electric mist

Katrina, Mandeville / Covington

I just got back from the Covington / Mandeville area. The good news is that there doesn't look like there was a lot of water damage. The bad news is, there were a tremendous number of trees down. First of all, it was extremely difficult to get into the area. We went up Hwy 190 from Airport Road (if you're familiar with that area) and there were dozens of trees down, and quite a few across the road and across powerlines. There were powerlines down and across the road. The road was down to one lane in many places, and one place where downed lines were so low, we barely made it under the wires. I should have taken photos, but frankly, there was no place to pull over safely and I didn't want to stop since traffic was patiently waiting to allow each other to pass.

Covington has a lot of downed trees, but there seems to be water services to a lot of neighborhoods. We brought food and water to friends, and we took what we had left over to a Shell station and gave out the rest.

There was one Shell station working, and they were having to wait for generators so that the pumps could work. Lines were easily thirty cars in length and growing. We spoke to Sherrifs deputies and they said there was another Shell station which was going to be opened soon on the main highway through Covington. There were no stores open that we could see, no ice, no phone service, and none of these services looked like they would be open any time soon. There were, however, quite a few people holed up in their homes, etc., so there is a lot of movement around there.

Mandeville is a much more severe story. There are Sherrifs working checkpoints preventing all but emergency personnel from getting into the area -- according to official policy. We had to show a driver's license, and I explained that I was looking for a friend's mother (someone who wrote in to this site), and we were very concerned because she was elderly and we had been told she hadn't evacuated. The Sherrif let us in. When we got off 190 on Hwy 22 (where that checkpoint existed), we were a bit in shock. I thought Covington would have prepared us, but the volume of trees down in Mandeville was far far greater. There didn't seem to be water damage, but lines are down all over, trees are down all over -- especially all of those neighborhoods as you go down 190 and it becomes Florida St -- tons and tons of trees down. When we got to Corondelet, the street was blocked, as were all of the streets parallel. We parked and walked into the neighborhood, and saw many many houses with trees down on them. Many trees down across the road. Lines on the street and in yards. Transformers lying on the street. Light poles snapped in half.

There were a very small contingent of people still in their homes, but I don't know what they're going to do for services. They did have running water, but nothing else -- no phones, electricity, gas, stores, etc. I think it's going to take them a week or more to even get the trees up off the ground, there were just that many. The neighborhood we walked through was fairly close to the lakefront and a man who had stayed through the storm said they had not had water damage. (He'd lived there since '49, and said he'd never stay behind again.)

Hammond just got cell service back up and running (at least for Cingular), so if you're trying to reach someone's cell, you may have better luck now.

Photos up in a few minutes.