One trick ahead of disaster

I've driven across Louisiana and parts of Texas before too. Also in very different circumstances.

Three years ago, after the female counterparts of Gustav and Ike hit Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi; after the evacuation crew, the rescue crew, and the cleanup crew had all moved through, we came: the salvage crew.

That was my inaugural journey to the South. Well, I'd lived in southeastern Virginia, which yes, Mabel, is most definitely the South, just not the Deep South.

I'd driven the Natchez Trace Parkway from Nashville to Alexandria (LA), and eventually set off on a three-week, 2000-mile odyssey across four states to locate and return all manner of large equipment bought, borrowed, or rented for hurricane support.

The endless devastation and despair are burned in my mind. But there were other novelties. Like arriving in Sabine Pass on a stiflingly hot November morning to get dive-bombed by what looked like small birds, but turned out to be enormous mosquitoes leaving three-inch welts. Or pulling into Alexandria (an empty shell of a town) for the first time in a torrential tropical rainstorm, staying in a smelly hotel with cockroaches aplenty, billed as "Alexandria's best lodging". Or driving for miles and miles and miles along I-10 (Hwy 90 was closed for much of its length) and seeing not a single billboard or road sign; they were all blown down. Or the hour-long drive of devastation out to Venice, just days after the road was finally dry and open, three months after the storms; dead horses and 18-wheelers suspended eerily from trees.

In a former life, I pre-positioned all manner of hurricane support and response forces prior to the storms. Out of harm's way but close enough to respond quickly, adjusting their placement as the storm's track changed. Ready to swoop in once the storm passed and I gave the word.

This time I was also dodging a storm, but now I was the mouse on the run. I cancelled my side-trips to Beaumont and Houston and stayed well inland from Shreveport to Austin, one step ahead of Ike. I watched the winds shift and the clouds circle overhead on a preternaturally calm and sunny day, and listened all 400 miles to nonstop local coverage of the storm, simulcast on satellite radio. I watched as gas prices rose over 30 cents per gallon in a single day; in fact, many stations were adjusting their advertised prices as I drove by. I passed any number of evacuees, many towing travel trailers, as they fled town going the opposite direction, but they were mainly radiating like spokes of a wheel from Gulf towns, while I cut cross-country.

I also passed relief & recovery traffic - a stake-bed filled with fuel drums and the rectangular fuel containers I remembered so well from Katrina - a large semi-truck loaded with a large cooler, an enormous generator, a backhoe, orange plastic-lattice fencing, and any number of hand tools. And every so often, I'd pass a convoy of utility vehicles; destined, I am sure, to wait out the storm and then move in quickly.

I felt like a pawn (or, perhaps more accurately, a bishop) on a board I'd once controlled.