Hurricanes

This morning I was reading an update on Hurricane Beryl and it got me to thinking about the Hurricanes that Jennifer and I went thru over the years.

Our first Hurricane was Andrew when we lived in Lafayette the first time. That was probably the scariest one, just because we did not know what to expect and did not know if we had prepared correctly. We made the choice to ride it out and stayed home. A lot of our friends and co-workers at the time elected to leave. Most of them had kids, so that was the wise choice.

Now the thing with hurricanes is that you have time to prepare. So a day or so before the Hurricane many people have for the lack of a better term Hurricane parties. They start cooking up things out of the freezer so that if they loose power they don’t loose food they paid good money for. Also people will stock up on stuff and they will clean out a grocery store in nothing flat. We made a last minute trip to a grocery store about a day before the storm (we really did not need anything) was forecasted to hit and about the only thing left was maraschino cherry’s. The shelves were bare, that was a little disconcerting.

We figured it was just the two of us and it was our first house so we decided to stay. All in all it worked out fine, but making it thru the night it struck was nerve wracking. We were about 30 miles or less from where it hit New Iberia, Louisiana.

Our first house in Lafayette had a small little interior closet that we chose to shelter in during the storm. We cleaned everything out if it and we had a air matress and we hunkered down in there, with flashlights and a battery powered radio. Prior to the storm coming we made calls home and probably worried the shit out of our parents. Anyway we stayed.

One of the issues is that we were not all that familiar with the area, so as we were listening to the radio the announcers were talking about this area and that area and how bad it was, but we did not know where these areas were in relationship to us, and so that was nerve wracking. Some of the announcers were a little over the top in describing things. It had us second guessing staying a time or two. Jennifer of course shed a few tears, but we pulled through.

Our house weathered the storm fine, some of our neighbors were not as lucky. Early in the morning when the storm was starting to decline, we were looking out the window and watched our neighbors roof shingles get peeled off their house like a deck of cards. That was pretty wild.

Well over the years we went thru several more hurricanes. Some were more memorable than others. We never did evacuate for any. Again we figured it was the two of us and if we died in one we would die together.

However, when it came time to retire we knew one thing, it was not going to be in a Hurricane area, we had our fill. We were extremely lucky and never had any significant damage from the hurricanes. We did loose a medium sized oak tree in our yard from Andrew. We had enough rain and wind that it got blown over, but that was about it.

During Hurricane Rita we ended up housing a few folks from work, who had tried to evacuate but got stuck in traffic out by us and decided to bail off the roads and came to our house in Cypress, Texas. We had a nice little gathering for that one.

The second time we were in Lafayette Hurricane Gustav passed pretty much over us. We got to experience the eye passing. That was wild. It was storming like hell and then we had a short period of calm weather and then storming like hell again. There was a street sign in front of our house that was blowing like hell during the first part of the storm and we were afraid it was going to be come like a spear and blow into the house. So during the calm, I ran out and pulled it out of the ground and put it in the garage.

The second time in Lafayette was the most stressful for me, mainly because of work. I was largely responsible for making sure our offshore workers got evacuated in time and then after the storm making sure we could get them back offshore as quick as possible to evaluate the damages and get operations up and running again. I certainly don’t miss any of that. Of course I worked with some folks that had a lot of experience with this and were of a great help on working through these things.

During Hurricane Ike, it became clear that Galveston and Houston were going to take the brunt. Well we had a lot of supplies stockpiled in Lafayette, for employee assistance (small generators, gas cans, tools, etc.). So the company had a cargo plane come over and pick up these items to take to Houston. I was also tasked with buying additional supplies in Lafayette and getting them on the plane. So we spent a good chunk of money at the Lowe’s in Lafayette. Any time I went in there after the storm, I always got the royal treatment from the folks there.

For Katrina I assisted from Houston with coordinating getting supplies and materials to our employees in the affected areas. This effort was led by Greg Dykes and I tell you the employees that recieved that assistance were extremely grateful and appreciative. It was touch and go if our folks were going to get in and out of the area due to conditions and availability of fuel, etc. However we had folks that pulled some rabbits out of hats and got us special arrangements to get fuel, etc. that was a very cool project. At that time Marathon took care of its employees, and they appreciated it.

Anyway, I still keep my eyes on the tropics during this time of the year, but I don’t miss having to deal with Hurricanes. Jennifer felt the same way. I will always have memories of them but certainly don’t want to make any more of them. Will always pray tha folks that are going thru