Originally Posted by Liss

I stayed home, on the island during katrina. Just sick of evacuating, couldn't make myself do it again. 5 of us stayed in my house with the windows boarded up and the power out for days. But there was no damage on our road. My mom's house on the beach got kinda fucked and there was about 15 feet of sand over the road, which has been shoved over into giant dunes on either side of the road. One of my roommates dads lives in mobile and he got 10 feet of water and a giant oak tree in his house (in fact, marshall, I'm glad Bob is ok, the garden district got hit bad).

With Rita today most of Gulf Shores is flooded out. A lot of people, including my family on the beach, got flooded in, unable to leave their homes because of the floods in the roads. She had a fucking huge storm surge...floods were caused by rising water - the gulf, canals, lagoons, lakes, and rivers, which are abundant here - rather than heavy rain.

We have a lot of refugees in from New Orleans, Biloxi, and Gulfport in town due to our abundance of hotels and rental properties and its sad, though interesting, to hear everyones testimonies. Our schools are taking in hundreds of refugee students and Im getting to do some volunteer work in Biloxi. I can't explain the depression I've gone through over this...I just experienced Ivan last year, and lost my own home and suffered. I feel guilty because what I went through wasn't nearly as bad as this- I still have my life and my family- and I can't do enough to help these poor people. I'm on the Gulf Coast and this is something we all have to deal with...this is my home and we have dead bodies from New Orleans washing up on Alabama shores just miles from where I live and it just kills me.