Luckily for us it was far enough.

Unbeknown to us, buildings in Poplarville, MS, about 42 miles away, were destroyed. Had the storm veered just a skosh west, New Orleans would have been devastated by winds. We were stuck until late afternoon, when the highways were cleared of fallen trees.

Karen’s mom drove alone to Tennessee. My parents and brother went south to Houma. It would be a week before we knew they were safe. At that time cell phones and landlines routed through the same exchanges, and the buildings for both 504 and 985 were under water. I could call anyone in the world except the people I needed to. Karen and I drove home.

Our house was undamaged but without power. That night it was 85°F at midnight (29°C) with 90% humidity. It was completely silent except for the neighbor’s generator, and so dark you could see the Milky Way. No television or radio stations, no news, no social media, no cell phone service because the emergency generators ran out of fuel. There were maybe 3 families in our little neighborhood of 50 houses. We slept as well as we could with all of the windows open, hoping nobody was out robbing houses.

The next day we packed our clothes, rabbit, guinea pig, gerbils and ourselves into my Nissan Altima and drove north, but only after I released my pet finches into the wild so they had a chance at survival. We had no more room in the car, and no idea when we would be home again. To this day I hope they survived.

The 3-hour trip to Jackson, MS took 12, and we were lucky to get a hotel room, gas and some sleep. In the morning we saw the first news reports of the floods. We had no idea the levees had broken. Karen and I were both born in New Orleans, and the image of the city both under water and on fire would take days to process.

The drive to Pine Bluff was uneventful.

Lucky for us power returned a week later and we were able to go home. We eventually learned that everyone was safe, and that many things would never be the same again.