Patrick_Pegues's Blog

I sent my family (parents and others since not married) to Auburn while I stayed here and lost electric for 8 days. Not fun. I had a generator to run my Refig and a small AC. The next one we lost power for 5 days and the third 12 hours. We lost my Mom Sept 16th to cancer so my Complaint Department closed forever. And then seeing Katrina, I havnt complained since then.

I lived through several hurricanes all the way back to Donna. Just another big wind storm with alot of rain that clears out alot of unwanted garbage.

With my first paycheck of the school year (teacher), I went to the store, spent $500.00 on groceries. When I left the house, we were not going to have a hurricane. Because my car radio did not work, I found out when I got home and my husband was boarding the windows. He had a fit when he saw all that food!! None went to waste. Got out the old cajun boiling pot, boiled shrimp, cooked forever, got down the old drip coffee pot, camp stove. And fed the neighborhood. LOL I'm from south Louisiana so we know how to handle the excess food. That night, we even fed the guys who were working on the sewer pump station. They hadn't eaten anything substantial for 18 hours...everything closed. AND we had plenty of beer...LOL

My daughter's and I huddled together in a central bedroom, alone, because my husband, who was a Deputy Sheriff at the time, got called in to work at one of the shelters. The howling winds, that sounded louder than any freight train I've ever heard. It was deafening. I could "feel" the suction of the roof being pulled up and the sound was like nothing I'd ever heard before. Thank God it held. We had $50,000.00 in property damage. 40-50, 75ft-100ft Water Oaks, Live Oaks and Pine Trees on the ground, on our fences, on our barn, on our house, on our dog pens. Hours, days, months, and years of recovering. The loss of our fern business, due to the loss of the trees as shade. (we're now in the cattle business) Hundreds, yes hundreds, of Water Moccasins in our pastures due to the flooding, no electricity for 2 weeks, breaking chainsaw after chainsaw, the never ending sound of generators and heavy equipment. The mosquitoes! It was a nightmare I'd rather not relive!

Charlie was the very first hurricane that I've ever experienced, so naturally, it was also the scariest one. I've dealt with gale-force winds before, during my deployment to Iceland, but winds over there don't normally come with torrential rains and threats of tornadoes!

I'm pretty much just huddled in the apartment, no power, no lights, and a battery powered walkman to keep up with the news, listening to the wind howl and hearing things tumble down the street occasionally, like the stoplights. I did see a couple of brain dead people riding their bikes in the storm across the street from me. After it was over, there was debris all over the place.

When Jean hit, I was still nervous, but got over it after a few hours. By the time Francis rolled around (and went on and on and on), I was just irritated. Francis caused the least damage in my area, but that was probably because there was just nothing left to knock down.

Opp's, never mind, it wasn't a hurricane, it was a tornado in Kansas..But it still was very scary.