I have to ride herd on the phones tonight from the HQ but they are forwarded to my cell and I actually got a for real day off tomorrow.
Flew in Saturday last and touched base in NOLA at the Metarie chapter headquarters before heading up to Baton rouge. Took me 6 & 1/2 hours to go the 65 odd miles from there to here. The evacuation traffic was pretty intense. Sunday was spent doing surveys on the staff shelters that we were housing folks in through the hurricane. They locked down travel for everybody from Sunday night till Tuesday morning 8 am.
Rain started whacking the roof early Monday morning. Our building had two sides that were very well sheltered and we spent most of the day sitting on benches smoking and drinking coffee and watching junk blow by, transformers blow up and trees blow down.
The baptist church where we are staying lost the steeple and we had the ac ducting torn off the side of the building and various and sundry junk tossed about. Water started flowing in the vents where the ducting tore off and luckily the only thing that got soaked was MY sleeping bag and suitcase.
After about an hour it stopped being particularly scary.
Power went out at 2 that afternoon and was just restored at 5am yesterday morning. It was 4 days before I managed to scrounge up a coke and a gas station microwave hamburger, lol. We were eating MREs and canned fruit for a few days as everything was closed down flat with the power knocked out.
The mall across the street opened up today and I ran over and got carry out chinese and new sneakers because my hiking shoes have been killing me. Happiness is.
I have been alternating between going out in the areas around us and doing safety and security surveys at evac shelters and helping out with the physical security and safety issues here at the headquarters building.
It's the same damn empty WalMart that they used during Katrina and it was a damn creepy feeling walking back in here after three years. Some of the ghosts seem to have been chased out though. There were about 50 people here the first day. There are better than a thousand working the area now.
I love doing this. Everyone you run into is a family member. You are all cousins sisters and brothers in the same big disfunctional family.
I am sharing a staff shelter in a church gym with about 150 other folks and have met a lot of old friends again and made quite a few new ones. There are three people from my home chapter who deployed down here that are working with me. My boss from the flooding in Rockford Illinois showed up one day and I have run into people who were running things down here during Katrina and Rita that I still remembered fondly. I had a crappy day a couple back and my shelter bud Lauri let me vent out for an hour and provided a hug and made me laugh. I've done that for a couple people as well.
The local folks have been superb lending help and for the most part it has been a joy working with our clients.
I am tired, sunburned and worn out and I have lost 10 pounds or so in the last week. I've been schlepping in from work around 9 or 10 each night and getting up at 5. Having the power back boosted morale quite a bit. Cold showers in an unventilated bathroom with palmetto leaves and mud on the floor and walls running with condensation are not conducive to making the happy.
There is a baptist Federation shower unit and laundry point at our shelter so we have enough stalls for everyone and those lovely folks did my laundry and folded it for me while I was working in my last pair of clean socks yesterday.
Keeping fingers crossed that Ike does not come here to play when it comes ashore next week.
Tomorrow I will be half done with my deployment. I flew out on my son's 7th birthday at o-dark-thirty and have missed the first two weeks of school for them. It's been a little rough on my wife and I actually asked her if she needed me to declare a family emergency and get home, but she told me that the last week has been the worst and things are getting better. My eldest is the greatest. She has stepped up and is cooking and babysitting for the mancub to help cover while my wife had business obligations this last week.
I have a whole glorious day off tomorrow and am going to sleep in and then see about finding an open steak house somewhere nearby. Or some eggs. Cripes I would kill someone for eggs right now, lol.
Miss hanging with you guys and the absense of any source of news down here. I heard palin talk a few times on the radio and I fricking LOVE her.
The headquarters building is emptying out around me here and I am going to hit the road soon.
Hope everyone is well in their own pursuits and will drop back as I can.
