I’m working in Lake Charles, La today...

yeap...and despite Popeye's ad's about the south being "fast"

Anyone from there knows it's relatively slow to get anything done.

Half a million people without power?

 

I remember going to Joplin MO after the F5 tornado touched (261-318 wind speed) down there. There wasn't a leaf on a tree, grass clipping or loose trash that wasn't pinned to something.

Every tree was as if winter had set in, stripped of any foliage (even the evergreens). It was surreal as you could see from one side of town to the other without anything blocking the view.

 

I've seen lots of tornado damage, but the one in Joplin was in a class of its own. It looked to me like a gigantic mulching lawn mower, a half mile wide, cut a 20-mile swath. It absolutely macerated everything in its path, except for a few structures, like a large hospital, which it lifted off its foundation, rotated and set it back down.

 

Hey, so am I! Been here a week, staying a couple more. You staying in town? Wanna go get Mexican for dinner?

 

We have a branch there; I know it has been hit by at least three major storm systems this year and been flooded all three times.

 

Back in 2005, our company was looking for volunteers to go to New Orleans to help customers get back up and running after Katrina. We had a group of about 15 guys go down to help. We had to stay in Baton Rouge and drive into New Orleans each day.

I couldn’t believe the devastation from Katrina. Unfortunately we had to cut the trip short because Hurricane Rita was a couple days out and at the time was headed directly for Baton Rouge.

 

Dang. I’m so BORED. Why, oh why, oh WHY didn’t I bring a guitar?

 

The only thing we worry about here in CA are earthquakes. Ya'll can have all the tornado's, flood's and hurricane's.
If the big one comes here...it probably won't matter anyway.

 

Yeah, but... what's that orange stuff you guys get. Gets real hot, turns trees into ash? I thought there was a small problem with that in California when I lived out there. Oh and it usually portended problems with lots of wet dirt sliding around down south. I'll think of it.

 

Yes those things happen here...big fires,. seemed the whole state was on fire...alas I do not live in fire or mud zones

I'd much rather deal with fire and mud than tornadoes and hurricanes.

 

I dunno, in a Hurricane/Tornado lots of structures bite the dust, things flood, lots of devastation et cetera. If you're lucky you have a basement or you boarded up then left town.


In a a major earthquake? Snapped sewer pipes, splintered highways/bridges, building falling on themselves and you had no idea what was coming. That's another level of apocalyptic bull**** to contend with.

 

There's a little Bessie girl I once knew, down there.

 

It's all very sucky, my breathing still hasn't returned to normal. Let's all hope for a better future.

 

Lake Charles is far enough from Lafayette (to the east) and Beaumont (to the west) that it makes it difficult to get anything done quickly. Because workers do tend to stage further away than is optimal.

I tried to rehab my office and house after Katrina/Rita in 2005, while staying in Napoleonville. 60+ miles by car, times two, every day. You had to make sure you had what it took to get back there, and especially this time of year it just gobbles up a huge amount of the available daylight. Nobody talks these days about the Jefferson Parish executive who ordered the pump station workers out of East Jefferson and so routine heavy rainfall inundated that area for no real reason. This official Order meant that when the City itself was under water (from the Gulf, totally different levee system) we could not stage from basically shouting distance. And this is, to me, the #1 reason New Orleans is still on its hands and knees today.

But Lake Charles has no such sister city. They had to gut it out alone, after Rita, and I suspect it will be the same this time (but worse, for reasons I need not name).

 

Yes, I worked several days at the hospital that was hit about three weeks before the tornado hit back in May 2011.
And yes, it looked like a bomb had been dropped on the city.....it was unreal.