Well…I’ve advertised it for so long, and here it is.

In case you have missed things, my region of the world in South Louisiana got a not so welcome but probably overdue visit from one of nature’s most awesome forces…

…namely, Hurricane Gustav, which at one time threatened to bring catastrophic Category 4 or 5 winds to devastate our area, but fortunately weakened “only” to a “low-end” Cat 3 by the time it hit the Houma/Thibodeaux/Morgan City area of the Louisiana coast. The parenthesis is appropriate, because even a low-end Cat 3 can bring 100+mph winds to particular areas, and area where the eye crossed shore and immediately east of the center’s path got the full fury of winds, rain, and storm surge.

Then, Gruesome Gus decided to make his presence felt in my own neck of the woods; though weakening as hurricanes do upon reaching land, he was still strong enough to cut a nice path of destruction across South Central Louisiana/Acadiana from southeast to northwest.

Click on the thumbnail for a larger image (via NHC Website)

By this time, his winds were barely hurricane force, but it kinda doesn’t matter when it is right on top of you…..and trust me, he was literally on top of us. As in, the eye passing right over where I was.

Even more than one week later, we here are still feeling the full effects of the damage done, with some locations in Southeast Louisiana hit the hardest not being able ot gain electricity for WEEKS. Not days, Clones….WEEKS. For most of us, though, things are beginning to recover; electricity in our parish (St. Landry) is being gradually restored; and the usual sandbagging and gripping for federal aid and the efforts of FEMA is ongoing, yet in a smaller scale than the “Heck of a job, Brownie” fiasco during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the similar efforts with Hurricane Rita in Southwest Louisiana and Southeast Texas later that same year.

Of course, our great “liberal” media was agog with tales of the supposed death of New Orleans and how those star-crossed citizens would survive the supposed oncoming onslaught of Gustav. Would the levees hold?? (They did….barely.) Would the city be evacuated without the hitches that occured with Katrina?? (Yup….but some fools still stayed.) Would it get nearly as bad as Katrina?? (Actually, no….the winds were probably just as strong as with Katrina, but because of the angle of approach and the landfall further to the southwest of the Greater N’Awlins area, the effects weren’t nearly as severe as it could have been.) And, most importantly, would the response of the usual government authorities be a bit more urgent and organized than the chaos of Katrina?? (That’s still pending….our new guv Bobby Jindal has been pretty active in pressers in reassurance and advocating for our state and getting a bit critical of relief efforts; the federal response has been slightly better, if a bit muted.)

But that’s more of the general story, which can be found anywhere. What I am about to post here is a much more personal tale of how this particular left-wing Black man survived being in the face of a Cat 3 hurricane and surviving with my anatomy and most of my wits intact. It will take a while to go through, but I believe that it will be worth it.

———————————————————————-

Friday, August 29th:
From my newly-acquired satellite dish, I see that Hurricane Gustav is blowing up off the western Cuba coast, and while there was original speculation about the track being a bit further east of where I am, all the signs are now looking towards a direct hit for South Central and Southeast Louisiana. I’ve survived some hurricanes passing through my area in the past (Danny in 1985, Andrew in 1992, Lili in 2002, Rita in 2005), but none nearly as severe or as direct as what is being forecasted for Gustav, with all that nice warm water of the Gulf of Mexico to maneuver through. I have only one thought in mind: How to get the HELL out of the way and view the storm from a safe distance….like, say, Houston or Atlanta.

Problem is, I still have to work that day, and my job hasn’t decided what they will allow the workers to go home tommorrow to prepare for the storm….so I am pretty much locked in for now.

The rest of my family, though, decide to stick it out and stay; since they think that their homes are strong enough to weather the storm.

Now it should be noted that I and my family stay about 40 miles onshore of the coast (roughly 20 miles north of Lafayette in South Central Louisiana, in the city of Opelousas), so storm surge flooding won’t be an issue; but the flooding rains and the high winds blowing down trees into powerlines, and the isolated threat of tornadoes most certainly will be huge issues. They would prefer for me to stay and stick it out, but they know about my particular panic about the weather, so they don’t protest my decision….much.

Saturday, August 30:
Oh, good….Gustav’s now up to 140 mph, and now confirmed to head straight for us. If I can get off work early enough, I could purchase a ticket for a Greyhound bus to Houston where I can survive the storm. Unfortunately, they don’t close the store and allow us to go home to prepare until about 6:30 PM…and by the time I get to the Shell station that passes for a Greyhound stop, I get the first really bad news: The buses stopped running since 3 PM that afternoon, and no buses will be running until the storm passes. Awwww, shit….I guess I’ll have to ride it out after all; but perhaps they will offer evacuation buses for those wanting to leave. Yeah, that’s the ticket….just lend an ear to the radio and listen for any updates.

Sunday, August 31: (The adventure begins)
10 AM: Well, the locals did announce evacuation buses leaving for points north….but they were in communities south of where I live. Nothing yet about any arrangements for buses here. What the hell are they waiting for…an engraved invitation from FEMA??

12 AM: Finally….they announce that a bus will be at our local parish courthouse in the center of our city to take evacuees out of my city. I pack, kiss my sister and her family goodbye and good luck, and silently thank my lucky stars to be out of harm’s way. Or….so I thought.

1 PM: It seems that the local authorities can’t decide amongst themselves where exactly they will bring us. Alexandria was the initial destination, but their shelters were booked up long ago. Shreveport was next, but their shelters were booked up, too, and it seems that the locals were fearful that the storm would go up that way and cause some chaos there. (Well….that, and the fact that the shelter there in Shreveport had no running water, much to the chagrin of those evacuees who did manage to make it there.) At first, the consensus was that we would be bused even further north to Arkansas; which bothered me not at all; the further the better. But then, some local with the parish Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness decided that rather than bone up the cash to send us that far north; why not just open a shelter within the parish and save the money. And whadayaknow; there’s an excellent shelter over at North Central High School in the town of Lebeau in the northern half of the parish were we can put them. Oh, but this makes my day even freakin’ better: I thought that the idea was to escape the storm, not ride it out. I make a feeble attempt to get someone to find anyone going to Houston on their own….but to no avail. Nothing to do but accept your fate and hunker down……but at least I’ll be away from the danger area; though not as far away as I would have preferred.

3 PM: The locals resolve their differences; we all get on the bus and head north towards North Central High. Turns out, it’s a pretty strong and physically built campus (maybe that’s why their mascot is called the \”Hurricanes\”). I feel a bit better about surviving. They say that the supplies from the National Guard and the Red Cross will be coming here later this afternoon or tonight.

8 PM: OK….no supplies here yet. People streaming in to take in shelter, and no sign of any authorities from FEMA or Red Cross or the National Guard anywhere. Whiskey?? Tango??? Foxtrot?????

10 PM: And still no supplies here, and still no authorities. Other than a parish deputy who’s making frantic calls to his bosses complaining about the conditions (we have elderly folks sleeping on bare floors in the wall and in chairs, FFS), it seems that we have become the forgotten evacuees. Thankfully for me, my twin sister, being the Mother Hen and good Christian woman (yes, Clones, she is the political opposite of me, and we shared the same womb; go figure) came along and sent me some supplies (a blanket, an outdoor sleeping bed, and some food and drink, as well as offering one last chance to come home and ride the storm out there. My response: \”Thanks, Sis, but no thanks; I’ll be safe here.\” She leaves to go back home. Then, off to sleep to prepare for tomorrow’s main event.

Monday, September 1 (G-Day)
6 AM: I awake and walk around the place; catch the local broadcast of WWL Radio from New Orleans’ live streaming coverage of Gustav’s emminent landfall. NO is getting it bad, but not nearly as bad as expected, since the storm has now weakened to barely Cat 3 major hurricane status, and is about to make landfall near Terrebone Bay below Houma. Just getting the first squall passing here. But….still, no supplies, nothing from the Red Cross or FEMA. Are we going to have to ride this storm out on our own??

7 AM: Ahhhh, listen to this: they were finally able to contact FEMA and the local Red Cross: turns out that all that negotiating for North Central High as an evacuation area was for naught, for the Red Cross hadn’t approved our location as an official evac shelter. Nope…..that status was reserved for another shelter: Holy Ghost Church and School, which is located….in downtown Opelousas. Right where I came from. Right in the path of Gustav. So now, everyone has to be loaded onto a bus and transported back to O-town to the proper shelter, where at least the proper supplies will be available. They did offer that anyone wanting to stay at NCHS could still do so….but they would be without supplies. How decent of them.

8 AM: Back on the bus, and travelling back to Opelousas for the real shelter. Home’s beginning to look pretty nice right about now.

9 AM: Now at Holy Ghost Church, in the school facility behind the church. Glory be, there be FEMA folks and Red Cross folks and National Guard troops everywhere; and MRE’s and provisions to boot. Even better, the cafeteria is a solid building within the main school campus which seems to be strong enough to withstand whatever Gustav has to offer. We might actually be able to make it after all. And the first major squal busts through.

11 AM: We have visitors here: a fetching reporter and a cameraman from, of all places, the English version of the al-Jazzera cable news network, is here to witness how we here survive a hurricane, and there are plenty of takers for mug shots and interviews….until the Red Cross folks evict them from the shelter a couple of hours later. The segment, unfortunately, won’t be shown here in the United States…..too bad.

12 noon: The Sisters at the church and the military feed us some MRE’s. Not too bad, considering the usual military rations; but plenty hell to open and heat up.

2 PM: Gustav begins unleashing his full fury here. From a back entrance sheltered from the wind and rain by the main church and opposite to the prevailing direction of the winds, I get a nice view of the rain and winds steadily increasing with each squall passage.

4 PM: The eyewall arrives….and it is all that and more. The prototypical sideways-driven rain. 60 to 70 mph sustained with probable gusts approaching 85 to 90. We are forced inside to the cafeteria for safety’s sake. Before we get chased inside, I see some shingles get peeled off roofs and a large tree get pulled down in the lot. Around 4:30, the power finally goes out.

5:30 PM: The eye of Hurricane Gustav — now barely a hurricane — passes right over us. Winds are now nearly calm and the rain even stops. We’re unscathed inside…but it is pretty bad just outside with trees and power lines down and even some roof damage. The awning where I had been previously standing gets flipped up by the gusts of wind and ends up on the roof of our building. Other than that….nothing much.

7 PM: The weaker half of Gustav passes over without much fuss. We get fed again, and the military brings plenty of cots for us to sleep on tonight. They announce that we are now on curfew until dawn tomorrow morning, and the lights will be turned out at 10 PM for sleep purposes….though they will attempt to keep some light via flashlight for those wishing to use the one restroom at the end of the hall. (Yeah, that’s right…..ONE restroom.)

Tuesday, September 2: The Aftermath
5 AM: I end up helping an elderly man make it to the restroom and back before he uses it on himself…then have a devil of a time locating his cot.

8 AM: it is basically all over but for the shouting (and the flooding and tornado threat). People are gradually leaving the shelter so that they can go back to their destinations. A local reporter from our local newspaper and her photographer decide to do an interview depicting the full Gustav experience…..which is how a picture of moi sleeping ended up being taken and splashed all over the next day’s edition. Oh, geez…could they have at least gotten my permission…..or refered to me as something than \”a man\”???

10 AM: I call my folks and they come and pick me up to drop me home

11 AM: I am back at home…..everything seems to have survived well. That big-ass satelitte dish I put on top of my roof is unscathed, suprisingly; and the house appears to have weathered the storm more than adequately. Now…it’s just a matter of waiting for power to be restored…. (It would take until noon yesterday (Tuesday) for my power to be fully restored; and we had to get a generator from my other sister’s husband over in Lafayette on Sunday to get power flowing then.)

—————————————————————————–

All in all, a unique and interesting experience being so up close to a hurricane. And, hopefully, one which I won’t have to face ever again…though more than likely, I probably will.

Maybe even this coming weekend.

Or…..perhaps not. Stay away, Ike.

Goodness….has it been that long since I last posted here????

Between work,  my financial issues, and dodging Hurricane Gustav (and boy, oh, boy, do I have a story to tell you on that!!!), it’s been tough sledding getting enough time to post.

Fortunately, I now have more or less permanent Internet access back via a new satellite Internet service (my big-ass dish adds a lot to my roof, doesn’t it??), and my financial issues are being slowly dealt with…so I will be back to nearly normal posting now.  At least, what I call \”normal\”.

It is good to be back here, though….and I have so much ground to catch up with: from Sarah Quayle Palin and the media’s attempt to annoint John McSame as our next President (hey, Senator Obama, it is perfectly OK to take off the gloves and attack now!!!), to the latest rumbles in the Feminist Sex Wars (featuring the usual shit-throwing from the GenderBorg hive); among other issues.

And with Hurricane Ike looking like he’s gonna cut Louisiana a break and break off Texas instead; my anxiety meter isn’t running so high. So…more racking and smacking.