Hi, everyone. We are at my sister's in Houston. We evacuated to Lufkin, TX and stayed there for
four nights. The hotel, La Quinta, gave us and other evacuees extended stays and then kicked us out and gave our rooms to the State Farm Disaster Relief Team. Fortunately, we had a place to go but some of the people didn't.
Beaumont suffered extensive damage. Lots of trees down and metal buidlings torn up. We were lucky.
We lost one tree and it fell over the driveway. Our fence is down and some roof shingles are gone.
Rita tore down an old playscape I had wanted to tear down anyway. But there is a lot of roof damage and
so some homes are not livable. My friend stayed through the storm and she said it was scary. Supposedly,
we had up to nine hours of 90 mile per hour sustained winds with higher gusts. Anyway, this is one report
I heard. Power lines are down everywhere. My brother--in-law, who lives in Nederland lost several sheds
and his front porch. The storm came in east of Sabine Pass, Texas and so Louisiana got the worst of
it with storm surch. So we all feel lucky. The authorities are not letting us back into Beaumont (although
some are managing to get in). They are saying now it could take up to a month for electricity to be restored.
One of the sad things is we had 16,000 new residents from the Katrina disaster. The kids were enrolled
in school and were just getting used to their new home and now they are displaced again. Another
sad thing is a lot of people still left pets behind and with all of the fences down some were running loose.
One of my husband's friends (who stayed) had made a makeshift fence and was rounding them up. Federal assistance has been SLOW but hopefully the visit by the President yesterday will help. Anyway, I am glad
to have access to a computer again as I missed the site. I am praying for all of the people displaced by this
storm, and especially the ones in Louisiana whose homes were completely destroyed.