I was one of the lucky ones. \r\n\r\nFriday August 26:\r\n\r\nFriday night I was sitting in a pool hall in Harahan with my fiancée, Kelly, shooting pool and having a good time. We moved over to the bar after playing a few games, and started talking amongst ourselves. The news was on in the background, and everyone was quietly discussing this new hurricane. We started talking to some of the other people at the bar, and no one was really concerned about Katrina. We were talking with one of the girls at the bar, discussing how long they\'d possibly close school for. She was a teacher, and was talking about missing a few days of class. Kelly and I were expecting to miss a day or two of school, but nothing major. That night was probably the first time either of us even considered that this thing could possibly become a major problem. We went home, and thought very little about it for the rest of the night.\r\n\r\nSaturday August 27:\r\n Saturday Kelly and I met up with her parents and went to lunch. Her parents were pretty worried about the hurricane, and were trying to figure out what they were going to do. Kelly and I decided that we would head up to Baton Rouge that afternoon so that she wouldn\'t get stuck in all that traffic Sunday trying to head back up. I decided to go with her because I was pretty sure that UNO was going to be closed at least on Monday, if not longer, so I\'d get to spend a few more days with her. We left River Ridge at about 7:00 pm and decided to take Airline to avoid some of the interstate traffic.\r\n\r\n Well, Airline was quicker than the interstate, but it still took us about four hours to make the one hour drive. \r\n We got up to Baton Rouge, and settled down to relax for the rest of the weekend. We also went to the grocery that night to stock up on food since I\'d be staying for a few days. And of course, we had to pick up alcohol for during the storm.\r\n\r\nSunday August 29:\r\n At about 1 am my phone rang. It was my mom, and she said that her company was offering her and my dad a free hotel room in Baton Rouge. This freaked me out, because no one in my family has ever intentionally left for a hurricane. I woke Kelly up and told her that my parents were leaving town and heading up here, and so she may want to call her parents and check on them. \r\n At about 1:30 am Kelly called her parents and woke them up. Her dad had wanted to leave town from the beginning, but her mom didn’t want to go. Well, my parents leaving was enough to finally convince her mom to go. Her dad finished boarding up the house at 2 am, and they arrived at Kelly\'s house in Baton Rouge at about 4 am. \r\n The house in Baton Rouge now contained myself, Kelly, and her mom, dad, brother, and grandmother. And three dogs.\r\n Sunday was a fairly uneventful day, everyone was in a pretty good mood, and we weren\'t too concerned about the storm since we were all at least safe. The only thing that we were really concerned about was that this area of Baton Rouge often looses power with just the slightest gust of wind. We knew this would likely be more than a slight gust.\r\n\r\nMonday August 29:\r\n Some time in the early morning hours the storm hit, and we lost power. We were a little dismayed, but decided that power would be back on soon enough, and so we called Entergy to report the outage, and resolved to stay out of the fridge and freezer for as long as possible. It was a hot day, but we decided that power would have to come back on soon.\r\n We spent most of the day crowded around a small battery operated TV watching what little news coverage we could. We all agreed that the Baton Rouge media was pretty pathetic. The highlight of the coverage though was the film footage that was shot by one of the survey helicopters in New Orleans. This was about the first time any of us had any concrete information about home that even the incompetence of the media couldn\'t foul up. Well, they almost did by mistaking Lakeview for Lake Ponchartrain. That was incredibly disheartening seeing that entire area underwater. Also irritating was the sense of near joy that the news anchors expressed at the sight of all the water and the sight of the Yacht club burning down. I\'m still irritated about the smirks and smiles on the faces of some of the news anchors.\r\n At about 9 pm that night Kelly\'s other brother called. He had stayed in his home in Bridge City during the storm. He said that he and his girlfriend had fared well through the storm, but that they had lost their roof, and their neighborhood was a virtual ghost town. They decided to leave. They headed to Baton Rouge, and arrived at Kelly\'s house later that night. \r\n The official count in the house: Myself, Kelly, and her mom, dad, brother, grandmother, other brother, and his girlfriend. And now four dogs. That brings us to 8 people and 4 canines in a 1200 sq. ft. house without power.\r\n\r\nTuesday August 30:\r\n Everyone was hopeful about power returning by today. Well, Entergy didn\'t come through, but my dad did. It seems that when he and my mom had gotten up here, they passed a gas station in Baton Rouge that had a small generator outlet set up by a Carolina company called Titan Industrial. My dad decided to go for it and bought an 8.5kw generator. This turned out to be a lifesaver for us.\r\n My dad and I hurried to set up the new generator in the back yard at Kelly\'s house, and begin running it. We finally had power!! Unfortunately though, a close inspection of the wiring for the A/C showed that we wouldn\'t be able to safely splice into it and run the central air. I plugged the refrigerator and a TV into the generator anyway, and Kelly\'s dad and I set out going from store to store trying to buy fans. At least the fans would help keep the air circulating in the house.\r\n We were able to find about 8 fans. That would give us each a fan to use. Well, in theory. What actually happened was that the dogs ended up enjoying about four of the fans while the rest of us seemed to end up with about a fan or so per room.\r\n We also took the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and see what kind of damage the storm had done. Our house had no damage, and very few tree limbs down. Others in the neighborhood weren\'t so lucky. We walked about two blocks down, and saw a horrifying site. A 40-50 ft. tall Water Oak had split and sent half of its trunk through a house and partially into the house next to it. All of the neighbors were out in the street trying to console the homeowners. That was truly sad.\r\n Unfortunately, everyplace was sold out of any type of room or window unit A/Cs. We settled in for yet another hot humid night with little to no sleep. The good side though was that the generator had a 5-gallon fuel tank, and so would run for 10-12 hours before needing a refueling. \r\n\r\nWednesday August 31:\r\n Yet another mostly uneventful day. More calls to Entergy about the lack of power, trips around town to try and find some sort of A/C unit that we could run off of a generator, and trips to fill up our only gas can.\r\n The only problem that we started having was that Kelly\'s mom and grandmother were not doing very well in the heat. It was becoming very serious for them, and so Kelly\'s friend Jenny offered them the use of her dorm room at LSU. She had power and a windows unit, so they gratefully took her up on it.\r\n\r\nThursday September 1:\r\n Today we finally had success and were able to find several gas cans at Home Depot. We could finally wait to make trips to the gas station.\r\n Later that afternoon Kelly and I were talking to some friends, and they tipped us off to a Home Depot in Baton Rouge that had just gotten a truckload of window units in. We raced out there, and were able to get one. Kelly\'s family had cooked dinner while we were out, but I was too excited to eat. I told them that I\'d eat dinner, but I\'d be doing it in \"Air conditioned comfort.\" I hurried to install the window unit. I got it installed after what seemed like hours (it was only about 20 min.). It felt like we had just hit the lottery. We had one air-conditioned room in the house that we could all congregate in! And, as a bonus, that room was also my bedroom!\r\n\r\nFriday September 2:\r\nWe all went out to dinner to celebrate Kelly\'s birthday in two days. Secretly, everyone was hoping for power when we returned. The generator was certainly nice, but true electricity would be even better. We had a nice meal, and prepared to return home.\r\n\r\n On the way home, we slowed down as we passed through the neighborhood. Streetlights were on!! Everyone was hanging their heads out of the car windows trying to see if our house had power yet… And we did!! After nearly a week without power, we finally had it again. We cranked the central A/C down to cool the entire house off, and celebrated for the rest of the night.\r\n\r\nFriday September 9:\r\nUsing a few connections my mom had made, myself, my parents, and Kelly\'s father and brother were able to get into Harahan/River Ridge without any trouble. I won’t mention the name of the group that we got in with, but I will say that they were headed into Metairie and New Orleans to help resupply the police forces with food, water and ammo. As part of our deal to get into Harahan/River Ridge, we brought a few hundred dollars worth of supplies to the Harahan police force to make sure they were well stocked.\r\nWhen we got home, things looked pretty normal in the neighborhood. Harahan hadn\'t had very much in the way of floodwater, and so there really wasn\'t any widespread flooding. The only thing that was different was that a lot of trees (and telephone poles) were down in the streets and in the yards.\r\nMy house sustained no major damage. And that was amazing. We have several large trees in our yard, including oaks, pines, and pecans, and we thought for sure that at least one of them would have dropped something through our roof. But somehow they didn\'t. It was almost impossible to get into the back yard though due to all the downed limbs, but there was no major damage from them. Just several weeks of cleanup for me to do.\r\nWe then entered the house. The smell was ungodly. I\'ve smelled a lot of things, including dead humans/animals, and they don’t compare. It was easy to see what was causing the smell, the freezer door was almost completely open, and was dripping what I can only describe as ooze. We ended up tossing the fridge and freezer after I completely cleaned them with bleach, and we still couldn\'t get the smell out of the house.\r\n\r\n--------------\r\n\r\nAfter all of this, I have made several trips back home to clean the house, and work around the area. My dad is currently living at home, but my mom had to stay in Baton Rouge for work. I\'m currently living in Baton Rouge with Kelly.\r\n\r\nFriday November 18:\r\nI am living and working back at home in Harahan. Pretty much all of the stores in the area have reopened, and are back to regular business hours. Gas stations have gas, and things seem to be progressing very well. It looks like the city will end up alright after all.