Thoughs On The Coming Storm

Yesterday you could feel it in the air. The tension, yes, even the fear, that here we go again, almost to the day of Katrina and here comes another storm. People were out buying gas cans, water, flashlights, batteries, whatever they thought they might need. The shelves at the local Wal Mart were getting bare, shoppers were loading up buggies of food and bringing them to the check out counters. It's still too soon to know if we're going to be hit, but New Orleans is in the cone and at one point the track lead it straight to our door.

As customers came in the store yesterday the topic of conversation was of course the upcoming storm. No one was in panic mode yet, we still are four or five days out, so there's time. One woman came in and filled her cart up with water and than was wandering around, wondering what else she should buy. I suggested the little five inch tv/radios we sell for ten dollars. I've had one since I worked at Service Merchandise over six years ago. I remember after Katrina that little tv was worth its weight in gold. It works off batteries and during those nights of no power and when the darkness seemed to be engulfing it was nice to be able to turn that tv on and watch WWL talk about what was going on.

One couple came in and bought three big dog kennels. They were telling me that like all of us at Katrina, we thought we'd leave and be back the next day, they left their dogs home, expecting to be home the next day. Sadly their dogs didn't make it, so this time they were making sure their dogs went with them.

Another older woman came in and needed help with getting a cot to her car. Standing in line we were talking. She has taken on the care of an elderly lady with Alhemeizers. If they evacuated she wanted to be able to put the cot next to her bed so she could make sure the woman was ok.

The man buying a shotgun and looking for shotgun shells for personal protection. He wanted to make sure there was no looting going around his home this time. God, the amount of guns, handguns we have sold in the last three days. Everyone is arming themselves and to tell you the truth it scares me. I don't begrudge people protecting what's rightfully theirs, but so many guns are going out in so many hands that know nothing of how to operate a gun, and worse are basically scared of the gun, it's a frightening concept.

Going out for lunch and the person working the other side asking me if we sold gas cans and I said yes, but had to tell her that we were unfortunately out of them. Gas cans are one of the fastest going things right now. But I told her we were getting two "hurricane" trucks tonight and there was going to be four or five pallets of gas cans on them. Stopping in the store today, to go to a parish meeting on the hurricane, I saw that all of the five pallets of gas cans have already been sold, none left and wondering if she got her gas can.

Traffic is starting to get heavier. The news showed some scenes of bumper to bumper on the interstate as some are not waiting to be told to leave and getting ahead of the curve. From my meeting we were told they were going to start contra flow tomorrow at six. Contra flow is when they turn the interstates into one way highways, out of the city, to get as many people flowing out as quickly as possible.

The parish, the mayors are all waiting before they call for a mandatory evacuation, waiting to see what the storm does, where it goes. They have to call one at least 48 hours in advance, so it's a hard guess to make. Right now they're calling for landfall around Tuesday morning. But will it continue to turn west, or who knows, skip the wrong way for us. Unfortunately the right way for us is the wrong way for someone else. No one gets away untouched.