THE END OF HURRICANE BLOGGING AT REAL ART

Until another one comes along, that is.

So we lost power here about thirty minutes after I managed to get Friday's post up and we didn't get it back until yesterday afternoon. Needless to say, it was a sucky couple of nights. I know; I know: numerous individuals had it way worse than we did. East Texas got hit quite hard, as did southwest Louisiana. Even though the death toll from the storm itself was quite low, with a Mississippi man dying when a tornado overturned his mobile home, and a Texas man dying after being hit by a tree, there have been several deaths associated with the storm, like the tragic fire aboard an evacuating bus filled with elderly people from Houston, or the heat exhaustion death of a disabled girl stuck in evacuation traffic, or the horrible carbon monoxide deaths of five from a generator inside an apartment in Beaumont. Hell, the evacuation itself was a major hardship for hundreds of thousands, and we most certainly didn't have to deal with that. This time. But as my buddy Lex has observed, as relatively insignificant as my problems were, they were my problems--nobody had to deal with them but me.

And let me tell you, once Becky fell asleep, and I moved into my daily night owl thing, it sucked. The heat was bad, but I now know why, for most of human history, people slept at night instead of the day: with nothing but a candle and lame-ass radio stations to keep me company, I was bored out of my mind. I know Abraham Lincoln was great and all that, but there was no way I was going to try to blast out my eyes reading by candlelight.

It's all very ironic that I spent a few days worried sick about Houston being blasted to hell, and then, come to find out, we got hit here in Baton Rouge worse than most of my hometown did. Granted, Houston metro areas near the coast were pounded pretty hard--the town where I used to teach, Baytown, ended up without power or water. But it's still quite a twist.

So what happened? From the Houston Chronicle:

High pressure pushed Rita away from the
most dangerous paths for Houston area

Forecasters had thought the high pressure system dominating Texas — a common summer feature that yields warm, clear days and droughts — would weaken, allowing Rita to come storming through Texas.

But the state's high pressure system was butted up against another such system along the upper Gulf Coast, stretching across the southeastern United States.

That high pressure system turned out to be the one that weakened, steering Rita away from the middle of Texas' coast toward Louisiana.

"The Texas high just didn't weaken as anticipated," said Jill Hasling, president of Houston's Weather Research Center. "We got lucky."

Click here for the rest.

The rest of the article observes just how bad it was going to be if the original forecast had proven correct, which is why the decision that so many people made to evacuate was such a good call, even though most everything turned out all right, as far as life and death is concerned. I’m pretty amazed, in fact, by the mass exodus: my early guess is that so many people were freaked out by Katrina, and this includes me and my dad, that they decided not to fuck around. Quite a good thing, if you ask me.

Another good thing is that my favorite city, Katrina ravaged New Orleans, is in better shape than originally believed. From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

Corps: N.O. may be dry again sooner than expected

Areas of the city newly flooded by Hurricane Rita could be pumped dry again within a week after levee damage is repaired, far sooner than initially predicted, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spokesman said today.

Workers dumped rock and sandbags into breaches in the city's Industrial Canal throughout the night and were expected to complete the repair Sunday, said Mitch Frazier, a spokesman for the corps.

The storm surge created by Rita eroded repairs made after Hurricane Katrina and sent water surging back into the already devastated Ninth Ward. Once the breach is closed, engineers now believe the area could be dry in a week, Frazier said.

Federal officials had said Saturday it would take two to three weeks to pump out the water delivered by Rita.

Click here for the rest.

And now some pics.

Like I said, Baton Rouge got hit harder than expected, with winds clocking near forty miles per hour along with around nine inches of rain, a rather nasty tropical storm effect. There was some flooding, like in our backyard:



Yes, Louisiana's newest marsh, our backyard.



Uh, the boat belongs to the guy next door. It's not here to rescue us--really, it wasn't that bad, at least, not here. Actually, things were somewhat worse way down the street:



And one block over, way down the street:



But we didn't have to deal with that. Like I said, not that bad. What was bad, however, was the psychological torment the electric company put us through. As I said above, we, like tens of thousands of other people in Baton Rouge, lost power the night Rita hit. But, the next day, the hard working men of Entergy showed up down the street to do their thing:



Unfortunately, their "thing" was to restore power for only the people at the end of the street, and not us or our neighbors.

Were these other guys going to help us out?



Hell, no! What about these guys over here?



'Fraid not.

So we got to spend Saturday night in 90 degree heat and darkness, and could look out the window at the houses down the street with all their fancy light and air conditioning. Torment!

Remember how I've written about the six cats from New Orleans that we're sheltering on our screened-in back porch? Well, we had been keeping the back door shut in order to keep the alien kitties from mingling with our own three cats inside the house, but the heat was so intense, that I just had to say "what the hell" and open it up to try to get a cross breeze going. Two of the youngest ones, Kali and Gaia, managed to snake their way through the screen door and went wild:



Our three cats simply looked on, perplexed. Fortunately, there were no fights, just some errant hissing.

Out of all the minor annoyances did come one really nice event: they finally managed to come and pick up the debris left over from the previous hurricane.



Given the makeshift nature of this heavy trash unit, it's clear that the reason it's taken three weeks for them to come is that their resources have been stretched to the max. I'm grateful that they finally made it.

At last, life is returning to normal.

And now, the final word on Hurricane Rita, from my pal Mike over at This is not a compliment, who stayed in Houston during the storm, in weird ee cummings poetic form:

the tequila

the tequila
would like
me to tell you
we played chicken
with God
and we won.

'Nuff said.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$