Gustav: See You On the Other Side

Every parish around us has issued a mandatory evacuation. Jeff Davis, Cameron, Allen, and Calcasieu. Hurricane Gustav will make landfall in South Louisiana in less than 24 hours.

We chose not to act on the "recommended" evacuation order. We will stay.

We stayed through Hurricane Rita in 2005. We were without electricity for seven days, but we never lost water pressure. It was really, really scary. I just knew that one of the oaks in the yard would fall on the house or the wind would just take the roof off. So loud...for so many hours. Trees went down in the yard, but none landed on the house and the roof stayed on.

So, why in the h*** would we stay for Gustav?? Couple of reasons. One reason is that Gustav is behaving differently than Rita. Gustav will come ashore a couple of hundred miles away in southeastern Louisiana and come at us from an angle (we are just a few miles from the Texas border on the west central side of the state). Rita came at us from due south, right up the Sabine River valley. Not a lot of land there to break the forward momentum before it hit us. And it was supposed to have hit Port Arthur!

And another reason, for me anyway, is that I want to come back when I get ready. When you evacuate, you have to remain outside the area until the authorities deem it safe to return. That might be weeks.

Also, we have two, big dogs and two cats. The dogs really don't get along, and the cats merely tolerate each other and the dogs.

So, we are staying. My daughter left Baton Rouge (AFTER the first LSU game of course) and then she and my husband--who had attended the game with her--both left Baton Rouge and went to his dorm/apartment in Alexandria, where they will ride out the storm. Today is my husband's 45th birthday. Happy Birthday, Dear!

See you on the other side!

Arrivederci!