Ok- My family and I are displaced because of Katrina. Saturday night/Sunday morning I made the decision to evacuate. At 12:30AM I threw on about three t-shirts and six pairs of panties in a bag, loaded my grandmother into the passenger side of the Mazda and drove out. We ended up in a Motel 6 in Port Allen, LA where we've been ever since. After a lot of cussing and fussing, my parents caught up to us the following afternoon. So we've been holed up together through the storm.
From what I can gather on the news and radio, it's pretty good odds my grandmother has lost everything. Her house is about three blocks from Tennessee Street--though I don't know where the levee breach was. I see all these houses in the Lower Ninth Ward...well, I see their rooftops. Eventually, I let her see the news reports. She hasn't asked any details or commented, so we haven't pressed it. I didn't want her to be shocked though, so we stopped trying to shield her from the coverage.
As for our house...who knows? We live in New Orleans East and took a very hard hit. I have no idea what the scene is. If you hear anything about my neighborhood, please post a comment. We live in zip code 70127 and right off Morrison Avenue between Crowder and Read.
My cell phone is unreliable at best, so I haven't been able to call people. But thanks for your messages. Every once in while I can retrieve my voice mail.
I forwarded all my email to my yahoo account, so I should get those eventually.
It may take awhile for me to post again because I don't have a reliable Internet connection/access. But I wanted to let everyone know that we have our lives and our health and each other.