Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 September 2008 04:20:30
We rolled our caravan of two cars and two trucks into Brookhaven, Mississippi, as darkness was falling, the Sunday night before Hurricane Gustav fell upon the coast of Louisiana. The others poured out of the vehicles to stretch their legs and walk the two dogs while I called the emergency information number. There wasn't a hotel room to be found south of Missouri, we knew, so we weren't even thinking that way. We wanted to take shelter with any reasonable place that'd have us all.
A United Way worker manning the call center provided us with the two or three Red Cross shelters in town. A Baptist and a Presbyterian church had space, and helpers, and the Red Cross was sponsoring shelters there, I heard.
I dialed. The Presbyterians didn't answer, and First Baptist was full up; they referred me to Central Baptist, set to open up when First was full.
We snagged the last six slots. There was no provision for pets, but we had expected to keep ours kenneled, the six of us taking them out for exercise and "The Potty Run". This was OK with the church, so we headed for Central Baptist.
There wasn't the ragged exhaustion and high-level worry at that little church gymnasium, not to the degree I experienced it when we fled Katrina. Then, we landed at a Red Cross shelter in a university gymnasium -- awfully similar situation, but many of our fellow Katrina evacuees had fled New Orleans proper, running from the storm herself.
There was a particularly anguished atmosphere there. Folks who'd heard preliminary reports that the storm hadn't done much, folks who'd dared to feel some relief and hope, saw TV weathercasters, standing on upper floors and highway ramps, reporting the new disaster, the flowing mounting crashing flooding, as the levees breached.
With Hurricane Gustav, of course people were worried -- but that particularly poignant twist-of-the-knife loss, felt by New Orleanians during Katrina, never materialized. Thank God.
We were an eclectic bunch, the Gustav castaways at Central Baptist Church. Some of the earlier arrivals had a choice of classroom space, which was probably a great blessing to them, helping them keep a close eye and a closed door on those toddlers and preschoolers. Turned out great for me, too! The older I get, the less patience I have for The Young. I swear I'm getting crotchety and curmudgeonly.
The families staying out in the gymnasium were given large dividers, rather like big rolling chalkboards, to create a little bit of privacy and an illusion of... normalcy? These had been used for Vacation Bible Schools I'm sure, considering all the scenes painted on them. It was rather like having a big picture window with a terrific view in your living room.
More later...