MamaDomme1
Posts: 377
Joined: 1/12/2008 Status: offline
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~~FR~~ I grew up on the Mississippi gulf coast and we (my family) were always as prepared as we could be. We would board up, take the priority things with us, and evacuate. Every single time. Yeah, there were many times that we would go up a hundred miles or so for a couple days, the storm would manage to go elsewhere, and we'd go home to unboard the windows and continue with life. Went thru Camille in '69 and all the smaller ones after her. Thought she was the biggest and baddest ever. Then came Katrina. I boarded and taped my windows, grabbed my supplies & a suitcase, took the medical paperwork for my mother who was on dialysis, and headed north to Memphis to my sister's. Oh, and my brand new golf clubs so no one would loot them. They were a priority, I thought. I finally managed to make it back to where my home USED to be on the first of October that year. The lines were still long for water, food, and to get our shots. Spent 2 days trying to salvage what I could, loaded it up, left the rest for the bulldozers. Haven't been back yet. Nothing to go back to. My cousin lived next door to me and sat the storm out the best he could. He was stuck for 9 days before the very first Red Cross supplies of water and MRE's were dropped. We weren't just flooded like New Orleans was..... we were completely wiped out. Completely. My 500 gallon propane tank still hasn't been found. I figure it's probably laying in some field in Alabama or something. Gustav has been knocked down to a Tropical Storm with 45mph winds right now..... but is headed back into the warm gulf waters to gain strength again. Let's just hope he moves swiftly thru the water and doesn't just sit out there stalling and growing. None of the coast can handle another big one right now. Hell, the cleanup of Katrina still isn't finished. They just finally reopened the Hwy 90 bridge over Biloxi bay. The population of New Orleans is only 50% of what it was before Katrina--- they people still don't have homes to live in again, in order to return if they wanted to.
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