Posts Tagged ‘Gustav’

Why do we stay in New
Orleans? Part 2
By Charles Burck, Special to the Beacon
Last Updated ( Thursday, 04 September 2008 )

According to news reports we heard while battened down in our home for Hurricane Gustav, some 10,000 of us had stayed behind — less than 5 percent of the city’s population. Hmmm, don’t the Hell’s Angels call themselves the 5 percenters? Do we stay because we’re closet outlaws?

We now break from our regularly scheduled post to note that the St. Louis Beacon has emailed to request I take the piece down. I assumed that as Charlie had donated his time to write this, it was public domain, and having left their website addy there would be sufficient.

Apparently not, so my bad. Apologies all around.

Link to full text of part II here.

Okay, so Gustav and Ike have both moved on, and while we keep our eye on the tropics and Texas in our minds, I want to pass something along that Charlie wrote in the 24 hours following Gustav.

Link: St. Louis Beacon

Well, in the end, we decided to stay home and not evacuate.

I waited for the 4pm weather update, hoping the worst of the traffic would let up. We had reservations in a Birmingham motel- 5 and a half hours to get to in the best of times, and I wasn’t too excited about doubling or tripling the travel time- with 2 dogs, 2 birds and 1 teen in the car, no less. So we waited a bit, hoping that either people would get where they were headed and off the road, or something about Gustav would change that would make leaving optional.

And that’s just what happened- since Gustav is weaker than expected, and since he’s aiming at other areas of the state, we decided to hunker down and go with the flow.

That flow arrived a little sooner than expected. A little after 6, Charlie called, yelling to bring the camera ASAP. The first big band of the hurricane was here-

It’s been a touchy few days around here. Hurricane Gustav is eyeing New Orleans up…

over Labor Day. (like Katrina) …

which made Charlie cancel a trip (again)…

while Alison is off at a “retreat.”

In 2005, it was her Freshman retreat. Her class went off for a week to a dude ranch in Texas. She got off the bus laughing and hugging her newfound friends, looking forward to the year. “I never saw a lot of those girls again,” she told me this morning, nervously biting her cheek.

This year it’s her Senior retreat, with those same girls- or at least those who were able come back. They have a strong bond around Katrina, and even though they pointedly don’t like talking about it, there’s no way it’s not a major topic of conversation there this evening.

The adults are giving them the usual reassurances, but it’s hard for these particular kids to take us too seriously; they know firsthand that sometimes things go bad.

Sometimes. Hopefully not this time. That “cone of uncertainty” still has a whole lot of wobble room.

So please, Mother Nature, give us one more pass. Please don’t make us put our levees or our leaders to the test just yet; we’re not real certain of either one.

Gustav, get gone.