With less than twenty four hours to go before hurricane Katrina hit land my wife and I started to pack up the car to leave St Bernard Parish Louisiana. We had to have the brakes repaired only an hour before we left. We had to depend on the kindness of a neighbor who was frantically working on the car as we loaded it with those things the officials said we should take with us.

We loaded a few changes of clothing our important papers and our dog, Patches. We went to pick up an older gentlemen whose daughter could not pick him up because she lived north of Lake Ponchartrain which was already nearly impassible. He was a member of our church and we faithfully picked him up for every service because he could hardly walk on his own. Looking back now we know he would not be alive if we had not gone to get him out of his house.

We drove through the night. At first we could not go over fifteen miles an hour across the twin spans, an eight mile long bridge across the lake a bridge that today is largely destroyed. The winds came just behind us only hours later and washed the spans that weigh thousands of tons into the water like toothpicks in a bathtub. In time we got up to about fifty but not once did we ever reach the speed limit. We arrived at a friends house near Birmingham Alabama where we stayed for two days. We contacted the old gents family and arranged for his family to come and pick him up. The power went out several times throughout the second night as the winds gusted and threatened Old Birmingham.

On the third day only hours after Katrina had moved above Jackson Mississippi did we began the 450 mile trek to my wife