This Too, Shall Pass

Well, we made it out. We left New Orleans this morning at 3:15am. The journey, which normally would take around 4 or 4 and 1/2 hours took exactly 8 hours, much of the extra time sitting in bumper to bumper traffic both on I10 leaving the city, as well as on I55 through Louisiana and Mississippi. This evacuation was better than our first with Ivan, during which the first 10 miles took 3 hours and we lost a car due to overheating, but worse than Katrina which was smooth sailing throughout. It seemed this time around that a lot of people had the same idea we did... leave in the middle of the night. They also waited longer to open contraflow this time around (opening at 4am after we were already on the road). For Katrina, they had opened it at 4pm, about 10 hours before we left. Huge difference! In retrospect, we also should have gone west and then north, instead of North and then west. It seemed like a lot more people were headed north instead of west. Next time, if there is a next time, I'm thinking we'll leave a day earlier in the middle of the night. Convincing Jeff of that will be another issue.

We are now safely at Arthur and Lovejoy's (my boss' parents) in Pollock, LA, which is just north of Alexandria. What a huge relief it was when we pulled in their driveway! We'll likely lose power in 2 days or so when the remainder of Gustav passes over us as a tropical storm, but we are out of the way of flooding, and the major storm impacts. And more importantly, within driving distance of an operational hospital, just in case of more preterm labor issues.

Now we wait .... to see if the levees hold, to see where my doctor will be post storm, to see if our home survives another giant storm - this one coming from a different direction, to see if our lives will be disrupted again for months, to see if our city actually learned anything the first time around. Now we wait ....