GUSTAV!!!!!

[Avi]

[Jademz]

sweet bro. I just lost 30 hours pay for a disaster(Fay). and 16%of what's left, lemme know how u fare.

[Avi]

Try a month, man.

Katrina kept me away for three weeks, and it was another few more weeks before I could work again. If Gustav hits the mouth of the river as a Category 3 or better, you won't hear from me for a long time...really.

[TronFAQ]

Avi, here's hoping Gustav doesn't hit your area . . . but if it does, we'll keep you in our thoughts and hope that you and your family are okay.

[Layer]

Well..I'm not much further away...In Mobile, AL.

I'm sooo keeping my fingers crossed.

[Avi]

Layer, I was thinking about you when they started showing the cone of probability on the news. You're just a couple of hours from me, and if a storm is big enough it can hit both of us at the same time.

For you all that have never experienced a hurricane, or at least the threat of one coming towards you, here's what it's like:

The news comes on and announces that what is equivalent to a 150 mile wide Tasmanian Devil might be heading towards your city. As it sits near the coast of Cuba, it builds strength and size as it eyes your city up from across the Gulf of Mexico. People panic and lines start forming at every gas station in the area. Bottled water, canned goods, and batteries fly off of store shelves. The news tells you that all you can do is wait.

The Tasmanian Devil rips across Cuba, killing dozens of people. It staggers into the warm waters of the Gulf, which feed it and make it even stronger. It is three to four days away from making landfall, and your city declares a state of emergency. The mayor explains the best possible way to escape the city without causing too much of a traffic jam, which could potentially lead to you and your family drowning in your car. All you can do is wait, and the anxiety feels like it's crushing your chest with every breath.

You try to go about your everyday tasks, but the whole time you're thinking about "when". When is the right time to leave, when is the right time to panic, when is the right time to stay. It's 93 degrees outside, and you still get the chills throughout the day. This may be the last weekend that you enjoy your life as you know it.

The Tasmanian Devil makes it to the middle of the Gulf, and the forecast says that it is coming for you. You grab some clothes, important papers, pets, and your family goes on a long trip to anywhere. If you can find a hotel far enough from the predicted point of landfall, consider yourself lucky. After 24 hours of nonstop driving, you check into a hotel and collapse from sheer exhaustion.

The storm is still a day away. You pace the floor, waiting for the latest update. You think about your home, your family, your friends...things and people that you might not see for a long time.

The next day, you watch reports of massive damage to your city on the news. Entire apartment buildings collapsed with people inside...retirement homes full of senior citizens are underwater, no survivors...miles and miles of street under six feet of water. In some neighborhoods, only the rooftops of buildings are visible above the rancid water that is saturating everything for as far as the eye can see. Looters are shooting at buses of people trying to flee...police are shooting at anyone that is outside after dark. Total anarchy and chaos.

Three weeks in a hotel room, living off of the charity of others. Churches send food and clothes to your hotel room. You try to hang on to every dollar you have because you don't know when you're going home, if at all.

Finally, the news says that it is safe for you to return to your city. After hours of sitting in traffic again, you make your way home to survey the damage and begin cleaning up. This is the part that varies from person to person. Some people were only missing a few shingles from their roof, while others had nothing to come home to. At night, the neighborhoods are eerily silent except for the sound of military vehicles driving around searching for looters. One by one, your neighbors come back to pack up their belongings and move out of state...no one wants to go through this again.

Well, here I am...going through it again. I have a room already reserved for my family in Arkansas if we need it. The truck is gassed up and topped off regularly. We know exactly what we're bringing and what we'll have to leave behind. Hopefully, Gustav blows off into the mountains of Mexico and does very little damage...but everyone is still living with that dread that you can't shake until you know for sure that you're safe.

Good luck over there, Layer. Hopefully, we'll all be okay come Tuesday.

[TronFAQ]

Well..I'm not much further away...In Mobile, AL.

Yeah, jesus . . . I forgot that you and V are practically next door. I hope that you and everyone else we know, living on the southern coastal areas of the U.S., will be okay.

[Jademz]

The total rainfall here was around 10 inches, some areas 45 miles east had 22 in. I'm not looking forward to the next round. You guys had it really bad Avi, I had to do cleanup from Charlie and Francis, they were something like 3 weeks apart..

[data_ghost]

not having gone through a hurricane means i cant possible understand what you guys are going through but after reading avis post, I'd just like to wish you all the best of luck chaps.

see you on the other side

[TRON.dll]

Yeah, any of you who live in that area: try and get a post here ASAP after the storm. I remember seeing the videos of Katrina, horrifying even to me, despite the fact that I'll likely never experience a hurricane.

Hope you fare well, be sure to evacuate when you should.

[TRON.dll]

Not tryin to scare anyone, just tryin' to be informative:

Associated Press says it'll likely make landfall early next week (possibly Monday) as a catagory 3.

If Gustav hits the mouth of the river as a Category 3 or better, you won't hear from me for a long time...really.

[Avi]

Believe me, no one here is more updated than Layer and myself...but thanks.

I have the news on every TV in the house, and changed my homepage to www.wunderground.com . To top it off, I'm in the middle of moving furniture to right where this thing is going to hit (supposedly, as far as they know at the moment)...talk about stress.

[Avi]

I'm almost finished moving. We're planning to evacuate at about 3 AM Sunday morning to avoid the daytime traffic. Hopefully, tomorrow shows a more westward turn for Gustav, pulling the worst weather away from us. Our main problems isn't the wind, it's the water that is going to pile up in the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain as a result of the massive tidal surges that will be coming in from the Gulf. That is how the city ended up flooded for weeks three years ago (to this very day, actually). If one tiny section of levee breaks, it's all over with.

After tonight, I will be without internet for a few weeks even if the storm doesn't come here. We had to switch our internet/cable/phone provider since we moved to a different parish (we don't have counties). Hopefully, I'll be back online soon.

Take care, everyone.

[Daddyo]

Good luck Avi, you can always work on your tunes w/o computer.

[SweatyPyro]

God Speed, man.