Katrina is coming

I'm watching CNN here in Barbados, and I'm amazed that
Jefferson Parish president Aaron Broussard is giving detailed
driving instructions to an international audience. He was
mayor of Kenner when I was growing up, now he's a bejowled
power broker telling an international audience not to take
the Huey P. Long bridge; but he didn't say which way to go.

Whew, I'm glad I'm not a resident of the west bank of Jefferson
Parish...they've got to take a drive on Highway 90 to lafayette,
which is a 2 1/2 hour drive over swampy causeways with no
traffic, add 200,000 people and it will be a 6 hour bataan death-
drive just to Lafayette. (or risk a one-lane merge from I-310 to
I-10...bleh) Once you're in lafayette I'd definitely keep going
to Houston.

I already suggested to my wife that she call our friends in
Lafayette to invite them over tonight. The projected path has
been steadily marching west since yesterday, if it moves any
further west I'd leave lafayette if I was there. It's better to do
so today, instead of sitting in traffic for 10 hours tomorrow.

But I'm pretty chicken after sitting through Hurricane Lily a
few years ago. That time I screwed up and traveled back to
Lafayette from New Mexico where I was working. My wife
and some neighbors waited for me to arrive before evacuating,
and by the time I arrived it was midnight, and I was exhausted.
I had had to drive from Hobbs, New Mexico to Midland, run to the
terminal and board a plane with two minutes to spare, fly to
Houston then drive to Lafayette.

Driving east on I-10 when all of southeast texas and southwest
louisiana are evacuating is a strange sensation, as a jam-packed
highway streams westward, while we were the only car headed
eastbound.

I arrived home at midnight and the hurricane hit at 6 am, luckily
Governor Fostor had prayed it into a weaker storm and we lived,
just with no power for a couple of weeks. (Governor Blanco
probably sounded like a nut on the news conference when she
said prayer was one thing that has worked in the past)

Comments

Anonymous said…
I'd imagine it's gonna be difficult finding motel rooms in east Texas for the next few days...
12:28 PM
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