This is a log I kept on a laptop from day to day through the storm and after ...\r\n\r\n THE KATRINA LOG\r\n\r\nSunday, August 28, 2005\r\n\r\n All day Riveted to the TV watching the Weather Channel. They are projecting Katrina to head NNE and turn due north somewhere south of N.O. Then the storm is expected to head NE over the Miss. gulf coast and across east Mississippi. We have tanked up all 3 vehicles, loaded extra bags of ice into one of the freezers, picked up some extra canned goods, stockpiled bottled water and plenty of batteries. We have a gas water heater, so if (should say when) the electricity goes out, we will at least be able to take comfortable showers.\r\n\r\n 10:00 pm At bed time, Katrina has turned and is barreling for N.O. holding true to the predicted course. She is a cat 5. Looks like N.O. is going to take a major hit.\r\n\r\nMonday, August 29, 2005\r\n\r\n 3:00 am Awake to check the Weather Channel. Katrina has almost reached landfall in the Mississippi delta of Louisiana. Headed straight for N.O. Expected landfall around 5 am.\r\n\r\n 7:00 am Off to work. It’s already breezy and cloudy. Weather Channel says Katrina is over Plaquemines Parish in La.\r\n\r\n 11:30 am Got numerous things tended to this morning. Pleadings filed and an order signed. The storm is all everyone is talking about. One judge is working. The other has left town. I had a 3-day trial set this morning before the judge who left town, but since the judge is unavailable and the hurricane is coming, I told my client to stay home with her children. \r\n \r\n We are already getting feeder bands with 20-30 mph winds and occasional heavy downpours. My son called around 10:45 to say that a heavy limb had fallen from the huge pine tree in the front yard. I told the secretaries to go on home to be with their families, and I stayed behind at the office to move the copier away from its window.\r\n \r\n At home I hesitated as I turned into the driveway. When I parked under the carport during Hurricane Ivan, my truck was destroyed. But it’s pouring down raining and the wind is blowing, and parking under the carport will give me a dry way into the house. Besides, the odds are against a repeat of the Ivan disaster. That was my thinking, anyway.\r\n\r\n 11:58 am My wife has made a taco salad and is just finishing cooking the meat when the electricity goes out. We know the exact time because when the lights came back on later in the week the oven clock was flashing “11:58.” \r\n\r\n 1:00 pm The wind is coming in heavy gusts. It’s impressive already, and the radio says that the worst won’t reach us until around 3:00 pm. We are in the downstairs den, with the blinds up, watching the trees swaying wildly in the back yard.\r\n\r\n 3:00 pm We are reading, working crossword puzzles, chatting and watching worriedly as the storm gains force. The huge pine trees in the back yard are swaying 5-6 feet from side to side. The ceiling leaked in the studio, probably because the shingles on its roof are peeled up by the strong gusts. Lisa and I spread some plastic over things in there to keep the water off and move some things to the back of the room.\r\n\r\n Around 3:30 pm there is a tremendous crash in the studio, which is the room right next to where we are sitting. Some debris flies through the open door between the studio and the den where we are sitting. The 60-foot red oak that shaded the terrace has crushed the studio, collapsed the carport onto my truck and the Nissan, and damaged the side porch. We decide to move to the basement. Our cat is no where to be found. She had been in and out of the studio earlier, and we are worried sick that she may be under the tree. Land line telephone is out.\r\n\r\n I get on my cell phone and call my sister to tell her about the tree. She says they have no damage so far. I ask her to call a contractor friend to get on his list for repairs/ rebuilding. I then call the local tree man who says I am first to call and he will be there first thing in the morning. Next call to the insurance agent. \r\n\r\n Our home is an old, stone structure built around 1940. There are massive heart-pine timbers in its backbone, and it is a solid, massive building. Nevertheless, the oak tree went through the studio, porches and carport like the proverbial knife through butter.\r\n\r\n 4:00 pm In the basement we can hear occasional thuds and feel the ground tremble as trees fall all around us. The wind is coming in massive, impressive gusts, and the worst has not even gotten here yet. I am convinced that the 8\' x 5\' round-top picture window in the living room will blow out. It is relatively new, a Pella around 4 years old, and is one pane of glass. From time to time, one of us goes upstairs and comes back with a report of more damage around us. Cell phone service is out.\r\n\r\n 5:00 pm Another crash and the house shakes. My wife is upstairs and I run to see what happened. She is okay. We find that another oak tree has fallen on the south side of the house. To our relief, though, we see the cat upstairs, traumatized and hiding under a bed. We head back to the basement. Around 5:30 a 70-foot pine falls onto the fence and driveway at the end of where the carport was located. The wind is blowing so hard that it makes one cringe every time the gusts reach their peak. The trees are swaying in arcs 8-10 feet, and sometimes are twisting around like a giant, invisible hand is trying to unscrew them from the ground. We find serious water leaks in the dining room and put pots under as many as we can. We use almost all of our towels and two comforters to soak up the water. The oriental rug on the floor is getting soaked. Through the evening, my son and I have to empty the pots many times. We find out later that this deluge is due to the fact that the tree on the roof has seriously cracked and broken ceiling joists and roof decking. In the guest room, there is a leak in the ceiling and some new cracks. In the living room, there are stones from the chimney in the fireplace, and cracks in the wall and ceiling and leaks in the ceiling.\r\n\r\n 6:00 pm Through a window in the basement, my wife and son see a giant oak fall onto the neighbor’s house to the south, smashing her kitchen and dining room. She is in a nearby town with her mother. Returning from a trip upstairs, my wife reports that the big oak tree in front of our neighbors’ house across the street has fallen across it, destroying it. They are in there. Radio says that the winds are gusting around 86 mph. From where we sit, it’s hard to believe that it’s not 150. God knows what it would have been like to have been in SE Louisiana. When it rains really hard, the wind is so strong that it atomizes the raindrops so that it looks like a swirling, heavy flood of fog. The sound of the wind is unremitting, a continuous rushing swoosh like the sound of the air swooshing in a subway. \r\n\r\n Cell phone service is now intermittent. Our daughter in Boston and our son in Asheville have been calling, desperate for information, but the cell phone service comes and goes. At one point, Paul was relaying information to and from Aimee. \r\n\r\n 7:00 pm The wind is still blowing hard, but the hardest gusts are becoming farther apart. The radio is reporting that the rain should end by 8:00, but the wind will continue through the night. \r\n\r\n 9:00 pm We are all exhausted. None of us wants to brave the wind to investigate what is happening outside. Off to bed in a warm, but breezy, house.\r\n\r\nTuesday, August 30, 2005\r\n\r\n 6:15 am Clouds are scudding northward across a cloudy sky. There is a light breeze. Outside the devastation is incredible. There are trees down across the streets to the north and the south. Power and utility lines are strewn around the streets, on lawns, and on houses. We count seven trees down in our yard alone, one of which fell in from our neighbor to the east. Fallen leaves and branches are strewn everywhere, carpeting the lawns and streets. There are 14 homes on our block, and four have damage; three serious. There is a tree on the house behind us. This has been one of the old neighborhoods of Meridian, with towering, shady trees that cool your home and allow you to while away the time on your porch. No more. The radio reports this morning that 100% of Mississippi Power customers in Meridian are without power. \r\n \r\n 8:00 am Mark and I are taking digital pics of the damage to our house and cars. Other neighbors are emerging. The neighbors across the street are all right. No injuries in our neighborhood. As I make my way around the back yard snapping photos, I note that two trees are lying on my fence to the north, hanging into my neighbor’s yard. Neither has hit her house, but one stripped limbs from her pecan tree. As the morning passes, the sound of chain saws gradually dominates. The streets are cleared so that we can get out to the main routes. We sit on the porch and marvel at the destruction. It’s senseless to even think about cleanup because the job is overwhelming. We wait patiently for the tree man. I learned last year in Ivan that top priority is getting the tree off the house. While I am in the back yard, a neighbor comes out onto his deck and we compare notes. He has a couple of trees down in his front yard, but none on his house. He is clearing out his freezer to take to his dad’s house, and he has telephone service! he offers use of his phone to call my insurance agent.\r\n\r\n 9:00 am Our contractor arrives and looks over everything. He will secure the back rooms as soon as the oak tree is cleared out of the studio. When I ask him what he thinks it will cost to repair the damage, he says that he would not be surprised if it was around $90,000. \r\n\r\n He gives me a ride around the block to the neighbor with the telephone. On the ride, we both are shocked to see trees on many houses and in the streets. When I return home, my sister and her husband have brought over a pot of Community coffee. They invite us over for an empty-the-freezer dinner of boiled shrimp (they have a gas stove) and grilled sausage and chicken. \r\n\r\n The hummingbirds and butterflies are swarming outside. I mix up a batch of hummingbird nectar and fill the two feeders. For the next several days our best entertainment will be watching the dozen or so hummingbirds fighting over the feeders.\r\n\r\n 10:00 am My truck is trapped under the carport, which is under the oak tree. My son’s car is under there also. I take Lisa’s car and head for my office to check it out. There is no way to get there from here. Ordinarily the 8-block trip north is a direct, three-minute jaunt, but not today. I head south because there are trees blocking the next blocks north. I turn the corner westward and have to pass slowly beneath dangling power lines. Then turn north and weave around limbs in the street. Eventually at the office, I find trees down all around, but not at my place. Inside all is well, but there is no power.\r\n\r\n 12:00 pm The rector of our church drops by and is astonished at the destruction. he tells me that 4 Episcopal churches on the coast have been totally obliterated, and 2 more have not been heard from. We have 6 families in our church who have had trees fall on their houses. \r\n\r\n 1:30 pm Still no tree man. The clouds have scooted northward to cast their misery on someone else. The sun is out and it is turning miserably hot. We are hot, tired, bewildered and discouraged. If you’ve never been through this before, you have to understand that as long as no recovery work is going on at your house, your discouragement grows.\r\n\r\n Most everyone in the neighborhood is solicitous toward each other. There is one notable exception. Our neighbor to the north lives in Mobile and comes periodically to stay in this house next door. Why she came to Meridian for this storm is beyond comprehension, considering that every forecast from last Saturday through Monday put us right in the storm’s bull’s eye. She has complained to everyone who will listen that it was our tree that fell in her yard and what an inconvenience it is to her. She wants it out now so that she can return immediately to Mobile. Others with trees in their yards are asking tree workers to get first to the trees on people’s houses. Later in the week she interrupts our tree man to get him to do her work, but he gives her an excuse, telling us later that he didn’t really like her and figured she would be more trouble than she would be worth. She doesn’t ask about or express concern for anyone else’s troubles in the four damaged houses. We wish she would sell her house to someone more human and go somewhere else. \r\n\r\n 2:30 pm Up walks a tree man from Greensboro, NC. Yes, I would like an estimate. He surveys the scene, does some arithmetic and gives me a very reasonable offer. Forget the local guy; he said he would be here first thing, and he did not show. So I tell the NC guy to add to the estimate that he will start work tomorrow, and I will sign his contract. He does, and we have a deal. There’s plenty of work to be done in Meridian. We enlist 2 of the tree guys to come inside and help us move the heavy dining room table into the living room so that we can take the soaked oriental rug outside to dry. This little event becomes significant tomorrow. \r\n\r\n 3:00 pm My son and I go to my sister’s house for the clean-out-the-freezer dinner.. Lisa wants to stay with the house because there is no security and it is open to the outside. On our route, Mark and I take a tour around the north end of town. Damage everywhere. Many, many homes with trees in them. Many, many trees down in the streets and in yards. Shattered utility poles and wires and lines down everywhere. Some streets are impassible because there are piles of lines, transformers and connectors blocking the way. At some points you have to slowly squeeze your car underneath low-hanging wires. At other points you go around wires overhead stretched to their limit by trees leaning on them. At my sister’s we have a hearty meal. Cell phone service is coming back, spotty and weak. Radio says we are under a dusk to dawn curfew. Also, we are asked to conserve water. If power is not restored to the north water plant within 48 hours, we will be under a boil water notice.\r\n\r\n 6:00 pm We return home with a plate for my wife and learn that the local tree guy did come by around 4:00 pm. Not exactly “first thing in the morning.” Lisa tells him we have someone else to do the job and he leaves. When it turns dark we head for bed. Not much to do with no power.\r\n\r\n One thing I do that I have never done before. I send my son down to the gun closet, where my hunting guns are kept, to bring up my Remington .12 ga. and a bag of shells. I load it up and put it close at hand. I direct him to do the same with one of my other shotguns downstairs. With no reliable way to contact police in an emergency, and only an antique, beveled-glass door between us and the street, we have to protect ourselves. \r\n\r\nWednesday, August 31, 2005\r\n\r\n 7:00 am We are hearing reports of long lines at gas stations. As of this morning, power has been restored downtown. Land line telephone service magically reappears.\r\n\r\n 9:00 am Radio says that grocery stores are open, so I set out in my wife’s car to get some breakfast food, which we seldom have in our fridge. This becomes quite an adventure. I head for the supermarket on the north side of town, which is usually a 5-minute trip, but it takes me 20 due to all the detours. When I arrive, there is a sign on the door that says, “STORE CLOSED.” So I head east for another store, only to find a massive traffic jam on North Hills St. due to tree work. I take a side street south only to get behind a 90-year-old geezer in a pickup doing no more than 5 mph and gawking at all the damage. He is weaving from side so that I can’t pass him. At Country Club he stops and begins backing up because there is a low power line. I slam my car into reverse and try to get out of his way, but my wheels spin on the wet leaves and debris, and he bumps into me. No damage, but I heatedly tell him to get his ass in gear and go home; he has no business out on the road. A friend is behind me in his Tahoe laughing at the whole scene. Back on the circuitous route to Winn-Dixie. I decide to head to the store at Eastgate, since the one on 39 is so hard to reach with all the trees down. There I find them on generator power, and no refrigerated items are for sale. All the fridge boxes and freezers are emptied. So much for eggs. Back at the car I turn the key and nothing happens. The battery is dead, I call my sister and she makes a few calls. Her husband is at work, but she gets another friend to come out. We try to jump it off, but the battery is so dead that it won’t take a charge. Fortunately there is an open auto parts store next door to Winn-Dixie. They can only accept cash. I sort through my wallet and find that I have three dollars more than they need for the battery. We install a new battery and I am off for home. Cell phone service is improving, but people tell us that they keep getting busy signals on a lot of calls. \r\n\r\n 10:30 am A friend calls to report that he and his wife are okay in Ocean Springs. They rode out the storm at his condo in Oxford. Tuesday morning they packed up and headed home, fully expecting the route to be blocked with debris and roadblocks. Instead, they zipped right through non-stop and arrived home to find no damage to their house. They have no power or water. He says that they know of 9 dead in his subdivision. \r\n\r\n 11:30 am My cousin calls from southwest Louisiana. We had planned a big cousins’ reunion and 96th birthday party for our grandmother on Saturday, but it is cancelled due to the storm. He said that he had been calling all of us in Meridian since Monday, getting nothing but busy signals, until I fortuitously answered.\r\n\r\n 1:30 pm Tree men are here and begin getting the tree off the carport and studio. They work very quickly. \r\n\r\n 4:00 pm My truck and the Nissan are driven up to the street. Lots of body damage to both vehicles, and the cab of my truck is squashed down but there doesn’t appear to be any damage that can not be fixed. \r\n\r\n 5:00 pm Our son arrives from North Carolina. He has brought a generator and some supplies. The generator goes into action powering fans, the refrigerator and one of the freezers. Dusk to dawn curfew again tonight.\r\n\r\n 8:00 pm We are sitting on the front porch when we hear a loud thud and feel the house shake. We run inside to find that the ceiling in the dining room has collapsed. There is a ton of blown-in insulation on the floor, in the windows, on the remaining furniture. Apparently the weight of the wet insulation was too much for the plaster ceiling to support. Underneath all of that gooey mess are almost all of our towels and two comforters that we had used to sop up the water. One more calamity to deal with.\r\n\r\n 10:00 pm Off to bed. I need to mention all the people who have come by and brought food, offered a place to stay, called, visited, offered to run errands and sympathized. My sisters here have been a great help. The neighbors have been super. A hurricane sends you out onto your porch, out of the customary air conditioning, and makes it easier for people to stop by and visit or walk across the street to sit down and talk. \r\n\r\nThursday, September 1, 2005\r\n\r\n 8:00 am The tree crew is getting the tree off of the south side of the house. They got the north side cleared late yesterday to the extent that we can reattach the power line to the house. \r\n\r\n 9:00 am Our son sets out to get gas for the generator and comes back with some after a long wait in line. We are beginning to realize that it’s going to be a challenge to keep up with the most basic supplies. \r\n\r\n 12:00 pm Our younger son leaves for Boston. He is starting school in a few days and needs to leave. He is driving my wife’s car loaded with his gear and musical instruments. Our daughter who lives in Boston will have the car. We feed the tree guys barbecue on buns that we rescued from our freezer.\r\n\r\n 12:45 pm Mark calls from near Eutaw, AL and says, “The cavalry is on the way!” He is seeing long convoys of power trucks and busses full of national guard headed south.\r\n \r\n 2:00 pm A crew from a cleanup firm arrives to clean up and bag all of the insulation, including all of our towels and the comforters. They will also pull down the rest of the plaster ceiling. This becomes a huge mess, as the dust gets everywhere. The crew hauls all of the debris outside and deposits it on my front lawn. When I question them they say they are leaving it for the contractor. I call their supervisor and tell him to get a truck over here to get his 22 filled garbage bags and assorted other debris out of my front yard.\r\n\r\n The tree is off our roof. The crew sets out to get the tree off of a neighbor’s house behind ours. Curfew tonight is 11pm to 7 am.\r\n\r\n 5:30 pm Paul and I go to Nick’s, a local bar and bookie joint, to see the news. It’s the first and only tv I’ve been able to see since Monday. The situation in New Orleans is desperate and the devastation on the coast is unimaginable. \r\nFriday, September 2, 2005\r\n\r\n 9:00 am Our son is off to get gas. A neighbor down the street has been bringing us a 5-gallon canful now and then. He is a big help and will take no payment for the gas, despite the fact that he is paying nearly $3 per gallon for it. Power has been restored to the north water plant, so we are free from the request to conserve water. \r\n \r\n 10:00 am The tree crew has been working on the tree the fell into the home of our neighbors across the street. An adjuster arrives and tells them to stop because the house is going to be totalled. They move on to another job. Later our contractor tells us that the wife across the street is upset because the tree is blocking access to all their clothes, which they need. Not to worry, he tells her, we will simply saw a hole in the wall from the outside and get what you need. So what if we damage the house.\r\n\r\n 11:00 am My wife and I take the vehicles to New South Ford. they are reassuring that the damage to my truck will be easily reparable. I leave it with him and ask him to work up an estimate on the Nissan, which we can not leave, as it is our only car for right now. I won’t get a rental until next week, so as to have it the most number of days possible during repair. \r\n\r\n 1:00 pm The electrician arrives and rebuilds the power mast to the house. This is significant, because it puts us in a position to get power right away when our street gets it. \r\n\r\n 2:00 pm The cleanup truck arrives and hauls off all the dining room debris.\r\n\r\n 5:00 pm This has been a relatively uneventful day. More and more people have power. We learn that our area is one of the hardest hit in town, and that it may take us a while to get power.\r\n\r\n 9:00 pm We have spent an evening typical of this event. We heat some food from the refrigerator in the microwave, courtesy of the magnificent generator, have a drink or 2 or 3, sit and talk, the radio providing a constant backdrop. It’s our only connection with the world at large.\r\n\r\n 12:00 am Paul is out in the front yard with his golden retriever when a police car pulls up. They pay no heed to him. They are flashing lights around the now-vacant home of the neighbors across the street, checking it out, when they hear a vehicle on 36th St. They tear out after it, blue lights flashing, and our son watches the lights go up Poplar Springs Drive. They seem to be serious about this curfew business.\r\n\r\nSaturday, September 3, 2005\r\n\r\n 9:00 am Son is again out scavenging for gas. What a lifesaver he has been. It’s been fun having his dog here, too. My wife is taking her to the vet this morning to have a cyst on her chest checked out. I empty the one of the freezers, which has now thawed enough to empty. The contents are pretty ripe. Paul hauls them off in his truck to a garbage collection point. We have had no garbage collection at home since the streets are so full of debris, but you can take your garbage to a collection point. \r\n\r\n 10:00 am Our contractor tells us that building supplies are almost non-existent. Fuel is so hard to come by that the freight haulers don’t want to come to Meridian for fear that they won’t be able to get back to where the came from. He says that he went to one gas station and there was a $30 limit on gas at $2.95 per gallon. The cashier offered to let him buy more if he would give her a “little something extra.” No thanks. He headed to the north end of town and found gas at $2.55. He said that his banker called him to let him know that the big gas dealers in town are saying that FEMA has commandeered the pipeline terminal here for shipment to the coast, and that the gas in the ground will be all we have until some time after next week.\r\n\r\n The contractor and I look at the damage in the dining room and discover that the ceiling joists and roof decking are broken and damaged. No wonder the roof was leaking. \r\n\r\n 11:00 am My wife returns from the vet with our son’s dog, who will have to have surgery to remove the cyst next week. Poor girl. \r\n \r\n 12:00 pm Power and tree crews are up the street from us. The sound of chain saws and heavy machinery has serenaded us from early morning to early evening every day since the storm. A neighbor tells us later in the day that they told her that the power crews told her that they aren’t leaving today until we have power. We are noticing that people are pulling up to the power workers in their cars, opening their trunks and giving them food and cold water from ice chests. This has happened several times that I have observed. Everybody who talks with the power workers thanks them profusely for coming down here to help us. We have offered the crews coffee, and they graciously thank us but get on with their work. \r\n\r\n 5:00 pm We try to rescue a few items from the studio. We are able to get the teak table, a piece of pottery, my wife’s portable easel that she purchased in Paris, and her stand-up easel. There are some of her canvases and paintings pinned in there, but we will need some help to get them out. Ironically, a statue of Buddah still stares down serenely and undisturbed over the destruction from his niche in the chimney.\r\n\r\n 5:30 pm A tree crew from Virginia stops by to let us know that there is a bad gas leak at the house of our neighbor to the south. The leak is big enough that you can hear the hiss of it escaping and smell the odor twenty feet away. We try unsuccessfully to reach her by phone, so I call the gas company. \r\n\r\n 6:00 pm As the power crews work closer, it occurs to me that our electrician never checked out all the wires torn loose in the studio. I call his partner and he tells me to cut off all the breakers until they can come take a look tomorrow morning.\r\n\r\n My younger son calls to say that he has arrived in Boston.\r\n\r\n 6:30 pm The gas men have to dig below the neighbor’s meter and patch the gas line coming into the meter. The force of the tree damaged it, causing a dangerous leak.\r\n\r\n 7:00 pm Two power workers drop by after taking photos of the house across the street. They are part of a crew from Delaware and Maryland, and they have heavy eastern Shore accents. They commiserate with us about all the damage here and they get pics of our house. They are saying that Meridian had sustained 85 mph winds for about 3 hours, and gusts up to 100+. They tell us that they are having a lot of trouble getting fuel. They also say that there were two truckloads of food for emergency workers that came into Meridian, but FEMA confiscated them and sent them south to New Orleans. That is how drastic things have become. They tell us that they have run out of time today to get our power restored, since Mississippi Power won’t let them work after dark, and they will be back tomorrow morning. We should have power tomorrow morning.\r\n\r\n 9:30 pm This has been a lost week. It occurs to me that although we have spent an inordinate amount of time just sitting around, we have also devoted many hours to basic tasks: preparing and eating food; filling the generator; cleaning up; moving limbs and debris; taking showers; making calls; running errands. No income-producing activity by either of us. A law office without power is inoperable. I will definitely pay my secretaries for the week, though. Our situation has been difficult, but it is infinitesimally insignificant compared to the suffering and utter annihilation on the coast and in New Orleans. The days have been scorchingly hot, so much so that we are forced indoors from about 2-5:30 to escape the heat. So many of our shade trees are now on the ground or on our houses that the leafy shade that used to shield us from the mid-day and afternoon sun is no more. But the nights have been blessedly, unseasonably cool, with temperatures in the low 60\'s. \r\n\r\nSunday, September 4, 2005\r\n\r\n 5:30 am I call FEMA and put in an application. Not sure what good this will do, but everybody and his brother has recommended it, so I do. The whole process takes about 20 minutes, with lots of questions and information. At one point the guy on the other end of the line starts telling me that if I have a large casualty loss, the IRS will help me and he starts to give me a toll-free number to call. I interrupt him and say, “Thank you, but you can fast forward past that information. I have dealt with the IRS before, and I know that they are definitely not there to help me.” He laughs heartily and says, “Smart man. Yeah, you’re right. We’ll skip that.”\r\n\r\n Weeks later a FEMA representative came to our house and surveyed the damage, which she told us was considerable compared to what she had seen. She told us not to expect any help from FEMA if we have insurance, which we do. I asked her why they encouraged everyone to file a FEMA application, and she shrugged her shoulders, pointing out that very few should expect any help from the agency. Her visit ended my involvement with the agency. I am looking to insurance to protect me from losses.\r\n\r\n 7:30 am Our electrician calls to say he is on his way. \r\n\r\n 8:00 am Four bucket trucks arrive and one is down the driveway to reconnect us to the street. Power is on its way. It’s as miraculous to us as the cavalry riding to the rescue. \r\n\r\n 8:55 am The power line is reconnected to the house, but Dusty has just now arrived and isn’t through with his work. Our son tells us that he heard in town last night that they are planning to place 10-20,000 evacuees at the old closed shopping mall and K-Mart. If that’s true, or even partially true, it’s puzzling to me. I know these people are in dire straits, but I wonder how we are going to feed, employ, school and provide water and other services to a populace that would equal 25% - 50% of our population. And we are hard-hit ourselves, with our own problems to address. Then it occurs to me that the rumor mill is hard at work, and I am sure we will hear all sorts of imaginative developments. \r\n\r\n 9:10 am The power trucks are pulling away. They tell us we have power whenever we are ready for it.\r\n\r\n 9:20 am The electrician is through and he has us powered up. My son and I disconnect all of the many extension cords throughout the house, reconnect the refrigerator and freezer, and shut down the generator. We are step by step re-approaching civilization..\r\n\r\n Let the rebuilding begin.