Riding out Gustav in Baton Rouge
This is part 2 of a series of articles about preparing for a hurricane, riding out the storm, and dealing with the aftermath. If you missed part 1 you can click on this link and read it: How to prepare for a hurricane. There are a lot of details about preparing that make the aftermath easier and the first article discusses those preparations in detail.
Riding Out The Storm
The first thing you go through if you’re riding out a hurricane (called sheltering in place) is the storm itself. The wind is howling, it is raining horizontally, the trees around you are losing huge branches, the trees are being snapped in half like tooth picks or uprooted. The light poles are being snapped like twigs and the wires on them wrap around the pole or around adjoining trees.
The power goes out. Sometimes the phone and cable go out before the power. Large trees fall on houses (occasionally killing the inhabitants as happened in Baton Rouge in Pollard Estates), across streets and into yards. Traffic lights stop working as does everything that depends on electricity.
You hear strange creaking you may never have heard before and you hear it every time something hits your house with force. You hear the limbs on the trees crack, break and hit the ground over the howling wind. You hear the trees creak as the wind strains them, and you hear them snap or uproot. It’s very frightening because you don’t know where everything is coming from or falling. You don’t know if it’s coming for you.
The storm rages for 8-18 hours depending on your proximity to the eye, the speed the storm is moving, which side of the storm you are on, and how large the storm is.
There is no refrigeration, lights, anything of modern life left. Storms take modern existence away in a matter of hours and bring considerable anxiety with the uncertainty of when the electricity will come back on, when you will get all the clean-up done or when you will be able to go back to your house if you had to evacuate.
You don’t know how damaged the local infrastructure is, when the stores will reopen or when schools will go back in session. You don’t know if you still have a business or job to go to or when you will be allowed or able to return to work. You don’t know where your next much-needed bags of ice will come from or how you will get to them.
You turn on the radio to listen to the latest information available and find out just how bad the storm is and whether the water is safe to drink.
As soon as the winds die down you go outside to see if your house has sustained any damage. Count yourself very lucky if there is no damage because most insurance hurricane deductibles are 2%-5% of the replacement value of the house. You’re on your own to pay for minor damage. My own hurricane deductible is $7600.
When we went out at first, our neighborhood looked like a war zone. There was so much destruction everywhere we looked. We were so blessed to not have any damage because more than a few of our neighbors had some very major damage. Short walks up and down our street revealed trees, downed power lines and light poles blocking both ends and getting around them should we need to drive out would be difficult. Once we got off our own street, there was no telling how many more obstacles we would meet. We didn’t need to go anywhere until Wednesday after the storm hit on Monday. We needed ice.
We usually don’t have to worry about water contamination here unless a water main is breached. Our water comes from a 1000 ft deep aquifer and the water company has emergency generators to run both the water system and the sewer system. Areas likely to suffer water contamination or have no sewer service are typically evacuated ahead of the storm. Staying in those areas is not safe.
Distribution locations of emergency supplies are broadcast as soon as the Office of Emergency Preparedness releases them on the air. Then you know where to get ice.
If you were properly prepared for the storm, you don’t have to go out for 3 days.
In part 3 of this series I’ll describe the early aftermath of Hurricane Gustav and the difficulties of living without electricity. You can go to that article directly here: Hurricane Gustav Aftermath Begins.
Posted on October 6th, 2008 by Sherri
Filed under: Gustav
That is crazy!
@rahab monster: what’s crazy?