Part 4.75: Katrina Pictures yet again

Again, go to 4.25 first to view these in sequence.

Here are some National Guard members on the breezeway connecting the Dome, the New Orleans Arena, and the New Orleans Center. Taken Monday afternoon from the NOC.
















This was taken either sunset Monday or sunrise Tuesday. I can't tell, because there was always water in this section. I think this was Monday. Anyway, this is the Wildlife and Fisheries people bringing people rescued from rooftops in the Ninth Ward to the Superdome for safety.









Sunrise, Tuesday morning. The Dome is naked. I leaned out of a broken window on the second floor of the Dominion Tower to get this shot. Mark was not pleased. I was careful.











This is the last photo I have of Downtown. I took it Tuesday morning from that same window after we finished our sanctioned looting, just before we went upstairs to be told we had to evacuate. You can see the water was halfway up the hubcaps of the cars. A mere 20 minutes later, the water would be to the windows of the 4Runner we escaped in. I regret not having the studio windows. And the higher water. And the Hyatt and Dominion. However, once outside, I think I went into shock. Now I wish I'd done it. But I couldn't get them.

Part 4.5 Katrina Pictures again

I think I must have hit a max size....here are some more... but try to do these in posting order. go down to 4.25 first.


This is part of the pretty glass atrium in the New Orleans Center. We had to watch where we walked and a security guard fussed at us for walking under it because glass was still falling occasionally.















Water dripping from the third floor into the Café du Monde in the New Orleans Center Monday afternoon.











The trees along this street ( I forget which it is...maybe Poydras?) fell inbetween all of the cars parked along the building. Some toppled, others snapped. No trees were on cars. Had the flood waters not come in less than 24 hours later, these cars would have been fine.














This is the Superdome on Monday afternoon, with my reflection in the glass, so you know I took it. That's the white cover hanging off the top. We watched it fly off during the storm earlier that day.

Part 4.25: Katrina Pictures.

I've finally uploaded my pics to my parents' computer now that I'm here...I'm jumping way ahead, but here we go. I ended up here. More on how that came about in the coming days/weeks.


Outer bands of Katrina seen from the DJ lounge in the Dominion Tower on Sunday. It's about 4:30 p.m.













This is Monday night after the storm. Only lights in the city are the emergency lights surrounding the Superdome.












This is the glass Conference Room...the only place where I had cell reception to speak to my parents.












These are windows on the second floor of the Dominion Tower, taken Monday afternoon.













The glass from that window, swept out of harm's way.














This is the ceiling of the second floor of the New Orleans Center, taken Monday afternoon. This is water coming from the third floor.

Part 4: Where do we go now? Where do we go now? Ahhhahhahhhahhhahhhh...

Recap: The Entercom Bigwigs were just telling us that we had two choices: Go to the Superdome, or try our luck in an SUV. People without SUVs (us included) started panicking and crying. We didn't know what to do. The Dome was not an option for us, but we didn't have an SUV, either.

Mark remembered that Spud McConnell was talking about his 4Runner earlier, and how he had half a mind, as the waters started coming up, to just get in and leave. But he wouldn't do that to the company. He had a job to do. He signed up for it. He wouldn't abandon it. But now his job was ordering him to do it.

Before the people in charge finished speaking, Mark silently got off the couch next to me and made his way over to Spud. My mind racing a billion miles an hour, worrying about our lives and the cats' lives, I lowered my head into my hands. Suddenly, Mark was back at my side.

"Spud's going to take us," he whispered. I looked up quickly at him, then at Spud. The speech was over. Two more people walked up to Spud, Layla, a news girl, and Charlie, Mark's former supervisor when the Bayou was still adult contemporary and he was a DJ there. I looked at Mark again. "What about the cats?"

"Spud said we can bring them."

We ran down to the production room, packed as many things onto our backs as we could, leaving cat litter and water and our pillows behind. We met up with Spud near the stairs. He ran back to his office to get something.

The generator system was set up weird. There was one just for broadcasting purposes, and one just for living purposes. That one had been shut off for conservation, I assume. So all of Entercom, friends, family, and pets included, had to go down four flights of pitch black stairs in order to make it to safety. At one point, just as I didn't think I could make it anymore, Oldies sation Kool 95.7 DJ Tommy Tucker appeared behind me and offered to take Lily's carrier from me. He carried her until we reached the bottom and we had to split up to go to our respective parking garages.

Spud was parked in the Superdome garage. We were in the New Orleans Center garage. We did not have time to even check on our car. We had to go. Spud opened the back of his 4Runner and threw out his kids' sports equipment and a baby seat. "We needed a new one of these anyway," he said. He threw out a few jugs of water. A security guard walked past. "HEY!" Spud called, gesturing to the jugs. "Take these. You may need them!" The guard waved in acknowledgement. We piled all of our belongings into his vehicle. As we were about to pull off, Spud said, "Whose suitcase is that over there? That's not any of yours, is it?" Charlie looked at it.

"No, but it IS yours."

"Shit." He threw the car into park and grabbed it. I held it on my lap.

We flew out of the garage and met water instantly. We eased onto the street. We followed the directions we had been given for our evacuation. The water got deeper and deeper.

I should mention here that when they told us to evacuate, the water was only about halfway up the hubcaps of the cars left on the street. It took us maybe 15 minutes to get downstairs and load the car, then pull onto the street. By this point, the water was up to the windows of the 4Runner. That's about 3 or 4 FEET. In 15 MINUTES.

We ventured into the deep water. Suddenly, we stalled. In water up to the windows between the Dome and the New Orleans Arena. No one said a word. I closed my eyes and whispered, "Oh please oh please oh please oh please" over and over to myself. Spud kept turning it over and over and over, sweet talking the engine. "Come on, baby. Come on." I was running through my head what we could leave in the truck in order to save the cats, thinking we were about to lose my textbooks and our clothes and bathroom gear, when suddenly, the 4Runner purred to life. Spud thre the car in reverse and sped backwards. He turned around and went flying past the FEMA, National Guard, Red Cross, and local law enforcement guys. They all motioned for him to slow down, as he was kicking up an impressive wake. He rolled down his window and said, "No way. Not if I want to make it out!" A couple of large trucks from Wildlife and Fisheries pulled in front of us and went slowly. We were afraid of stalling again.

When we got to Loyola Drive, it was DRY. We flew down Loyola and made it to the first on-ramp to take us to the Crescent City Connection. When we got up the ramp, three vehicles were in front of us, and a fire engine was blocking our path. They were not allowing us up there. Spud backed down the ramp and went to Tchoupitoulas St., and was able to get on there. We made it onto the CCC and crossed the Mississippi River. We looked over and saw what we had just escaped. The Hyatt and the Dominion Tower looked like Oklahoma City. As we drove up the ramp and over the bridge, we saw old-time New Orleans-style houses that had collapsed. Bricks were everywhere. Trees were in buildings. Rooftops were missing. Water was rising everywhere around the CBD. The Dome? Even more impressive in its nakidity now that we could see the whole thing. No one looked back. Just ahead and sideways. We drove silently on.

Until Spud spoke.

"You know," said our actor savior, "In the movie version of all of this," he looked next to him at Layla. "You and I would be having an affair." He glanced behind him to see Mark behind Layla and me in the middle. "You two would still be married, but you would be 9 months pregnant and ready to pop." He looked in the mirror and saw Charlie on my left. "And you would be gay."

"Wait, why am I the gay one?"

"Two reasons. One, you're the only one I can't pair up with someone. And two, I'm not going to be the gay one. This is my movie."

We needed that. So desperately. We all lost it and giggled like school girls. Then we made it across the bridge.

Here on the West Bank, it was not water damage but wind damage. Billboard signs were bent in half. Buildings were missing fronts. Trees were down, blocking HWY 90. Spud messed up his antenna driving through the forest that was now HWY 90. We basically rode in silence, listening to WWL. It hit us. There were people on the air who were supposed to be leaving with us. Evidently, they didn't make it out due to the water. It was people we'd seen gathering their stuff and heading to vehicles. At the same time we were. They must have been in a different parking garage and were unable to get out.

We got to the 310 exit, and headed towards Baton Rouge. Spud asked if we had anywhere in particular we'd like to be dropped off. At this point, we had not even considered it. We just wanted out. Charlie and Layla are both LSU grads and had contacts. Charlie worked for a radio station, so he was going there. Layla's friend's parents live in Baton Rouge, so she was going there. Our cell phones were not working. We had no way of contacting anyone to tell them what we were doing or to see if someone could take us in.

I reached in my purse for a pack of gum. I realized that I had not brushed my teeth since Sunday night. That was also the last time I'd showered. On top of that, I'd just put on my clothes from Sunday after my shower because I was rushing to get back to the Dominion Tower before the Hyatt's evacuation took place and grabbed the wrong clothes. It was now Tuesday morning. We realized we were all probably pretty ripe. This was especially true for Charlie, Spud, Mark, and me, since we'd been in our sanctioned looting of the Sundries shop.

We discussed at one point that we felt like all of our work raiding the shop was for nothing. But once we turned on the radio and heard their stranded coworkers back on air, we felt we'd done something good. They would have plenty of food, drinks, and medicinal supplies. Enough to last for a while, if necessary.

We all chomped on that gum in silence. Everyone was grateful for it, as we were all so rank.

Around Gonzales, I checked my phone again. It worked!!! Verizon towers in the Baton Rouge area were apparently unharmed. I called my parents and told them that we were forced to evacuate. We were headed to Baton Rouge, but that was all we knew. Mark called his parents. They said they would pick us up in Baton Rouge and bring us to their house in Morgan City, which still had electricity. Charlie said we could hang out at the radio station until they came, if we needed to. We had a plan. Finally.

Spud decided he wanted to go to a Baton Rouge news station, because he felt they would want the personal story of us making it out of the storm, and going through it, too. We pulled up at Channel 2 Baton Rouge, and Spud led the way. He spoke to some people, who liked the idea, and they mic'd him up and put him on. They let us stand in the back, behind the camera man, to watch.

Here, we saw visuals of the city for the first time. We saw the extensive flooding. We saw buildings on fire. We saw flaming gas leaks. We saw submerged homes and cars. We saw crumpled buildings. We saw people waving for help on rooftops. We saw people carrying bags through chest-high water. We saw crying babies, children, adults, and eldery. We saw lost wet pets wandering streets and standing on houses. We saw trees down. We saw things you see in blockbuster summer disaster movies.

Then we saw Spud cry.

He lost it on the news. In front of the viewers. In front of the cameras. In front of the anchors. In front of us. We teared up with him. he shook his head, placing it in his massive paws. "I keep thinking of all of those people who called me last night. I bet 60 percent of those who called me, asking to be saved, scared out of their minds....I bet I was the last person they spoke to. And I couldn't help them. I bet 60 percent of those people are gone." He dissolved into tears.

Watching this large, confident, boisterous man break down in front of people was hard. He was our cheerleader. He was our savior. He was our guardian angel.

I swear, if anyone had told me a few days earlier that my guardian angel would be a very large foul-mouthed chain-smoking actor named Spud, I'd have laughed in that person's face. But here we were.

I leaned into Mark and cried quietly into his chest. Layla and Charlie wiped tears from their eyes. The anchors looked like they didn't know what to do. We composed ourselves, and Spud told the story of the rising waters, what the CBD looked like, and our dramatic escape. Then we were interrupted by a confirmation on where the 17th Street Canal breeched.

It was on the New Orleans side of the Canal. Near the Old Hammond Hwy. Bridge. One street and about 6-10 blocks away from our house. It was two blocks long, and there was no stopping the water yet. I choked back a huge sob. Mark pulled me out to the newsroom and outside. I launched into hysterics. I grabbed my cell phone and called my parents. I held myself together long enough until I told them the news. Then I was inconsolable again. This meant that not only did we lose our home and everything in it, we lost my car and my father's BP service station. We still weren't sure of the status of my brother's house in Old Metairie, nor did we know about my parents' house in North Metairie. Quite possibly, my family was completely wiped out.

Between Mark and my father, I quieted down. Then I talked to my mom and my brother and had to be calmed down every time I spoke to a new person. By this point, it was almost noon. We'd left Entercom around 6:45, 7 a.m. Spud was ready to roll.

We went to find food. We found out that Great Wall in Baton Rouge was open, and Spud praised it to the skies. When we got there, we were given a choice between a long table and a round table. Spud said, "Give us the round one. We want to be able to look at each other." It was a buffet, and it was just what we needed.

I thought back and realized that all I'd eaten since Sunday afternoon was: a small bowl of chicken and sausage gumbo, a packet of cheese and peanut butter crackers, a couple of Pringles, and a hot dog or two. It was now lunchtime on Tuesday. I hadn't eaten anything that day.

We scarfed our food like we would never see food again. Buffet was a great idea. We were so hungry. When the bill came, Spud grabbed the check. He wouldn't let us pay. He said that he had another job working on a movie in St. Francisville, but our jobs were probably doubtful. He said he makes a lot more money off movies than radio, so lunch was on him. He wouldn't let us touch the check. We were even more in this man's debt, but he wouldn't hear any of it from any of us. His word was final.

We dropped off Charlie and Layla at the radio station. Spud brought us back to Channel 2. Before he left, I gave him a huge hug. We sat around waiting for Mark's parents.

They got there shortly after, and we took the almost two-hour ride to Morgan City. We were supposed to be there the next weekend, Labor Day Weekend, for the Shrimp and Petroleum Festival. (Yes, you read that right. I like to call it "The Greasy Prawns Festival.")

Stay tuned for Part 5: Everything starts sinking in in Morgan City.

Part 3: The End of the Storm Was Really Only the Beginning.

Recap: The storm was winding down. Garland was broadcasting in the hallway, bringing the news and a comforting voice to the people of New Orleans during a very scary time, despite the fact that the building was seemingly about to collapse on us.

I woke up from my nap to see that so much chaos had broken out. I was able to text people until about 1 p.m. I last spoke to my mother around 10 a.m. as the windows were shattering, the two of us crying like babies. I was sure I was never going to see them again. I honestly thought that we would die in that building. Sobbing hysterically, my mother told me goodbye, saying, "I will hold you again, my baby. I will." I lost it. I was far from consolation. Then my parents set off in tropical storm force winds from Pensacola. Yes, the storm was that large. I had no idea where they were headed. Neither did they. I knew they would have a long, hard road ahead of them.

That was the last phone call I was able to make on my phone. Landlines went out sometime around then. Texting was the only form of communication. Until 1. Suddenly, I was cut off from the world. With one exception: the Internet. I posted like a madwoman to MySpace. I sent out e-mail after e-mail. A lot of people posted that they were glad New Orleans had seemingly done so well. All of them were ready to come home. I shot off e-mails telling them what we were going through, and how the surroundings, mainly the now-naked Superdome, looked. Everyone was shocked. No one else was in the city, all were posting from Texas and other places. I kept telling the truth and trying to keep them from thinking they would be home that evening. Until 4 p.m.

One of the last e-mails I recieved was from my brother-in-law, telling me that my parents had made it to Auburn, Ala., and had gotten the last available room in the Microtel. He gave the phone and room numbers. I tried my cell one last time, and got nothing. But I didn't write down the room number. Remember this.

The last e-mail I sent was to male Blake (female Blake comes to play later), warning him not to try to make it back to St. Charles Parish. I had just seen the story about the lower 9th Ward, how 200,000 people were on their rooftops, surrounded by floodwaters. They waited to be rescued. People away from New Orleans weren't getting that. National media made it seem as though we'd made it out okay.

Coincidentally, we lost the Internet around the time the storm subsided. We couldn't believe our eyes as we looked at the carnage that was the studios. We couldn't believe the naked Dome. We just couldn't believe it. But we seemed to be okay. People were out walking around Monday afternoon, looking at the downed trees, the broken windows. Mark and I strolled carefully through the New Orleans Center. We tried to get in the garage to check on his car, but the doors were locked. I brought the camera and took pictures of the topless Dome, the splintered atrium windows in the N.O.C., the water stains on the ceiling, the flooded Café du Monde, the shattered trees. We wondered how our house looked, but figured we'd be home in a day or so. Our plan was to ride around to Geoff's house, my parents' house, my dad's BP station....and to call people and let them know the status. We were the only ones who had stayed and were even remotely close to the city. Everyone else was in Dallas, Houston, Baton Rouge, Arkansas, Florida...we figured we'd do a courtesy while I had the next day off of school and work.

The sun was coming out. People were walking pets around the Dome. We learned that the Dome had two holes in the roof, and sky was visible. It was being used as a shelter for medical needs, followed by low-income families and people without means to escape in a timely manner. Thousands of people were crammed in there. That evening, some of the FM people and news reporters walked over to the Dome for coverage. They came back, reporting that relief and boredom were settling in, and so everyone was singing Gospel music. Remember this, too.

At midnight, Mark went back on air. Spud McConnell was hosting. Spud is a local actor who was on "Roseanne" in the '80s, who gets a lot of roles in local films and commercials, and is THE definitive portrayer of Ignatius J. Reilly and Huey Long. He's also a graduate of Nicholls State University and a former member of the Nicholls Players. Mark and I are both of those. So, through these commonalities, and work, a shared acquaintance of a former mass communication teacher named Chuck, and Spud's all-around niceness, he and Mark struck up a good working relationship. I sat in the booth with Mark while he worked. The shift started out pretty predictably.

It was weird. Only WWL was broadcasting, out of all of the stations in the city. We lost TV the night before, cell phones that morning, texting that afternoon, and then Internet. Past sundown, reporters couldn't do much, because the city was without power. The National Guard had been stationed around the Dome since either Saturday or Sunday. So we were safe, especially with the storm over. They were predicting us spending a few more days at the station, so that WWL could bring news and comfort to the people. However, we had no way of getting information. The land lines were down, so calling out was not an option. But for some reason, people could usually call in to the WWL studios. Go figure. WWL actually began to rely, basically, on hearsay. If someone called in with a neighborhood report, we had to take him at his word. Callers called in with these reports, with questions about restoration of power and when they would be able to return. Then it got weird.

We heard about the 9th Ward earlier. Then, we learned that a canal had breached in St. Bernard Parish, and that "Da Parish" was under. We felt awful upon hearing this news. My teaching partner, Melissa, is from Violet in St. Bernard. I felt for her. I hoped she'd made it out alright.

Then, we heard a rumor that the Southern Yacht Club, where our wedding reception was held just under 3 1/2 years ago, was on fire.

Next, North Kenner, including the Esplanade Mall, was supposedly under water. That didn't sound good at all, since my parents live in North Metairie towards the Kenner line.

After that, we started getting a lot of calls from Mid-City. Frantic calls. All saying something like this: "I'm in Mid-City, and we didn't have any water from the storm until a few mintues ago. Now it's coming into my house. I'm on my second floor, but I may have to go to my attic, and maybe even my roof." The calls got more and more desperate. Mid-City residents were getting hysterical. "I'm on my roof. My house is on this street near this landmark. I'm on my roof. Water is rising. Help me!" "I'm watching the water from my roof. There's an old lady/single mother across the street. I hear them yelling. Someone come help! We live on this street near this street." On a lot of these calls, you could hear crickets and frogs, with cries for help in the background.

The mood in the Entercom suites changed. It went from mild relief about the storm to confusion. Why was the water rising now, between midnight and 4 a.m. Tuesday, when the storm was over for almost 12 hours? Theories were posed: Broken water lines. Clogged drains. It wasn't raining, so it couldn't be that. But what was it? Confusion led to fear.

A man called in, telling us that he'd seen a Tulane Hospital doctor on a national news channel who said that the 17th Street Canal had breached. The Canal stretches from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain and divides Metairie from New Orleans. We were a little worried at first, because there's only one street between the canal and our cross street. But since the water was coming up in Mid-City, which was the only place we'd recieved panicky phone calls, we figured the breach had to be somewhere up that way. We worried that our neighborhood might have flooded. We live in Lakeview, and it has been around forever, through Betsy, Camille, and countless other hurricanes, with no trouble. Our house was over 50 years old. It sits off the street a good ways. We'd probably be okay.

Other people called in, confirming what the man reported. But no one knew where the breach was or how big it was. We were a little nervous. But it had to be up by Mid-City. We had Veterans Blvd. in the way of that area. We'd be fine.

They announced that Jefferson Parish, where my parents live, was not allowed home until Labor Day at 6 a.m. That didn't sound too good for my parents. Or my brother, who'd moved to Old Metairie earlier in the year.

Tierza Simmons, an FM personality on B97, had a Cingular phone. If you stood near the blown-out windows of the Conference Room, you could get reception. She offered to let us use her phone to call our families and let them know we were okay. Mark got through to his parents. I called Microtel next.

I got through on my first try. I asked the desk guy for my parents' room number, because I had it in my e-mail, which I could no longer access. I thought they were in room 109. But I wasn't positive, and at 4:15 a.m., I didn't think it would be polite to call the wrong room. The guy told me there was no one by that name. I spelled it, since it's a good ole Louisiana surname, and this Alabaman probably couldn't spell it. Nothing. "Well, there were some people who were supposed to check in at 3 and never made it. Could they be one of those?" Oh GOD. Don't say those words to me. Then it dawned on me. I said that they hadn't made reservations, that they'd evacuated from New Orleans, and checked in that afternoon sometime before 4 p.m. Central time. Maybe they were listed somewhere else. The guy said no. There was one list. I said they checked in, that they had to be there. He insisted that they weren't. I grew frantic.

I tried the desperation card. I told him about the helicopters swarming around me that made me keep asking him to repaat everything. I told him how I was in New Orleans still and just wanted to let my parents know that I was okay. I told him about the military and Wildlife and Fisheries trucks bringing the airlifted 9th Ward residents from their rooftops to the Dome. I told him about the horrible storm and our busted windows. I told him how my parents were kicked out of a hotel in Pensacola in TS winds and found refuge in his hotel. I said all this on the verge of tears. His response?

"That's nice."

WHAT!?!?! EXCUSE YOU!?!?!?!? Then he informed me that they were not on the current guest list, a former guest list, a future guest list, or the all-time guest list. I stopped being desperate and started being pissed. I told him that I thought they were in room 109, but didn't want to dial it in case I was wrong, could he see who was in room 109 please?

"There's no one even in that room."

I got angrier and angrier I spelled and respelled my father's name, but the guy bsically kept insisting that I was an idiot. I asked him if they were, in fact, the Microtel in Auburn, Alabama. He said yes. I said, "I got this number from an e-mail my in-laws sent me before we lost the Internet. I could NOT have obtained this number, or the name of your hotel, which I've NEVER even HEARD of, and so I KNOW for a FACT that they are there. Check that list again!"

He asked if it could be under a different name. I said the only three people in the room have the same last name. It would only be Stanley, Stan, Kathleen, Kathy, Geoffrey, or Geoff. He said, "Could it be Joseph?" That's my father's middle name. I told him that, and said, "Well, what room is that person in?"

"109." ASSSSSSSSSSHOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLE!!!!!!! That was the room I thought they were in in the first place. The room he said was empty. "CONNECT ME!"

My father answered the phone. I told him that he wasn't allowed home, that the news didn't sound good for his neighborhood or my brother's, and that mine was iffy. I asked if they'd heard about the breach, which they had, but nothing definite. I asked about the Yacht Club. It had burned to the ground. I asked about the Esplanade Mall. Under water. Target at Clearview? The front fell off. Things looked bleak all around.

I talked to the three members of my family, and we cried together. My dad told me that they only had their hotel room until Friday, because Auburn had a home game, and the rooms were already rented out. We didn't know what they were going to do. They weren't allowed back in JP. They would be nomads the following weekend.

In the meantime, someone came up to Mark and said we were starting to take on water. Security was letting them loot the Sundries shop again. Again, they were inventorying and purchasing everything we took. He went down 5 flights of stairs to help out. When I got off the phone, around 4:45, someone asked me to help out. I was glad to. For two hours, we carried boxes and bags of food, drinks, and medicinal supplies up to the second level. We had to avoid broken glass and work under the cover of darkness. We didn't want passersby to see what we were doing and join in. We finished just as day was breaking. Tired, hot, sweaty, and sore, we went back up the five flights of stairs to our production room. I got Shazzy to use the litter box the night before, and Lily went right before we had our sanctioned looting experience. We were about to get some long-overdue sleep when someone opened the door. "They're having a meeting up front, and everyone, staff or not, is required to attend."

We went to the lobby, and all of the refugees were there. The Entercom bigwigs told us something chilling:

"Water is rising, and it's rising quickly. We do not think we can keep you here. We are running out of generator fuel. We will lose water and electricity soon, and we will not be able to broadcast any more. Everyone must leave. We have two options, and we cannot tell you which one is better. You have to decide what is best for you. You can go to the Dome, or you can try your luck in an SUV. We don't know which is better or which is worse. That is for you to decide. But you have to decide NOW. The water is rising quickly, and you must leave in the next ten minutes."

Stay tuned for Part 4: "Where do we go now, where do we go now, ahhhahhhahhhahhahhhahh..."

Part 2: The storm begins

Quick recap: Sequestered in the DJ Lounge, I tried to stay sane by playing with the cats. But they were shaking with fear (and possibly cold as the room was so frigid. But I decided to keep it that way in case we lost power.) I got a sweater and blanket and made a coccoon in the chair by the computer. Once in a while, someone would walk in, survey the room, get something, and leave. I watched local news websites and the Weather Channel's site. I checked my e-mail and posted to MySpace a kazilion times. I had 6 hours of this, but at 5 p.m., one hour early, Mark walked in. Someone else had shown up and was going to take over the shift. Then we went to the Hyatt, which is where I left off.

Back in the Dominion Tower, sleep was impossible. Midnight came, and I went back to the computer. But I had exhausted all of the possible sites that would entertain me. I just kept wishing the storm would hurry up and hit land. It was dark outside. Dark and windy. And the storm was still a good 5-6 hours away from us. Around 1 a.m., I got out my textbooks and tried to do some studying. But I fell asleep while reading about teaching literacy. Funny. I woke up about an hour later to complete numbness in my arm, as I had fallen asleep on the desk on my arm. My face was ribbed to match my sweater. The wind was worse, and there was rain beating the windows. I tried to get the cats to eat or use the litter box, but they would have none of that. I put them back in their carriers, and I walked down the hall to the room where Mark was working. I stayed in there for the next two hours. By the time his shift was over, 4 a.m., the storm was still a good bit away, but conditions outside had worsened. Katrina was raging. The wind and the rain whipping against the building were so intense. But things would have to get worse, much worse, before they could get better. And that worried me.

Fears of the unboarded windows in the DJ Lounge prompted us to move our belongings and kittens into the sales area of the Entercom Suites. We chose an empty cubicle near the door, rolled out the sleeping bag, and tried to sleep. This was around 4:45.

By 6 a.m., the full force of Katrina was thrust upon us. I woke up to the sounds of someone yelling, "These windows are going to blow!!! Watch out!! Look at the water!!! We're flooding!!!" Tucked in a cubicle, I just stayed where I was. No water or windows were near us. At 6:15, the whole building swayed noticeably. It was like what I imagine an earthquake would be like. Holding back tears, I moved closer to Mark, who was snoring lightly. Fear coursed through my body. My mind was racing. The sounds of the creaking, swaying building were overpowering. I didn't know what to do. We couldn't go outside; it was far too dangerous. We were only on the 5th floor...if the building would be to collapse, we would probably be killed. I wanted my parents, who had finally found a hotel room (the last available one) at a HOJO in Pensacola around midnight. I wanted them there with me more than I had ever imagined possible. I wanted everything to be okay, but was positive it wouldn't be. While I was laying there, the power went out. With no humming electronics, the storm was more frightening. But the generators kicked in, and I let out a small sigh of relief over the fact that we were keeping electricity. But that sigh was squashed a second later as a crash came from not far away. The first window blew. Water went every where, driven in by 145+ mph winds. The carpets were saturated. People ran everywhere, yelling. At this point, the windows in the sales department systematically blew out. Someone ran over and told us to grab our stuff and move to the center of the suites.

We found an unused production room in the middle of the building. We dropped off the cats first, then went back for the rest. Although the room was soundproof, and it drowned out the sounds of the running, screaming people, the storm was still loud and clear. We saw a flurry of activity outside the window, and learned that the first studio windows of the FM stations were starting to give out.

The windows are double-paned, strong, and soundproof. We watched in horror and awe as the outer windows would get sucked in and out, in and out, in and out. Then, a crack would start spreading across the panes. Then, the sections of the cracking windows would start sucking in and out, in and out, in and out. One by one, or sometimes as a unit, the sections would fly away, never to be seen again. But the windows weren't done. The second window would start doing the same thing as the first. Once the inner window flew into oblivion, the winds raced around the studios, whipping the blinds, the papers, and the furniture around. Some things were sucked out. The doors to the studios would start banging around. Afraid we would lose the doors and have hurricane-force winds throughout the suite, someone found a bunch of bungee cords and rigged up a system connecting the doors and holding them shut. We were afraid that the windows looking into the hallways would go next, but they stayed in tact.

As day broke, we watched out the windows and saw things fly past. We watched the roofing paper billow and try to fly away. water gushed all around, out of holes on the roof, and up pipes on the roof. We still were not halfway through. Almost, but not quite.

Mark decided to forgo sleep in favor of helping out. I curled up with a blanket and a textbook, only to fall asleep again. I woke up about 9 a.m. to the sounds of the storm still raging outside. Mark peeked in on me at one point while I was sleeping and dropped off a Good Humor ice cream treat. I apparently acknowledged it but fell back to sleep and had no memory of it. I woke up excited that the ice cream fairy had visited, even though it was melted. I ate it anyway. By this point, people had been grazing in the kitchen all night, and now, Monday morning, we were running dangerously low on food and water. So the building security agreed to let some Entercom employees into the Sundries shop downstairs to get provisions. They only took the ice cream and dairy items, because those would be spoiled and unsellable after the storm. They inventoried what they took so the company could purchase the food from the lady who owned the shop. They figured she would appreciate some income.

During my short nap, Garland Robinette was on air. The ceiling started pulsating, as the glass conference room windows had blown out and the glass doors to the conference room were trying to do the same. They propped open the doors to the conference room to alleviate that problem, and the WWL Studio, the only one they had boarded up, was about to lose the boards. Garland ran through the building, still broadcasting, and set up in a hallway. WWL was there for the people.

Stay tuned for Part 3: The ending of the storm was really only the beginning.