Ivan

Hurricane

I am here in Atlanta through Friday and it looks like Ivan will be here on Friday. Considering how the Atlanta airport has problems even during normal storms... I am not too confident that I will be getting home on Friday night... we'll see.

I once was in a hurricane. It was about 10 years ago and I was travelling for work. I was in Houston and watched the news about the hurricane that was coming my way. Later that same week, I was going to Alabama, just north of Mobile for another business trip. I called my boss and asked if I should come back home or continue on with the trip. He said that if the planes are flying there, then I should go. I did.

I remember how the rain and the winds just slowly got worse and worse until the sun went down and then just how bad it got after that. My most profound memory is of one of the many evacuees that stopped by the little hotel that I was staying and trying to help. He came in to the hotel and said "my house is gone, do you have any rooms" well, the hotel was more than full... we had people in the meeting rooms, sleeping in the lobby, so he said "well, I have my generator in the back of my truck, it's the only thing I took" He set it up outside the lobby and we had power, so he could watch the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs. I still laugh at that story, because here was this guy..knowing that his house was going to blow away, and he grabs his generator so he can watch a baseball game.

This storm looks very bad and I feel bad for those folks out there in the panhandle of Florida and Alabama.. it looks like it is heading that way right now. I remember seeing those houses on the beach, that are on stilts.. they will be gone by the weekend if this storm doesn't slow down.