Fire From the Sky

It appears that this is it, friends. Hurricane Gustav is expected to make landfall soon, and the consequences could, and are expected to be, extreme.

I just finished watching the mayor's press conference, in which multiple people referred to this storm as "surpassing Katrina", "the storm of the century", "the most horrific thing this city will ever have endured", and "a storm that will break records", among other colorful blurbs. I know this is intended to startle people into leaving, and it works. Those are sobering words.

I was going to stay in the city this time and ride the hurricane out. A sick part of me wishes I had stayed behind for Hurricane Katrina. And there's still a huge part of me that wants to be here for this. How often to you get to see the drowning of an American city? How many people can say they lived through and witnessed the death of a metropolis? I wanted to experience it.

However, the option of staying here is now off the table, as the building I was going to take refuge in is being shut down. It's a ghost town here, save for some stragglers and armored humvees. It looks like a police state.

People have told me not to speak like that. That a city won't die; that it'll return. And that's true to a degree. No matter what happens, people will return, and businesses will eventually re-open. But it will never, ever be the same. It's death as far as most are concerned.

I don't know what I'll do if I get wiped out again. I don't look forward to the prospect of being homeless once more. I barely have the funds to get out of town, much less struggle through the uncertainty of things if this IS "The Big One".

I will not return if this is another Katrina. I will not endure this process again.

I wasn't quite ready to leave this town behind yet, but here it is. I'll be packing the most treasured of my possessions into the Jeep and hitting the road with an expired and now doctored temp tag, and low coolant. Hopefully I won't overheat or end up in a jail somewhere.

Beyond that, I'm setting time aside tonight to take a bath in my roomates' bathroom, since this may be my last chance. I'm going to eat some of their food since it's only going to spoil in the refrigerator anyway ... and I'm not going to worry about mopping the floor.

With a heavy heart and a bitter taste in my mouth, I bid you all adieu ... for now.