At the moment, Lake Charles has become the staging point for the Entergy Company (main electric company along the Louisiana gulf coast) workers getting ready for restoring electricity once the storm has past. They are all being housed at Burton Coliseum, the large arena where McNeese plays its basketball games. The civic center currently has 1400 evacuees house din it, and of the 4000 hotel/motel in Lake Charles, none are vacant and reports are that the nearest vacant hotel rooms along the I-10 corridor are in San Antonio. Special needs evacuees are being housed in the Girls gymn here on the McNeese campus.
In Lake Charles, the only effects so far are high humidity and temperature (83 F at 5 am) from the moist gulf air being circulated in here, with high cirrus clouds appearing in bands. Our local news managed to get an e-mail connection for a while with a relative of a former employee in Chalmette (suburb of New Orleans) for a while (he had to stay because his parents couldn't evacuate due to health problems) and he was reporting the roof being damaged, and seeing a fence ripped out of the ground and some bricks of the house actually being removed by the wind(at a corner?). This was well before the eye was near, just after the eye had just made landfall at 6 am (sooner than predicted). Last night i was tired and relocated Biloxi from Mississippi to Alabama I believe, I was thinking of Mobile, AL when I did that. Lots of extra people in Lake Charles at the moment. Probably the most interesting thing is what people are doing with all the pets that came with them...the Animal Control office relocated all it's current residents to volunteers within the community and emptied out all their cages so that evacuees pets could be kenneled. They als sent their mobile kenneling facilities to the civic center, but they are full now. > -- > "So much water, so little time!" > > http://chemprof.tripod.com/fishing.html > > -- "So much water, so little time!" http://chemprof.tripod.com/fishing.html
