Appreciate your reading it

Nordette — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:19:56 -0500

And commenting too. Thank you, TM.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link.

Thank you, Candelaria.

Nordette — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:18:53 -0500

I think the adrenalin kicked in and I didn't really think about what I was doing, but I only did what I would want someone to do for me and my family.

So many families are dealing with far worse than what I've faced right now. At most I was inconvenienced for awhile and stressed out.

Be well.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link.

Yes, I've seen the pics from Houma

Nordette — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 12:16:08 -0500

The storm surge from Ike really took people by surprise. I rode across Lake Pontchartrain yesterday and was shocked at how high the water still is and how much higher the swamp water and bayous are. It's subsided but is still kissing the shoulder of the road in some places.

I know someone who used to live in New Orleans but relocated to Houma following Katrina. I need to check on him. He's probably both mad and hurt as all get out.

I hope your relatives make it through this okay, hope they had flood insurance. But the photos and mementos lost in a flood usually leaves a wound for a while. If they couldn't get them to higher ground before the flooding, that is.

The destruction of our wetlands has made flooding worse in all the coastal areas of Louisiana.

Nordette is a Contributing Editor with BlogHer.com whose personal blog is hosted on another site at this link.

Ike Delivers A Punch To SE Louisiana

gringainteguz — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 22:27:35 -0500

Hello New Orleans girl! Houma is my hometown, and the areas around it are flooding again, much worse than the damage caused by Gustav. All of the levees in Terrebonne have been breached. An estimated 10,000 homes are flooded. Several relatives are facing flooding for the first time in their lives, as flooding in this coastal community worsens with each passing year. Sigh. I wish you well!

Laurie, a gringa in Honduras,

laurieishere.blogspot.com

Wow!

Candelaria Silva — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 21:41:20 -0500

Wow, Nordette. I have incredible admiration for your strength. You keep on keeping on and in your own turmoil are a good Samaritan as well.

Continued strength, multiple blessings.

blog.candelariasilva.com

Good and plenty!

That was beautiful

Tacomamama — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:26:00 -0500

Tacoma Mama

Hurricane Season: Peace After Revolution

Nordette — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 22:25:34 -0500

I preface this story with sympathy for those in Texas slammed by Hurricane Ike as well as Louisiana residents impacted by Ike flooding. For the last few days here in southeastern Louisiana, we've felt licks from that storm as parts of the state recover from Gustav. For instance, riding down the road I had to fight winds blowing against my Toyota Corolla, really had to focus to hold the steering wheel steady.

Noons, of late, have resembled 6:00 p.m. dusk. Lights flicker at home and in public places, resetting clocks and DVD players, and the people have gone mad at the gas pump. (I went to four different gas stations today before I could fill my tank, and even that one had a 10-gallon limit. I refused gas at one because it was $3.99/gal.)

But Ike spared us mostly. Another city, Galveston, must deal with devastating destruction. My heart goes out to the families who must rebuild, but the rest of my post concerns the aftermath of Gustav evacuation and lessons learned.

On the fourth day of our evacuation from Louisiana and safe with an Aunt in Memphis, what we heard was that there was no power at home, that Hurricane Gustav had knocked out the juice in all but two Louisiana parishes. Some had no power. Other areas had partial power. The sewerage system was down in our city because sewer pumps require electricity, and so no one should flush the toilet, we read online. Flushing without power could result in raw sewerage backing up into your home.

We'd also heard from Katrina veterans that we should expect a refrigerator of spoiled food. Possibly a stench would greet us when we opened the door of our small home that sits less than five miles from Lake Pontchartrain, that we would be in for a major cleaning job, even if the house didn't flood, and naturally, "watch out for alligators and snakes." All kinds of monsters rear their heads after a hurricane.

For all this fear and apprehension, we could thank Mother Nature and her child Gustav, the storm that Mayor Ray Nagin said would be the "mother of all storms," but that turned out to me more like tantrum-throwing cousin. Only Houma, La., and the areas that surround it felt Gustav's wrath as the whip of an abusive mama.

In Houma, they lost buildings, lives. In Vacherie, La., they lost part of City Hall. So far 43 deaths have been attributed to Gustav; however, in most of the state we experienced only loss of power and some flooding for a time. Nevertheless, as we returned, who knew what the future held? When we left my aunt's home in Memphis, Hurricane Hanna stood ready to ravage the eastern coast. Another storm, Josephine, kicked in infancy out in the ocean, and a possible contender for nightmare, Hurricane Ike, seemed geared to bring more misery to Haiti and Cuba and perhaps us again at the time.

My aunt said to me as I pulled from her driveway, "If you see anything strange at all, you turn around and come back." Don't you love good aunts?

"Be back in an hour," I joked.

Riding from Memphis after evacuating Louisiana the Saturday before, my two children, the dog, cat, and I joined a caravan of cars and trucks heading home. And we also saw signs of help from afar, utility truck after utility truck rolling beside us on I-55 from states as far away as Illinois, staff ready to work and turn on the lights in New Orleans, Slidell, Metarie, Baton Rouge, Houma, Thibodaux, Covington, Mandeville, and other parts of the state.

My children and I were in a race to beat my brother and his wife back to my house because my elderly parents traveled with them and not us to and from Memphis, and one thing you don't want to do is show up with an 81-year-old Alzheimer's patient and an 87-year-old diabetic to a Louisiana house with no electricity or working toilet in early September. The heat, the flies and mosquitoes, the smell, and the danger of someone suffering heat stroke -- no one wanted to face potential inconvenience and certainly not potential tragedy. Yet, we moved forward to take on the challenge.

Then we saw it, a mid-size gray car weaving across the road out of control, narrowly missing other cars--barreling off the left shoulder across the deep green grass of the I-55 median, almost across to opposing traffic, swerving from that threat back through the median grass then across our side of the road again where it began and straight off right shoulder ... BAM! Into a line of pine trees, the car rammed one tree truck, busting up the driver-side front bumper and aligning itself parallel to the road, hugged by weeds, bushes, and more Mississippi trees.

Watching that car swerve, zigzag, and jerk across the road to its resting place, we tensed, and I heard myself saying, "Oh! Do you see that? Do you see that!"

I think my teenage son and 20-something daughter said "Yeah, yeah." The truck in front of us moved forward, not slowing down, but I couldn't do that. Without thinking, I pulled off to the side of the road near the wrecked car, whipped out my cell phone and dialed 911 as I flung open my car door to go see if the passengers were okay. I heard my son's seatbelt click open in the back seat. He told the dog to stay as he exited the car and shut his door. My daughter also began to exit, but I suggested someone should stay in the car.

I went up to the car flashing my cell phone, and the driver, a middle-aged white man of slight build with salt-and-pepper hair climbed from the driver's side looking a little dazed and red-faced. His female companion, a short, round woman with short, thinning, blonde and white hair sat in the passenger's seat. She was on her cell phone and sort of leaned over with the tilt of the car. It had come to rest on an incline, but was not inclined enough to be in danger of tipping over.

The woman's phone's signal died, and so I told the highway patrol where I thought we were, near a Yazoo City, Miss., exit sign and the exit number I thought we'd passed most recently. The man paced, stooped to look at the crushed front bumper and damaged left fender, grimaced, and paced back to the driver's door, yelling to the woman, "Come see this. You should see this." He then paced to the front of the car to repeat his wreck ritual.

"Damage to the car is the least of our worries." She told him as she opened her door and pushed herself upward and out of the car.

"It's a rental," he mumbled. She reminded him again that the car was not her concern yet. It seems the man had passed out at the wheel and she'd had to steer the car from the passenger side, which explained the erratic weaving, the death-defying trek from right lane, to median, to right lane, shoulder, and trees.

As she toddled around the back bumper to join us, I saw she had summer wear, a pastel, lightweight shirt and capri pants. She wore flimsy sandals and seemed unsteady on her feet.

"You don't have on good shoes to walk through this," I said, eying the thorny brush. "And you look a little shaky. If I were you, I'd sit down." I nodded toward the driver's seat.

She said she was okay, but took my advice just the same. After I told the pair that motor assist patrol was on its way, she thanked me and said God would bless me. I think I told her that they'd been blessed that it wasn't worse, and if they were okay, we'd have to get back on the road. Traffic had been a horror off and on since we left my aunt's house in Tennessee.

We climbed back into our car, and my daughter demanded details. The cat had slept through it all in her carrier. The dog waited, eager to lick someone as my son and I snapped our seatbelts back in place, and off we went, returning to the road home, a little less focused on what might await us, a little more grateful that we still breathed.

These storms come and go down here, upheavals to lives we thought we'd planned well. But there's a lesson in hardship and the world gone topsy turvy. For some there's an obvious message: Just move away. For others it's a rap on the fingers: Be thankful. For us it's been a syllabus with lectures on living in the present: Take life as it comes.

Running from hurricanes, you have to let go. Glance in the rear view mirror and you may see your world falling away in chaos. You re-learn a proverb you've heard before, that the only thing that matters when trouble comes is that you have people you love with you. You digest reality, that life goes on with storms brewing somewhere, and it's the center of your spirit that must rest.

If you'd like to assist hurricane survivors, AmyGeekgirl has a round-up of reputable charities here.

Nordette is a BlogHer.com Contributing Editor whose personal blog is at this link on another site.

BlogHer - Hurricane Season: Peace After Revolution - Comments

Appreciate your reading it

Thank you, Candelaria.

Yes, I've seen the pics from Houma

Ike Delivers A Punch To SE Louisiana

Wow!

That was beautiful

Hurricane Season: Peace After Revolution