like running water, lights, food, family and friends!!!
Hello Everyone -
Thank you all for your emails, phone calls, and concerns. Sean and I truly appreciate them and it is very heart warming to see how many caring friends we have!
As for the hurricane, we are all okay. We had to stay because there was just no way we could leave our animals. If we were to pack up and evacuate, we would only be able to take a handful of animals with us and there is no way we would be able to pick and choose.
The storm hit on Monday morning and we basically just rode it out. There are five of us here, Sean, his cousin Mark who lives near New Orleans, and a couple of friends of ours who live in Mandeville in lower lying areas. The five of us just sat and waited. The electricity went out at around 5am. It wasn't bad then though because the storm was passing through and it was cool in the facility. The winds were pretty bad but fortunately, we did not have any damage to the building.
Our facility is located on a piece of land that is about 30 acres. There is the main building up front where there are six units. We rent two of the six units. There's a large cylindrical storage shed in the back and also a small trailer used for storage. While the main building was fine, the winds were strong enough to blow in the door on the storage shed and then once that happened, the pressure pretty much blew the sides apart. The trailer was completely blown apart. Besides the damage that occurred to those two buildings, we maybe had two or three trees down.
Hurricane Katrina was pretty much past us by Monday evening. On Tuesday morning, we stepped outside and thought that things really were not that bad. That is until we started driving around. It seems like we were really spared. There was no flooding in our area. However, there were trees down EVERYWHERE. You couldn't drive more than 20 feet down the road without having to drive around a tree. There were trees snapped in half and others that were just completely uprooted. There were power poles snapped in half like toothpicks and others that were pulled town by trees. There were quite a few homes that were crushed by trees as well. It was a horrifying scene. People started getting out there and cutting up the trees with their own chain saws just so cars would be able to maneuver around the roads. The entire St. Tammany parish we are in had no electricity, no fuel, no phones and no running water.
Today is Friday, and things really have not changed much. The days seem to blur together and I didn't even realize that it was September until late last night. This is the first time I have been able to check my email and check the forums online. We still do not have electricity. Thank god it has been a little cooler yesterday and today. We do have a landline phone that works and our cell phones work intermittently. We were not able to call our families to let them know that we are all okay until late Wednesday night and the landline phone was only working intermittently then. It seems to work just fine now though which is good news because it's a sign that things may be slowly returning to normalcy.
Sean and I purchased a generator on Sunday morning and tried to get as much fuel as possible. However, we weren't prepared and didn't have enough gas cans so we were only able to get about 20 gallons. The generator that we picked up runs for 12 hours at 50% capacity on 6 gallons of gas to give you a general idea. We used the generator very sparingly because we only had a limited supply of fuel. A friend of ours stopped by and told us that he was able to drive to Baton Rouge and get gas. Baton Rouge is about an hour away from us. We decided to try and make the trip in order to get some more gas because we only had about 10 gallons left.
We were able to get some 55-gallon drums so we started driving. We actually ended up driving past Baton Rouge and drove for about 1 1/2 hours. We were able to find some open gas stations and miraculously enough, we filled up both 55-gallon drums as well as a few smaller containers. On the way back, we also spotted an open Home Depot and were able to buy two smaller generators. The small generators aren't very useful but we can at least run one of the small refrigerators on it.
So the trip was a success and we came back with two more generators and about 150 (over $400 worth) gallons of gas. We are basically looking at things as if we won't have electricity for several weeks. We want to be as best prepared as we can because we are going to try our hardest not to have to leave the animals. We are currently only running two of the generators and leaving the third as a back up in case one of the two breaks down. We basically just run a few fans to have some air circulation and keep us and the animals cool, the refrigerator and a big freezer that we have. So long as we have food and water, I think we'll be okay.
Sean and his cousin were able to rewire the water pump that we have so that it can be plugged into the 220 volt plug on our large generator so we can actually have some running water. We hook it up for about an hour each day - just long enough for all of us to take a quick (very cold) shower and fill up all our water containers so that we are able to wash our hands, flush toilets, water animals, etc. throughout the day. We are on a well and since there was no flooding in our area, our water is not contaminated. We may try and get some more food today or tomorrow. FEMA is setup nearby and is handling out MRE's, bottled water, and ice but the lines are HUGE. We heard that a couple of supermarkets and gas stations in our area were able to open with generators so we might check them out.
Sean set up the DSL modem on the generator so that I could do a little bit of internet stuff today. He said that if the power is not restored by next week, we might have to start running ads for animals for sale and just drive out to Baton Rouge to ship things because we will need to start generating some cash flow because we have already spent so much money. Our biggest loss so far is our rodent room. Almost our entire mouse and rat colonies have been wiped out. Many of the breeders and feeders died from overheating and the majority of the pregnant females died giving birth from the stress and heat. We can keep the reptiles as cool as possible and make sure they have water but feeding them will become an issue. They should be okay for a while but we're not quite sure what we'll do if it takes over a month to get electricity back. I heard a rumor that the local power company said that St. Tammany should not expect power for at least 30 days.
Thankfully, we are on the north shore and not in the New Orleans area. I can not believe what those people are going through. It's not only having no water and no food, but all the violence that is happening with the looting/pillaging and raping is horrible. I heard that they have now declared Marshall Law in the New Orleans area and the law enforcement have been given give permission to use deadly force and to shoot to kill. We have started to see similar effects trickle into our area although it has not gotten to such a horrible degree yet. We are now keeping our doors locked all the time and Sean went and locked the front gate so that vehicles can not drive down our driveway. We brought all the guns and ammunition inside in case we do have to defend ourselves (thank god the guys are experienced with guns because I really don't know much about them!). We have heard that there has been some looting in the Mandeville area and neighborhoods have signs nailed to their trees that say "You loot, We shoot!" and it will only be a matter of time until it spreads to Covington where we are.
We are concerned with someone coming by in the middle of the night and stealing our generators because that has already happened to someone who lives down the street from us. He said he woke up in the middle of the night and his fans/AC was not working so he thought his generator was out of fuel. He went outside and heard his generator running but the sound seemed to get further and further away. He shone his flashlight out and saw a truck driving away with his generator on the back of it! So we are now being very cautious. The entire atmosphere is very different compared to just a few days ago right after the hurricane. People are still helpful and friendly, but it seems like you have to be on guard a lot more than before. Better safe than sorry I guess...
Many of you have asked us how you can help. The only thing we can say is to please help donate to the Red Cross. Kingsnake.com has a link on their main page for donations.
Thank you all for your concerns. We will keep you updated of our situation as it progresses...! Here are a few photos too...
Thanks,
Celia
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Celia Chien
www.ExoticsByNature.com
www.BallPythonMorphs.com
www.CornsnakeMorphs.com
