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OK, we woke up Thursday morning to a mandatory evacuation for Orange County because the storm had slightly turned more north. We packed our house up as quick as possible and left with family, including two grandmothers, and some cousins to Many, Louisiana. It took us 12 hours to travel about 150 miles. It was grueling because we didn't run the air while we were in idle (which was most of the time) - but considering we had two babies and two 80 year old women... it could have been a whole lot worse.
We arrived in Many about 1:30 in the morning and immediately went to sleep in a room at the church - wall to wall with our group. Friday was spent in anticipation of the storm. There were about 100 people with us in this little chapel, so there was cleaning and cooking and preparing for no water, electricity, etc. that we were doing. It was really a remarkable experience because we all combined our resources and came together - as many do in times like this. Someone had brought a laptop which gave us access to most of our information. Those from southeast Texas know that all of the information leading up to the storm was hard to listen to... especially when it potentially could change your entire life, goals, income, home, etc. It is just almost unbearable. Yet, as hard as it is to listen to, you are glued to every word or tidbit you can find. We had a few 'crazies' as we called them in our group - who enjoyed exaggerating anything negative they heard, or didn't hear, to truth. For example, it was going around that officials were saying, "If you haven't left by now... you need to write your social security number on your arm so that they can identify your body," and other things like that.
Anyway, we went to bed fairly early that night. I woke up about 1:30 to this howling noise. I was asleep in the chapel and the wind sounded like children screaming - it was unbearable to listen to and I just could not go back to sleep. I went out into the foyer and slowly others began to join me. As we sat there - we saw the skirting from a temporary building out back fly off. There were people sleeping in the temporary building and so we quickly got them out of there. About 3:30am, we lost power. We had close to all 100 people cuddled up in the foyer with their flashlights gathered around the radio. We heard that Beaumont was spared the storm surge, but it didn't comfort us because we knew that our friends in Lake Charles were not.
A cousin stayed back in Vidor. We were able to get through to him on his cell phone about this time. He told us, "the rain is coming down really hard... the winds pretty loud... I think there's a Hurricane out there!" Then he told us to stop calling because he was trying to sleep. I was grateful for that phone call because we needed some comic relief and it made us feel as if everything was going to be OK. Somehow, I was able to go back to sleep until morning.
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paradoxes