Sat, Sep 24, 2005

Good News! - Just a quick update. Nora, Jackson and I left Thursday morning at 8:30 to Jackson, MS to stay with Abbey & Michael. We had GREAT luck with the traffic. We were ahead of all the mess. I got off I-10 at Lake Charles and took backroads and did really well finding my wasy thru the small towns. **See David I CAN read a map**

David had to stay behind b/c he is the safety manager of Friestone and had a lot of responsibility coordinating all of this. He was in a shelter with between 200-300 emergency personel, Police officers, EMT, mayor, judges, ect. They had direct phone calls every few hours with the National Weather Service to keep updated.

They lost electricity around 9pm - but phone lines remained clear!! even cell phone lines! I last spoke to him around 10:30pm and he was going to try and get some sleep before the next conference call with the NWS at midnight.

This morning I was up at 5:30am and tried to call but got his voice mail...@ 8am he called me to tell me he was OK!! Praise the Lord!! The second call I got from him around 10am - he was at our home.

He had to walk to it b/c many trees down blocking roads. Our home is OK~!! One tree down-very damaged, couple shutters blown off and a screen blown off but the roof, windows, and everything else OK!!! Water standing in the drainage ditch and over the drive but not up into the yard! Praise the Lord again!!!

On his was walking back tohis car he decided to walk down the next street over and he said it appeared to have been hit by a tornado b/c of all the severe damage. Roofs complety pealed off and could sese thru the houses and lots of trees blown over-roots sticking out of ground. WOW- we got very lucky!!!

In case some of you forgot where we live, our home is in Orange, TX right on the TX/LA boarder.

At this time, I am not sure how long Nora, Jackson and I will stay with our friends here in MS - probably until the water and electricity are back on at home.

Tonight we are counting our blessings - that we will have a husband and daddy to go home to!!! Thanks all of you for praying for us in the Rita adventure.

We grew up in KY and this was our 1st experience with a huricane. whew! (So thankful we have this webpage to be able to keep everyone updated! It had expired but we got it back up and plan to renew for another year.)

God bless everyone! -Bonnie