My experience with Gustav

          Have you ever been in a hurricane? Well I have, many times. I have lived in Louisiana all of my life, until I moved to Kentucky in 2011. The last big hurricane I was in was Hurricane Gustav.

          It was the second most destructive hurricane in the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. The storm was the seventh tropical cyclone, third hurricane, and the second major hurricane of the season. Gustav triggered the largest evacuation in United States history with more than 3 million fleeing.

          It formed on August 25, 2008, about 260 miles southeast of Haiti. It strengthened into a tropical storm that afternoon and into a hurricane the morning of August 26. Later that day it made landfall near a town in Jacmel. It inundated Jamaica and ravaged Western Cuba and moved across the Gulf of Mexico.

          When Gustav was in the Gulf it gradually weakened because of the high winds and dry air. It weakened to a category 2 hurricane late August 31, it remained its strength until it make landfall on the morning of September 1 near Cocodrie, Louisiana.

          By that time my family and I was already prepared for the storm. We went and helped a friend of the family with her house and land hoping to survive the hurricane. She lived with her daughter who had Down Syndrome. She asked if we would stay there and keep them company, so we did. People were calling Gustav “the storm of the century … the mother of all storms.” Everyone we knew was worried and was evacuating. But my father is a firefighter and we stayed to help others who were in need.

As the hurricane hit Plaquemine, it was rough. The wind was up to 115 mph and the rain was coming down hard. We watched as trees fell over and roofs flew off houses. One significant thing I remember is our neighbors shed tumbling through his yard and across the road into the river. The lady we were staying with was terrified. As her house shook the lights went out and her back porch tore into pieces. When everything calmed down we turned on the radio and listened to all that had happened.

         In the state of Louisiana, 34 parishes were declared as disaster areas. 48 deaths were blamed on Hurricane Gustav. Five were due to falling trees, two due to a tornado, and the rest were indirect deaths. In Baton Rouge, wind damage was the worst of any storm in memory. The damage was so severe to effectively shut the city down for over a week. Most schools were closed for a week, and many for two or three weeks while power was restored. Around 1.5 million people were without power in Louisiana in September.

           We were left without power for three weeks, living off of water and MRE’s. It was so hot and there was no way of getting cool while helping others save their homes and cleaning their yards of debris. The roads were covered with trees; it took all day and night clearing them out.

         When it was over we went to our house to see what damage was done. Our home was torn in two, it was no longer livable. My husband and I moved in with his family until we moved into our own house. My mother and father went and lived with a friend of theirs. Debris cleanup was still ongoing at the end of 2008, four months after the storm had passed.

Written By: Heather G.