Countdown to 30: Day 12

(Hurricane Katrina cont.) On Monday around noon, I started dialing the phone. Suprisingly, after about an hour, I was able to reach someone at one of the homes. Within two hours, I had made contact with those in the homes near the Center that I had numbers for. There was wind damage, including a tree that had fallen in on one of the homes. There was no electricity, which was to be expected since the wires are above ground in that part of town. Everything else seemed to be alright. I made sure that each home had my cell phone number, and I let them know that cell phones with New Orleans numbers were not working except to call out so they needed to check in with me.

As the afternoon wore on, it became apparent that the city was flooding very rapidly. The people in the neighborhood had no way to watch the flooding on TV. My new mission was to inform each of the homes that they needed to find a way out of the city because the flooding was quickly approaching their part of town. Landlines stopped working because most of the phones were handhelds and only lasted as long as the charge. One home in the neighborhood had an old phone that did not plug into an electrical outlet, and I could still contact them. I just had to hope, pray, and wait to hear from the other families. Rumors were running rampant. Looting was occuring. It was a mess!

On Tuesday, there was only one family in the neighborhood that I could reach. The water was still rising and they were starting to panic a little. They did not want to leave their house because they were supposed to be getting kicked out by the owner soon and did not want to risk losing everything. They had stories of others leaving or rumored to leave. I watched coverage on TV all day long (and was really tired of seeing this one guy that they showed over and over and over and over loading the same ice chest into the back of his car). I actually saw the rescue of one family that we knew on TV, but they kept showing the guy loading his ice chest instead of showing the clip again. I watched for hours trying to see the clip again. I also watched to see who else I would know rescued. It was tough!