Some Post-Rita Thoughts

We are far enough inland that we rarely have to tangle with hurricanes. Katrina showed that they can truly do some damage as they move inland -- Jackson MS is only about three hours to the east of us. There was plenty of Katrina left over after New Orleans to deal some pain in Jackson and northward.

This weekend was our turn. Like everyone, we frequently looked at the projected storm track on the internet, watched the developing land fall on TV and all.

The winds were gusty Friday afternoon and you could go out and observe the sweep of the outer bands of Rita overhead. Saturday morning we woke to even stonger winds and rain. I was the "on call" person for our network and desktop group. This includes the email servers. I got a call that our mail gateway was not responding at about 8:30 a.m. After attempting to revive it remotely, I got in the car to make the 30 minute drive to the office.

That was a drive through gusty wind and sometimes torrential rain. I got the problem resolved and headed home. About noon, I got a call from a retail division guy who was headed to South Texas to clean up our retail stores after the hurricane. He was leaving Sunday morning and had some crippling issues with his laptop. I agreed to meet him at the office at 3:oo p.m.

I had promised Cindy that I would grill her a steak, so I rolled out the gas grill and fired it up under our back patio cover. At 1:00 p.m., the power went out. Given the deteriorating weather conditions, it was hard to know how long we would have to deal with it. We opened as many windows as we could and let the moist breeze blow through the house. Not so bad at that time.

I made the trip to the office again at 3:00 p.m. and after doing my duty there, I went to pick up some "no preparation needed" edibles, batteries and other things that we might need if the power was off any length of time. By the time I finished shopping it was getting pretty harsh. I made it home safely and we settled in for a candelight evening. We called the energy company numerous time through the evening in hopes that we would get power restored, but the recording said there was widespread damage and no estimate as to how soon. The cool moist wind made sleeping fairly easy through the night. We got about 4.5" of rain Saturday.

Sunday was a lot less "fun". It was warmer, much more humid and not any significant wind. I went to the local store and bought bags of ice to try to keep the freezer and refrigerator cold. We went to church in the country -- also without electricity. I bought more ice, but we seemed to be fighting a losing battle. My brother-in-law loaned us a spare generator, but we couldn't get it to work properly, so we had to empty our fridge and freezer and take the stuff to their home -- which was being entirely powered by generator.

Through all this, it was a hot, humid, sweaty mess. This was definitely no fun. I was beginning to empathize much more with those souls in New Orleans who went for days before getting help. I found that I am not a very good sufferer. You can think about it, talk about it and all. Until you have a situation to test the mettle of your character, you really don't know.

Thank God, at 5:00 p.m. Sunday -- 28 hours after it went off -- the power was restored. I hope I learned some valuable things through it all.

More Hurricane Surreality

My company has been very severely affected by Katrina, as many have. It will be months before our New Orleans offices and facilities are operable. Most of our NOLA operations have been moved to Lafayette, LA or Houston, TX or Dallas TX. Some have moved in with us at our South Arkansas headquarters.

It has been utter chaos, from an Information Technology perspective, getting all these folks back in operation. Most of the hundreds of displaced employees had to leave their PCs behind in now uninhabited facilities. We have had to provide replacements and bring replacement servers up to accomodate their domains.

Now we have Rita! Our Houston offices are evacuated and headed north. We may have to do it all over again for those folks. The NOLA people who headed to the Houston area are now having to evacuate again!

What is even more surreal... I watched the whole Katrina thing unfold and there were hurricane force winds as far up as Jackson, MS... pretty far inland. The latest storm tracks for Rita could have it doing the same thing toward us! Someone said we could have 70 mph winds and rain this weekend. So... I watch even more intently.

Being a Statistic... The Dubious Honor

Several weeks ago... around Labor Day... we had one of our not too infrequent power outages caused by a severe thunderstorm. It was night, we had the windows open, but the air was not moving through the bedroom enough to go to sleep comfortably. So, I got up... several times.

To keep cooler, and to keep an eye on the power crews so that they didn't leave our area without getting our power back on (which has happened before), I sat on the front porch. My wife, Cindy, and I talked about putting some insect retardant on. It was dark in the house and we couldn't find it with the flashlights, so we sat out there and I got bit up by mosquitos.

About four days later, I started getting chills, fever, headache and body ache. This lasted all weekend and into the beginning of the next week. What was more strange was that I broke out in a rash. We joked about getting West Nile Virus. I looked up the symptoms on the web and, sure enough, they matched what I had.

I decided a couple of days later to get a blood test, just in case. Cindy called the doctor today and she nurse told her that the test came back positive for WNV. I am, thankfully, over the symptoms now. I had an elderly uncle who died from WNV. So, I have the dubious honor of being a CDC statistic... one of the "confirmed" cases in our area.