We pulled the black Suburban up to my sister’s house.  Chris and I had to get out to remove two large tree limbs.  As she pulled onto the pavement, I could hear the trees and leaves crackle underneath the tires.  Many tree limbs covered the front yard, but we saw no structural damage to the roof.  I was still in awe of the damage in my immediate eye line.  Their mailbox had taken a ride down the street.  A stop sign across the street was near parallel to the ground.  Wires hung low and fallen branches weighed them down.  As we walked down the walkway to our house, two Chinooks flew over head.  I couldn’t see them, but I could hear that they were close.

Walking into the house was very odd.  We leave a disaster area inside where everything is seemingly as is when we left.  River Ridge had no water damage, so that is one major headache we didn’t have to deal with.  I opened the door expecting the feel of cool air on my sweaty skin caused from typical southern humidity.  I felt no such thing and caught whiff of a terrible smell.  Chenae and Chris began to empty out their closets and personal belongings.  I walked outside to survey the damage in the back and saw that a large tree limb had fallen on the roof and broke into three pieces.  One of the larger pieces was hanging literally by a limb on the gutter.  I removed it.  Fortunately, there was no damage done to the roof.   The basketball goal was tipped over as was every other one I saw in front yard driveways.

Caitlyn began to remove all the rotten food items from the fridge and freezer.  I did the same from the extra unit inside the garage.  With my surgeons gloves, I removed the spoiled meats from the freezer.  My nose was stopped up and I could still inhale the terrible fumes.  The texture was mushy and I could see random juices flowing from it.  I quickly made up my mind to just pick and toss things.  I had no further desire to look.  It was bad enough smelling it.  After a minute or two, I realized that one of the bags had a hole in it.  As soon as a picked it up, stale blood filled the freezer bottom.  It was quite disgusting.  I filled a whole garbage can with old food.  Then, I used literally 1/2 a bottle of Clorox Cleanup.  I didn’t clean it, but sprayed it.  While I was doing it, my sweat was mixing with the fumes from the Clorox.  It was not fun.  I wanted to open the garage door to circulate some air but couldn’t.  We agreed that it was not a good idea to keep any doors open for fear of looters. 

We kept all the doors locked, which became annoying as we made multiple trips to the SUV.  Each trip to the door requires thought.  You have to be prepared.  You are a prisoner in your own home.  Several factors are always in your mind and you have to train yourself, very quickly, to get in that mindset.  1) People are desperate at this time.  If you open your door at the wrong time, you could get shot or jumped or whatever.  2) You’re not supposed to be there, and police are told to shoot first and ask later.  It only takes one with a quick trigger finger.  3) Many have taken it amongst themselves to protect their neighborhood, so if they don’t know you might be in trouble.  Each of these things is something that you have to think about every time you leave the house.  Moreover, the way you act is impulsive and somewhat frantic.  Due to the above factors, we were moving things out of the house into the Suburban very quickly. In the back of my head, I knew Chris had a .44, but I thought, "Why?  Do we actually know how to use this on another human?"

I swear I felt like I was looting Chenae and Chris’ house.  I was walking out of the house with their TV and I hear choppers.  On one side, I saw a Blackhawk coming from the east and Dolphin from the north.  I don’t know much about flying levels for choppers but these boys were low.  I could clearly make out the heads in the pilot seats they were so low.  At that moment, I just thought damn they see us.  What will happen?  Are they looking for us?  What are they looking for?  We need to move faster.  All I saw in my head were pictures of war zones on the news.  It was like having the news in my head.

I ran through the house to see how much more I could help Chris and Chenae.  The sweat was dripping down pretty steadily.  It was began hard for me to hold heavier things because they’d slip against my sweaty hands.  I took a few bags of clothes out to the car and 2 Coast Guard choppers flew one behind the other.  The whole time I think ok we have to move faster, this place will be crazy tomorrow (the official day for residents to enter the parish) and less than 10 miles from here a city is underwater and almost 100% empty.

My House
We took the Suburban and Chenae’s black Envoy, that was left at the house during the storm, to my house.  I felt like an army that just made a stop for supplies and we were onto the next supply house.  As we surveyed the damage, we heard more choppers above.  We passed a few people that were driving by and they waived.  All I could think was that we better waive back or they’ll shoot. 

We turned the corner to the house to see two of our neighbors on the street.  It was good to see them.  I said hi and grabbed Caitlyn so we could get started on our house.  It was about 1030 and I wanted to get out before the major heat came at noon.  We walked in the backyard first and saw that a huge tree came completely uprooted and missed our house by less than 6 inches.  Our whole backyard, which was large had only one path out  due to the mammoth that fell.  It was simply amazing to see the tree uprooted and how it pushed the fence out over it out from the ground.

We made our way into the house and immediately the stench of old food hit us.  It wasn’t the normal smell I’m used to coming inside.  The house was hot and untouched.  It was so weird to see so much destruction outside and absolutely nothing wrong on the inside.  As I cleaned out my closets and room, I kept trying to switch on the lights forgetting that there was no electricity.  I did it several times strictly out of habit.  I didn’t feel the rush looting my own house as I did my sister’s.  I think it was because our house is on a hidden street and we also had two neighbors there.  There was no one except a few passer bys near their house.  I wanted to hurry though because of the heat.

My bed was laid out with three bags one for clothes, important papers and miscellaneous things.  It wasn’t hard to pick out what I needed and what I didn’t.  I moved swiftly.  Probably the most unimportant things I grabbed were a few DVDs and my PS2.  I put papers for the house I was supposed to close on the Monday when Katrina hit.  It seemed relatively pointless since I knew I wasn’t going to buy it.  I was excited about it and now it seemed completely irrelevant.

I got into my Camry and we left 3 cars fully packed.  The street were narrow with debris along all sides.  The combination of choppers and heavy machinery randomly passing in the streets to clean up reminded me of a defeated warzone.  It was completely surreal and the feeling is indescribable.  We went to look at the house I was going to buy on the way out.  I saw a tree on the street that had fallen on a transformer.  It split the pole like a toothpick and buried the transformer about 3 feet below the ground.  At that point, I realized the force that had come through as if I just had it screamed in my face.

Our houses were ok.  Our spirits were lifted because we knew our homes were still there.  A little relief, for the first time in 10 days, began to set in.  It was so hard fathoming not being able to return for months.  I had to force myself to realize that there was virtually no city outside our neck of the woods.  If I had to imagine what a thief feels like, today was my day to feel it.  I had successfully ripped two houses off and just had to get back to Baton Rouge to unload the goods.

I only wanted one more thing and that was to see my parents.  We headed back to Baton Rouge.  They were on their way to meet us…

K