Hi everyone thanks so much for your posts. That really means a lot to me.

I had to call some relatives and then I did talk with Phil on the phone a bit.

I was starting to get a little crazy this evening. I had exhausted all the resources I could online and the prospect of not doing anything was too much, so I called my brother's house in TX and talked to my SIL. We're talking on the phone and she shrieks that there is a call waiting and it is my SIL in Pascagoula. So they talked to her and my brother for just a couple minutes before the connection went dead.

I heard this second-hand from my brother in TX: they had been working around the clock nonstop for three days (since Sunday). They had just been given a couple hours off to get some sleep. I think that says a lot about how stretched the resources are at attempting to deal with this disaster, and how bad the disaster is. So they tried the phones again and now they were working. So the first call my SIL made was to my brother in TX.

My brother has spent the last couple days continuing search and rescue. It is very grim there. Read between the lines here. I really don't want to post any more than that.

That's all we're going to know for now. I don't care if I don't talk to him right away. All I needed to hear was that he was ok. I imagine he'll have some story to tell me when he finally gets a chance to slow down, but honestly I don't think that will be for at least a month.

In many cases I think that they are going to have to pull out of some of these areas for the short term, until sewer, electric, running water, etc. can be put back tog. I actually wonder if Pascagoula will become a ghost town. It existed really because of the shipyard, which will probably be too expensive to rebuild. So it will evolve into something else. I don't think the coast can really come back from something like this.

Again I want to say that I don't think I could have gotten through these last couple days without you guys.

We knew before many people did what was happening, and after Katrina hit (you know even typing the name makes me feel so bitter), we knew as well. None of my friends understood. So I am sorry to have kind of spilled my guts out here, and thank you all for being so supportive!