[SEL] Rita

[Tom Smith]

Hi Group,

I just made the trip from Many, Louisiana where we have a lake house to 
Houston,TX (home). We left 2:00 am Thursday morning to avoid some of the 
rush (fairly sussessful - normal 4 hour trip only took 5.5hours). The storm 
got serious for us this (Saturday) morning about 3:00 am and slacked off 
about 9:00am. We lost power early but had a cell phone and kept up with the 
progress. It reportedly went west of us about 30 miles and I was hoping to 
go west back to Texas and cross it after it passed. Unfortunately it slowed 
down and I drove through the southern part of the eye (such as it was at Cat 
2) just out of Center, Texas. Fortunately is was only blowing steady 100 or 
so and there are a lot of trees in east Texas to slow the actual ground 
speed even more.  My timing was good as the traffic on I-59 south was fairly 
light. I really wanted to avoid the mass rush back because gasoline on all 
north south routes is non-existant and the back road places that might have 
had fuel had no electricity. We lost a few trees, power will probably be 
restored within a week, and we unloaded all the frozed food at our place and 
another relatively. Meat and other items in the freezer get really ripe 
after a week without power and add to that another month before we would be 
able to return.

A world of damage on the coast and inland 30-50 miles but my message to 
those concerned about love ones and friends in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, 
Alexandria had trees down, lost power but mostly ok.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mick DeMaria" <bmvid at snet.net>
To: "The SEL email discussion list" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2005 6:32 AM
Subject: Re: [SEL] Rita


> Hi Pete:
>  How are you guys fairing the storm? My sister lives in Lafayette we 
> haven't heard from her since yesterday but I suspect it's probably due to 
> power outages.
>
>  Mick
>
>
>
> Pete Alleman wrote:
>> Hi Gene,
>>
>> We are riding the storm out at home in Youngsville. The winds should be
>> about the same as in Morgan City. Right now we have about 40 to 50 MPH
>> winds with moderate rain. It is not real bad. I don't see any damage yet.
>>
>> We still have power but the local TV news is reporting lots of scattered
>> power outages. I've got my old lister generator ready to go when we lose
>> power.
>>
>> I'm sure John will be fine. A 75 MPH hurricane usually does very little
>> damage.
>>
>> Pete.
>>
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