I'd say on the SUCKS scale this qualifies as a 10:( (Oh, btw, I'm ALIVE, guys!!!)
 

It's been rough, but I am OK.

This is my first opportunity to get to a net connected computer.

As you know, the storm surge flooded areas that have never seen water before. I ended up chest high in the water and had put my little dogs on a shelf by the door. I had decided that the moment the water hit their feet we were going for the deck out front (which was floating as well as any nicely designed raft:upsidedow) because the shelf was a couple inches below the fence that the deck would have floated over and no longer be an option. The water actually partially submerged the shelf they were standing on but thankfully stopped 1/2 inch from their feet. The water inside the house dropped several inches within a few minutes and I realized the water outside had fallen down a good bit fast, so I got the door open and water flowed out (along with half my living room :1orglaugh).

I then ran through waist deep water to my sister's house next door (she works at a nursing home so she was there for the storm) and I got in and rescued her dogs (who had been floating on the bed). The only pet we lost was her rabbit. As bad as that all that may sound, where I almost went for the storm turned out much worse. My aunt's house is a good way north of me and always been my "safe-house" for storms. She and my grandmother ended up chin high in the water and the only reason they are here today is because my cousin who lives around the corner had a new boat and was able to rescue them. My mother's house has an upstairs, so they were safe there. The water went 9 feet feet into her house and her neighborhood is considered even less of a flood risk than mine (neither got water in Betsy or Camille). We all lost our cars except my brother-in-law, he works at another nursing home and had his truck there.

The one benefit of my having stayed here is right after the surge was I was able to get the water out quickly which helped reduce the structure damage substantially. I stayed a few nights at the nursing home with my sister but I was only getting maybe an hour a day to work on cleanup when my brother-in-law got breaks from work. My place is a duplex with rental side that had recently been vacated so I cleared a small room in it to work out of while I sift through the debris on my living side (it had roof damage, so it's a bigger mess). It's quite depressing to drag out 24 years of life and memories and dump it in a pile beside the street but although I may have lost all my stuff I know I am quite fortunate... the neighborhoods 2 blocks to the south of me have no homes standing to put stuff in :sadcrying

Most of the stores are still closed, Lowes and Walmart are open and I've been able to get a ride a couple of times and get a few essential things. Walmart didn't have a single broom or mop and almost no cleaning supplies but in amazing timing a church bus came around maybe an hour after we returned from Walmart giving out a bucket full of cleaning supplies plus a mop & broom. :thumbsup People have been great with supplying ice, water & MREs. Most of the traffic lights are still out, there's very few places to get gas.

I have a bunch of stuff to do before dark, I'll get back on later tonight and chat with you guys and fill you in more on the last couple weeks.

great to hear you are safe...hope the clean up and getting your life back to "normal" progresses smoothly.

Good luck.

sounds like you've had a tough time, glad to hear you and your family are okay!

Welcome back, and good luck with everything! :thumbsup

good news that you are ok

atleast you are alive
you can rebuild my friend
Good luck!

Glad to hear you made it through the flood.

On a lighter note, it sounds like you were related to half the people that didn't evacuate (sister, brother, mother, aunt, cousin, grandmother, brother-in-law). :1orglaugh

ADG Webmaster

good to see that you and your family are ok - all other stuff can be replaced :thumbsup

holy hell
good luck

glad you and yours are okay. :thumbsup

glad your safe!! :thumbsup
sounds like one hell of a ride though :(

Glad to hear that you are doing ok as well as your family. The clean up has to suck but at least you are on your way. Why not just move the hell out of there? :)

Happy to hear you guys are safe. Welcome back and I hope things go better for you now.

.

good to hear you're okay. I'm in Baton Rouge. No flooding but the electric was out for a week and the internet just cam back up

Nice to hear you made it and sounds like you are gonna be able to restore your living situation. Just out of curiosity, to the cars that got submerged, do any of them start up after the water subsides or are they all "lost" as you said.

Glad to hear the animals are safe.

great to hear your alive and well.sorry to hear about personal things and the rabbit. I hung out with some people who evalucated to LA and they keep talking about how evalcuation is vacation, i found that to be a tasteless comment and it upset me greatly..

this comment could be seen from two sides.


first side : you are an animal lover and you are happy about the safed dogs


second side (sounds more realistic ) you dont like mardigras and this is a sarcastic comment to show that you dont care what happened to him

Glad to hear another Gulf Coastie made it. Good luck my friend and if you need to get out of town for a break, you're welcome to come over here to Mobile. Hell, there's more people from LA, MS, & TX here then there are Mobilians! It's hard to see another AL tag on the road. Seems like we're the "home base" for most of the insurance/clean up crew/etc operations. Great for our economy but man it's impossible to get around town these days. :helpme

Same here...lost power for a week. Got my connection back yesterday, but it keeps going down after about 20 mins. They have to come out again, but it might be a week or two.

Glad to hear you and the family are safe mardigras.

I see your point.

I am an animal lover and it warms my heart to see somebody go the extra mile to make sure their animals, and in this case their sister's animals, are all safe.

You're right in that I do think Mardigras is a bit of an idiot. However, I don't wish any ill will upon him, his family or his home. I'm glad to hear he's alright too.

Good to hear you're alive and well man

I'm glad you and your family are all OK and that's awesome you rescued all the animals!

Wow, its still amazing to hear these stories. Glad you are ok.

glad to hear you're ok man...

Thanks for all the well wishes and welcomes back folks, it is so good to see you again. Here's a few replies to comments and questions in the thread:

It's progressing a bit smoother than the rest of the neighborhood. When I heard we were cleared for power as soon as we had an inspection of all electrical that got wet I put everything else on hold and concentrated on replacing all the outlets in the place. As a result as of last night I am the only one on the street so far with power. :thumbsup

LOL, this storm attacked approximately 90,000 square miles, something beyond anyone's imagination... I had plenty of company. :upsidedow

That's all that matters. Although we had some close calls everyone in my family and all the pets made it. A friend's father-in-law is the only fatality I know. The main thing not replacable (and the hardest to lose) were my home movies :(

The freakiest thing in my 43 years... I can happily go at least another 43 without another one :upsidedow

The smell is horrid. I've aired out most of the place but as I'm clearing out the back rooms out I'm finding that anything that could float upright and capture some of the surge water did. It's like finding mini pockets of unflushed toilets. The city came through with the bug spraying truck night before last which was a tremendous relief from the swarms of flies all through the neighborhood (there's 2 weeks of garbage at everyone's house along with a huge pile of stuff that runs the length of everyone's property). The neighborhood looks like a landfill.
I can't leave home. Everyone most important to me is within a 10 mile radius. This will be a most beautiful place to live again. If everyone abandoned a town the first time there was a natural disaster there would be very few habitated places in the US. I'm not in an area that is pounded by hurricanes and there has never been water from one here in recorded history prior to this storm.

I think I'd give up the internet for a dozen weeks to not be dealing with the nasty mess I'm working on :Oh crap

They say if you get the fluids, battery and possibly starter changed before trying to start them there is a chance to salvage them. Too many people try to jump them off and that sends the salt water through the system and destroys it. 2 of my doors and the trunk are sealed shut:helpme. I'm not touching it until my brother (the family mechanic) gets a chance to come over and look at it.

The rabbit was bad enough... worse, 4 or 5 days ago a large section of wood fence loosened by the storm fell down at my neighbor's house and killed her 14 year old cocker spaniel. That was pretty much the emotional peak of the entire ordeal. :(

I can't imagine being stuck in another state with nobody I know as any sort of vacation. By striking early I got my power on and amazingly even though the insulation and controls of my hot water heater were totally submerged after drying out that sucker kicked in and after 2 weeks of "sponge baths" I took a warm shower at home this morning. Now that was a vacation :thumbsup

Thanks. I have some friends who are going to drag me away a few days after I clear the mess and see the insurance claim adjuster. 80% of us here that got flooded were not in flood zones so few had flood insurance. I'll be really OK if the personal contents part of my homeowner's insurance will cover my stuff. I don't know yet. They told me to take pictures and write down model and serial numbers of everything I drag out, so that sounds hopeful.

Bitch :1orglaugh
I'm glad to hear he's alright too.[/QUOTE]
Thanks for the well wishes man, all of you guys!

Now would be a good time to have a blog, if you have a few minutes to update it each day. :) Just a diary of what you do each day.

I've jotted a few things down... I took pics during the storm until about halfway through surge, then threw the camera in the attic as it approached the window. Afterwards the video wouldn't work on the camera but I managed to get it to take some still shots of damage before it died. By then I was able to grab several disposable cameras at Walmart so I have some interesting stuff I can post.

Glad that you made it through it all alive. Won't it be nice to get back to a boring life? Take care.

Correction: I turned 44 six days ago, by candle light :1orglaugh

Heh, I think it may be awhile before I see even the most mundane thing as boring :upsidedow

Glad to hear M-Gras - and you know youre always welcome up on the west side of MS if ya just need to relax and take a pool break - got power back and first thing I did was get the chainsaw out to get the tree out of the pool - its all recovered, got power back to the hottub and the blender :)
Gimme a shout if ya'll need a weekend away from it all (I should have the rest of the trees cleared by then)

Good to hear you are ok..keep being strong

I have never spoken with you before, but some asked about you. Glad to0 hear that you are ok.

Wow.. I'm sorry to hear that all of this happened to you. I couldn't imagine being in your position. However, I am VERY happy to heart that you were ok, and spared a lot of death.

My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family.

Crazy! Glad to hear you're safe *and* have such a positive attitude. You must have a really great family.

I am offically the GFY happy camper for the day :)

Great to hear you and your family and pets are AOK....
I think you were about the last GFY'r from the south that was MIA...
(Im sure someone will correct me if Im wrong...)

Keep your spirit up Mardi Gras... sounds like you are a trueblue NOLA'r

:thumbsup :thumbsup

Big B
CECash.com

but hey everyone here loves to rip apart the religious ones, religion and the church and their beliefs, but low and behold, who brought you the cleaning supplies? :1orglaugh

Great news..... Glad your ok.

After that story it sounds ridiculous to say you have been lucky but.... well you know the rest.

Its also good to hear that stuff seems to be happening around you - power back on, Walmart open etc. Its certainly a different story than the one the press is showing us. I suppose they dont want all those people in Texas flooding back into the city.

Glad to hear you're OK mardigras!!

Oh Simon, your simplicity has truly brought a chunk of normalicy back to my life. Sparring with you and several other "pundits" here is genuinely one of my most enjoyable pasttimes. :)

Unless your comments above were generic and not specifically directed at me perhaps you have formed an inaccurate opinion of me. I am a rather religious person myself. If dig around the forum you will find I have answered religious questions in much more research based answers than at least 95% of the thread participants. I do not follow any organized religion but consider myself a non-denominational Christian and research my own answers rather than allowing any single entity to spoon-feed them to me.

You are more than welcome to research every post I have ever made to GFY (or any formum on the internet for that matter) and you will not find one where I ripped on religions or churches. What I have ripped apart is hipocrites, blasphemers, liars and control freaks. There's a huge difference :winkwink:

I'm northeast of NO. They are basically dead there:(

The good stuff is happening very near me. I'm still the only one on the street with power. Then again, I was listening closely to the radio and did go tell all of the neighbors what they needed to do to get running. There's only 3 houses on my street where people are staying at night.

None of the fast food joints or regular stores are open yet. Walmart and Lowes is pretty much it. Note: You can pretty much live out of those 2 stores :upsidedow

I hate to ask.... but Pix?

Happy birthday ... :GFYBand

Blog would be nice. If you need free space ( and easy install - Fantastico), let me know.

Keep well.

I was on the edge of destruction... one of the final locations south in my area able to accept power. There are 150 year old historic homes that have ridden out every 20th and 21st century storms 3 streets south of me that are literally gone. :helpme

There are too many close calls to believe anything other than someone (thing) watched out for me. I've faired better than anyone around me and now that I have the net connection I have neighbors and family that can use it to take care of their businesss. Nobody saved their computers. :Oh crap

If you're gonna restore power,give it to the geek :thumbsup :1orglaugh

Glad you are OK despite the nightmare :thumbsup

Glad you made it ok. Stuff can be replaced. People cant :(

The computer I just got has a slot for my camera card. My camera video died during the storm but I got some video and in the aftermath I was able to take some pics by turning the camera off and on after each one until it finally died. I got some disposable cameras after that so those will be developed later (lots of insurance pics, etc). I'll try to upload some of the digitals in a bit.

I'm very glad to hear you and yours are ok.

Stay safe man, and best luck for the future. Katrina killed my friends father in law here in Florida as well, prior to landfall in the Gulf coast. He was killed by a falling tree :( If you need any spare computer parts, cables, wires, etc, I'm sure others like me have closets full. Just put the shout out!