Hi, everyone. As you can see from my personal info, I live in Hattiesburg, MS. The eye of Katrina passed about 5-10 miles from my apartment. I just wanted to add my two cents to the banner many are seeing concerning donating to the relief effort. While my town was lucky -- relatively minor structural damage and power and water outages -- New Orleans and the MS gulf coast are really devastated. Most of Mississippi is still without power. If you are able to give, please donate to the Red Cross's relief efforts.
Now for our personal story . . . we rode out the storm in Hattiesburg, which in retrospect, was pretty stupid. On Wednesday, we came to my mother-in-law's house in Orange Beach, Alabama. She has power and, much more importantly, water. You don't truly appreciate plumbing until you lose water for over a day. I have sleep apnea, and spent the night monday (after we lost power that day) waking up gasping for breath. I use a CPAP machine to keep me breathing when I sleep, and without power, I couldn't use it.
We are heading back today because my wife works at a clinic and they are resuming service. Our town was completely cut off from the outside world. There was no radio or telephone communications (by our emergency management personnel) with anyone. All local radio stations are down, so while there are limited ice and water distributions occuring, it is extremely difficult to inform people to know where to go for them. From what I understand, our emergency management personnel had to drive to the state capital to let them know what the status of Hattiesburg was.
Please keep all hurricane victims, not just those you see on the news, in your prayers. While some of us don't need the prayers as much as those whose lives were truly devastated, we all need them to some degree.
Thank you, and God bless you.
Now for our personal story . . . we rode out the storm in Hattiesburg, which in retrospect, was pretty stupid. On Wednesday, we came to my mother-in-law's house in Orange Beach, Alabama. She has power and, much more importantly, water. You don't truly appreciate plumbing until you lose water for over a day. I have sleep apnea, and spent the night monday (after we lost power that day) waking up gasping for breath. I use a CPAP machine to keep me breathing when I sleep, and without power, I couldn't use it.
We are heading back today because my wife works at a clinic and they are resuming service. Our town was completely cut off from the outside world. There was no radio or telephone communications (by our emergency management personnel) with anyone. All local radio stations are down, so while there are limited ice and water distributions occuring, it is extremely difficult to inform people to know where to go for them. From what I understand, our emergency management personnel had to drive to the state capital to let them know what the status of Hattiesburg was.
Please keep all hurricane victims, not just those you see on the news, in your prayers. While some of us don't need the prayers as much as those whose lives were truly devastated, we all need them to some degree.
Thank you, and God bless you.
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