momoese

The news I'm seeing is horrific. Hope you guys are ok.

GATrops

Southeast coastal GA was very lucky (again). All we have had is some rain and a little wind. I cannot express my sympathy enough for those impacted by the storm in Alabama, Mississippi and Lousiania. It breaks my heart to turn on the TV.

Our Thoughts and Prayers Are With You.

bananalover

I'm up here in N. Geogia. We also got a little rain and a little wind from the very outer bands.
I did hear from my friend in Covington, LA . They went north and were lucky they did because she said if they had gone west or east they would have never made it out because everyone was going those ways. They went up to Tenn. and were fine. She does not know if she has a house left though.
Have not heard from a friend in Mobile. They were going to stay! I know they will probably not have power for a while but I do hope they left and did not stay after all.

bigdog

Tim and his nursery, gingerwoodnursery.com, are located in St. Gabriel, LA. It's south of Baton Rouge. Haven't seen him post in a couple of days, hope he's ok. Here in Nashville, we had high winds and lots of rain on Mon. night/Tues. morning, worse further west. Lots of shredded and broken leaves on the bananas, but surprisingly no casualties. I consider myself very fortunate not to live on the Gulf coast right now. My grandmother lives in Pensacola, which dodged the bullet for the most part this time. I just can't imagine the hell that those people less fortunate are going through right now. I tried to imagine the fear of what it would be like to drown in your own house, or suffocate from the heat in your attic. It just makes me sick to think about all of the suffering going on. My prayers are with them.

Casa Del Gatos

Anybody heard from Tim yet? St. Gabriel is about 10 or 12 miles south of Baton Rouge, right on the Mississippi River. I am certain there was some significant flooding. But they are inland a good bit, hopefully not the devastation that is elsewhere.

I am in Silverhill, AL, East of Mobile by about 30 miles, but we got 100 mph wind gusts with PLENTY of rain.

Our damage is:
Three whole trees down. One I won't miss, two I will. Lots of cutting and hauling!
1 or 2 dumptrucks worth of branches from Pecans, Oaks and Magnolias scattered over 3 acres of lawn (sigh).
And about 20 six-foot bananas are toast. (better than I expected, actually)
5 long days without electricity, except by generator. Had to have refrigerator running for medications.

All in all, I think we came out pretty damn well, considering our friends near Gulfport in Miss. were at ground zero. Their house was erased from the earth. No trace of any belongings at all. Not even anything left for the looters! At least they made it out alive.

We have electricity here now, but travel into Mobile is problematic and electric service there is sporadic, so I am tele-commuting today to save gas. I am the technical manager for an online computer backup company Enveloc so I will be helping clients in LA, MS and AL restoring data they have backed up with us.

Gas stations all the way east into Pensacola are running out within hours of getting new deliveries. Lots of evacuees and other displaced folks trying to fuel their getaways, and those of us still needing gas to run generators are waiting in line for hours in some cases.

There is no overstating the impact of this thing. No natural disaster in the US has ever been so widespread and devastating. The real number of casualties and property damage may not be known for months or years. The casino industry on Mississippi's coast has been completely wiped out.

Believe it or not, New Orleans didn't get it as badly as it would have if Katrina had moved 30 miles more westward before landfall. There would probably have been no survivors and no recovery for decades! If you've seen footage of Gulfport and Biloxi and Ocean Springs, imagine New Orleans with that impact.

All in all, it's good to see other countries offering US assistance after all these years of us helping everybody else!

Bananavilla

Casa Del Gatos, glad to here that you are fine. I was just saying to my wife last night that I wonder if the banana forum member down in Silverhill Alabama is alright. We even took the time to look Silverhill up on the map and were expecting a worse report.
Sounds like you were fortunate compared to so many others.

Are your banana corms still there and just ripped to shreds or completely gone? You now how bananas will regrow if the corm is intact.

Nice to hear from you,
Mike

tlturbo

Glad to hear from you guys that have been able to communicate. We have friends in Baton Rouge and they are without power. I thought Charley devistated Pine Islane where I'm at now (condo for fishing) but after what I have seen this week, WOW.

I hope everyone is OK and that we will eventually get reports from everyone.

Terry

tropicalkid

Nice to hear from some of the southern members.
Not a word on Tim Chapman though.
Hope he is O.K.

tropicalkid

momoese

On the member list it shows that Tim visited the board yesterday.

Maury

St Gabriel is about 10 miles south of my house in Baton Rouge. We weren't hit to bad. Should not have been any flooding in St Gabriel.

TimChapman

Hi all,

I hadn't seen this thread. I am fine, thank you for the concern. St. Gabriel is just outside of Baton Rouge. We had wind in the 60 mph range, and very little rain. I had lots of pecan and oak branches to pick up and a trashed landscape. Those things are minor, and nothing to complain about when so many others are dealing with so much more. We were fortunate enough to get power restored within 36 hours which actually shocked me. The area around me had many downed trees, but it seems everybody was very lucky as i haven't seen any damage to homes.

We certainly lucked out. I have several friends from new orleans and surrounding areas and haven't heard from any of them. I'm pretty sure most evacuated well before the hurricane hit.


Tim Chapman

GATrops

Glad to hear from you Tim. We will continue to keep you and everyone else impacted by the storm in our thoughts and prayers.

Richard

Casa Del Gatos

Tim,
Sounds like you were in a good place. Our power took closer to 96 hours to get back and we had close to 10 inches of rain. That's OK, the ground can take it. Like you, very little structural damage in our area. All in all, we were VERY lucky!

In addition the gas shortage forced me to work from home all week (very understanding boss!)

sean

Glad everyone is doing well...we got our power back after 5 days! Though it is nothing in comparison to what the folks in NOLA and the gulf coast are going through.

After going through Andrew, I can relate to the uncertainty and chaos of the situation, though Andrew was a dry storm. Flooding would have immensely compounded the problem in south florida as most people did not evacuate for it.

Whats amazing was the response the government had post-andrew, as we had national guard here within a day or two to bring order to the looting going on in homestead. Funny how no one has brought that fact up yet!