Katrina Approaches

Say a prayer for everyone along the central Gulf Coast this morning. My dad has already boarded up, and pulled out. He got into Memphis last night. My aunt and uncle and cousins all plan to ride it out. Dad talked with them this morning and while they are all getting extremely nervous, they don't want to leave. I was nine when Camille hit the Mississippi coast. We were in Houston. My grandmother, aunt & uncle and cousins were in Bay St. Louis. The eye hit Pass Christian and Long Beach, just across the bay. It took us days to find out if everyone was still alive. Three weeks before they would let us in. I can still remember being stunned by miles of trees, all flattened in the same direction. My grandmother had a big house surrounded by pecan trees. Almost everyone of them fell. Miraculously, they all missed the house. You could walk the length and breadth of her large backyard without having to touch the ground. Tree to tree to tree. The only thing that saved them was that the eye hit to their east. For years after Camille, we would drive by one apartment complex that took a direct hit. The only things left were the concrete steps and the foundation. Everything else was gone. The day of the storm, several people held a hurricane party in one of the apartments. Only one person survived, and she was found miles inland. This is going to be a bad one.