My husband and I had only been married about four months when Hurricane Andrew was a threat to New Orleans. I worked nights on a radio station on the tenth floor of a building that overlooked the lake. The night before the storm was due to hit - projected to hit New Orleans - my husband kept me company while I was on the air, providing updates to those listening. We could feel that building sway in the strong winds, and we made plans as to what to do and where to go if we needed to evacuate. As hurricanes are known to do, this one by-passed New Orleans for the most part and unleashed its fury on Baton Rouge. I had an appointment for a interview for a job at a Baton Rouge radio station that had to be postponed because of Andrew. So many people in the Baton Rouge area had no power for weeks after the storm.
Of course, everyone has heard takes of Katrina. I blame that storm as the turning point in my mother's and mother-in-law's health. No one with any ties to the Gulf will ever be quite the same post-Katrina. That storm changed everything I had once loved about New Orleans. But that's a story for another day. Up near Baton Rouge, we lost power for only eight hours. I can remember reading an American Girl book to my daughter while we ate the ice cream in the freezer before it melted. I also remember hearing about the flooding in New Orleans. I knew my mother, who was too hard-headed to evacuate, lived in a high area by the levee, but since I couldn't get her on the phone for a few days, I could do little but worry.
Four years ago on Labor Day, Hurricane Gustav decided to pay Louisiana a visit. My husband and my kids - then 11 and 14 - lived in the suburbs of Baton Rouge. The winds were horrendous - we watched out the window as the next door neighbor's trampoline rolled over the 6-foot privacy fence and came to rest against a tree in our yard. Our power went off mid-morning and stayed out for the next eight days. As you may know, Labor Day in Louisiana is hot and humid. Think about that muggy day with no electricity, two outdoor dogs inside, and two kids with no TV or Internet. Now multiply that by eight.
We had a gas water heater, so I could still take showers and wash dishes. If someone had told me that usually just the electricity goes out and not the gas, we would have gotten a gas stove instead of the electric one. But we still cooked a little on the barbecue pit. We had chips, cookies and peanut butter, so we didn't starve. Of course, first thing in the morning, I would have killed for a cup of coffee! One day, we drove to one of the designated areas to get ice, bottled water and MRE's. MRE's are so nasty that they make school lunches look like a gourmet meal. Even the drive was awesome - air conditioning, a phone charger and the radio! Plus, it meant a change of scenery!
The daytime wasn't too bad. Yes, it was hot. But at least during the day, there was light and I could read. And I read a lot. To escape from that place and time, I read book after book. We also played games like UNO. But the night was a different story. We had no generator and in the total silence, neighbors' generators emitted the loudest, most obnoxious sounds I have ever heard. And once the sun was down, the dark was just that - dark! It was pitch black. We had a few flashlights, but we didn't want to wear them down. I would stare out the windows in all directions, looking for any sign a light was on somewhere since that might mean that power would be back soon. We slept a lot once it got dark...though it was almost too hot to sleep. I would get up as soon as I saw light. Those nights were unbearably long and miserable.
There are so many things that you miss in eight days...being able to blow dry your hair, doing laundry, cooking something to eat, baking cookies.... It's like a prison sentence. You can't just run to the store or the mall because they don't have electricity either. You can't get money out of the ATM. You can't put gas in your car. Even when the stores and gas station started to reopen, lines were long and patience and supplies were short.
The power came back just about the time we all thought we were going to lose our minds. We resolved to never stay for another storm and to but a generator - though we didn't keep either resolution.
This year, on the same fateful date of Hurricane Katrina - August 29th - we had another unwanted visitor named Isaac. We watched its path, stocked up on batteries and water, picked up lawn furniture and trash cans - all of the usual hurricane preparation. The only thing that seemed terribly wrong is that my son came back from college and chose to spend the hurricane with his girlfriend and her mother, playing the role of protector.
Luckily, Isaac did not wreak a lot of havoc at our house. Our electricity blipped a number of times and went out for about 10 minutes, but came back on. We did lose our cable TV and Internet for 12 hours or more here and there. But we fared much better than others we know who are still without power a week later or who lost everything in flood waters.
Once again, we say that we will get a generator, and we may or may not. We say that we won't stay at home, but I refuse to go too far from my cats. We have until November 30th to keep watching the tropical weather outlook to see if anything else is brewing that might be a threat. And we chalk it up to life in the Gulf South.
