New Orleans Tracks Hurricane Gustov

[Doug I]

Power should be back tomorrow

David - do you have a loooooooong extension cord?

I saw a Roadside Industry Profiting Off Frustrated Folks guy selling Titan generators out of a trailer. Police were there Maybe he was legitimate, maybe not.

I have seen 4 generator units sold by Home Depot and they've all been defective. Two we got had sludge in the carbs that we had to disassemble and clean (luckily 4 of us at work knew what to do). Another hasn't worked yet, and the owner was told "no returns" and the replacement for that 1 has broken both engine mounts.

Once the power comes back we'll pretty much be back to normal. Most of the local gas stations were able to open late Wednesday or yesterday.

We were going to relocate our office today as net access, which is critical to us, will be down for an unknown time. Packed everything, shut down he servers and then the phones came on. No power - just the phones. Power, we were told, could be another 7 to 14 days. With the phones DSL is possible, so as of this evening we're on-line and have plenty of gas available. Unpack everything.

The post Katrina recovery effort was a cluster fluck from day one. No planning, no planned response and no active management till outside resources arrived. This time around things have been better. Granted the problems haven't been as bad, but at least planning was in place and people knew what to do a week before they had to do it. It wasn't perfect but it worked damn well. The needs in BR caught many a little short as most of the advance planning was directed NO's way. The response afterwards has been about all it could be.

Now that it's over let's hope IKE leaves the east coast the hell alone

[DAVID GAGNARD]

Well, some good news and some bad news, but the bad ain't that bad..............

The bad, power is restored to within 3 houses of me, power company says I will DEFINTELY have power back by tuesday!!!!!!!!, no doubt I'll be the last SOB to get power tuesday night........

The good news is a buddy got his power back on yesterday and lent me his big a$$ generator... got it "hot wired" in my shop, which feeds the shop and back-feeds my house, will run everything cept my central air unit, at least I can walk in a room with a Coleman lantern at night and take a hot shower and get some work done...

BTW: work is piling up and I worked today and will work tomorrow afternoon...we had from 10 to 20 inches of rain,depending on location and a lot of subdivisions flooded from 1 to 4 feet deep, mucho cars went under,that's where I come in.......In the next two weeks, I'll probably do the same amount of claims I normally do in 6 to 8 weeks!!!!!!

Well, I gotta go to my niece's wedding this pm and I'm fixing to head out....

At least I'l be online a little more now........

How you'll doing down there Doug??????? News report says Baton Rouge is still 75% out of power and a few friends have kids over there in college and they have no power........

David