Fleeing Gustav at the New Orleans airport

I started to think things were getting a little weird yesterday when the National Guard drove through my neighborhood in Bay St. Louis and set up camp outside town near the Silver Slipper Casino sign.

Is it just bad luck that I have a flight out of the U.S. to study abroad on the same day a hurricane is coming?

Today I got up at 3:45 a.m., threw my stuff in the Corolla and headed toward New Orleans with my dad.  Somewhere in Waveland we started to see long lines at gas stations … at 4 a.m.  My dad said something was terribly wrong.  I thought the cars were from Waveland people gassing up.  Wrong.  As we followed 90 toward Louisiana, we were met by a constant stream of cars on 90, which is not an official evacuation route.  We took 90 into New Orleans because the other routes were all contraflow.  Not too far along 90, we found a bunch of cars going contraflow, despite the highway still being regular flow.  Talk about dangerous.

It didn’t take too long to get into the city on 90.  There were virtually no cars going our direction, while the other lane was full and moving pretty slow at times.  With all those headlights coming toward us and none with us, it felt like we were really driving into something awful, like the world was ending but we had the antidote for the awful disease in New Orleans.  That’s a little exaggerated.  But it was a really creepy drive.  We also got lost briefly near Oschner, but a cop showed us the right way to the airport.

I knew they were checking reservations at the turn-off to the airport and only allowing passengers inside.  Also knew all the stores inside would be closed and only minimal staff would be present.  But once I got inside the airport, I discovered that United didn’t even plan to open their kiosk until 6:30 a.m.  I joined the massive line to wait.  A lot of normal people were flying out as well.  A family from Washington who had just vacationed in Florida stood behind me still in beach gear.  Another family was off to Japan for the father’s military assignment.  They made me really sad.  Two little girls, one on crutches, and several pets.

I’m really tired.  My flight is not supposed to actually leave until 11 a.m.  Sometime this week I changed my flight from noon to 7 a.m. and I’m so glad I did.  Looks like that noon flight won’t make it to Dulles in time to catch the flight to Paris.  If you’re wondering why I didn’t just fly out of Gulfport or Jackson or Mobile … it was more than $300 to cancel my flight (you can’t just cancel one leg of it and find your own way to D.C.) plus the Paris flight is now more than $2,000 one-way.  My round-trip tickets were less than $1,500 total.  All I could do was switch to the 7 a.m.

Back at home my parents are readying everything.  We’re not expecting Gustav to make a direct hit on the Mississippi coast, so my parents might not even evacuate.  Before I left, we moved my car to Stennis Space Center, where my dad works.  My dad got the boat out of the harbor and tied all the large items in the yard to trees.  He’s really into strategic stuff like this since he’s an oceanographer.  We also moved lots of our valuables and clothes.  In Katrina everything was in our house or parked by the Winn Dixie in our van.  It all got wet, and most of it got muddy.

Our house is approximately 20 feet above sea level, opposed to 15 feet in Katrina.  We have storm shutters and an upstairs now.  But from the most recent Weather Underground storm surge prediction, the most we’ll get is 9 feet of water.

From what I’ve heard, not that many people plan to evacuate from the coast.  New Orleans basically has to evacuate since there aren’t any shelters in the city, but we’re hanging on.  Wish us the best!

On airport conditions:  It doesn’t look like many flights are leaving that I can see.  It’s pretty quiet and boring here.  A boy near me is playing with an MRE.  I really hope someone in the airport gave it to him.  That’d be cool.  There’s also a girl from New York with a small dog.  I had no idea you could bring dogs as a carry-on.  I just talked to a girl across from me in the same situation.  She’s from Baton Rouge and her visa to study in Helsinki starts tomorrow.  Her parents are across the street in a parking lot making sure the plane leaves.  Crazy.  I might go check the vending machine again.  Last I checked, it wouldn’t accept any money.