe hitting closer to Freeport which would still put us on the dirty side of the eye, and for my house, it would have meant 125 mph winds. I was starting to get a bit more concerned.....
That night around 10 pm, I decided to make one more Walmart run to see if I could get anything else we may need. It wasn't as crazy as it had been the night before, but traffic was backed up on the freeway for MILES---all I could see were red tail lights. Good thing I lived close enough that I didn't have to get on the highway!!! I still couldn't get much food, but I was able to buy some pop tarts and of course my bananas! LOL I also got Kyle this cute little tiger flashlight that growls when you turn it on. :o)
Thursday, coordinates predict it's coming in to Galveston....We start looking for plywood to board up our windows, and of course there is none to be found. We taped them up as much as we can, but are not sure if it will be enough to sustain 120 mph winds. The good thing (if there is anything "good" ) about the storm hitting Galveston is now we will be on the west side of the storm, which doesn't get the storm surge, nor the tornadoes. We'll still have gale force winds but not as much rain. Later on, they say it's heading east of Houston, probably on the TX/LA border but it could still hit Houston if it turns back. AT this time they were worried about a possibility that it would stall out in Lufkin (East Texas) and turn around and come back to Houston like TS Allison did in 2001.
By noon on Friday, we started getting a breeze...At this point it felt good because it had been so dang hot all week. Trey and the kids rode their bikes and played outside until finally about 8:30 or 9 pm, I MADE him come in because the winds had picked up enough that the trees were whipping around pretty hard, and I was worried that something would break and blow around and hit him. He decided to sleep in our closet, because the other kids were sleeping in their parents' closets and he thought that was cool. We'd already decided he had to sleep in our room because we didn't want him upstairs, and the living room has a large window in the foyer that we were afraid might break. I didn't want him in the path of the glass.
Rita came ashore near Beaumont around 2;30 am....We started getting rain around the same time. It rained off and on all night long, and the wind came in gusts for most of the night as well. When we checked the rain gauge, though, it said we only got 3/4 in of rain. It was turned sideways by the wind so I doubt that was very accurate. We had a lot of wind all day Saturday as well, but we were very blessed and didn't lose power or water, like we'd been warned we might. So we watched the news and played games, talked with the neighbors, etc, and just had a nice relaxing weekend. The governor had asked the school districts to give everyone a couple of days to get back to town, so school was canceled for Monday and Tuesday as well.
Sunday night, just as the new premiere shows were getting ready to come on, cable went out all over the city. A generator had overheated. Now we'd been on news only mode since Wednesday and had missed many of the shows already--Martha Apprentice, Apprentice, ER, E Ring, 3 wishes, inconceivable, etc. And now we were going to miss Desperate housewives and Grey's anatomy as well! grrrr. How ironic that we survived the storm and THEN had problems w/ cable. I couldn't even get online since we have roadrunner!
Because of everyone's quick thinking and willingness to evacuate, the death toll w/ Rita was not as extensive as with Katrina. The last count is 7 storm related deaths plus probably about 30 maybe traffic related fatalities with evacuees. The bus that exploded in Dallas was one of the tragedies as well as who knows how many children, elderly and disabled died from dehydration or heat stroke on the highways as they tried to get out of town? I know it would have been much much worse if we hadn't had Katrina a month ago. Government officials learned from Katrina that we needed to make transportation available for those without the means to leave on their own, and we started the evacuation earlier even though we didn't know for sure where exactly it would hit.
For us, we didn't evacuate...But we did learn some lessons for the future: 1. We need plywood for all of our windows, and we will be buying some as soon as Home Depot has it back in stock. 2. duct tape does NOT work on windows and it leaves a yucky residue on the windows after you take it off, especially after the sun has hit the tape for a while. 3. We need to find back ways to stores, etc from our new house... There are side roads that we need to investigate. 4. We need to stock up on more C and D batteries....We had TONS of As and AAs because that 's what all the toys need but flashlights need the others. 5. We should evacuate if it looks like it will hit as a CAT4 or 5. This came in as a Cat 3 and we had some heavy wind gusts.
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