The Next Window

Southwest Louisiana from the Texas border to New Orleans took the brunt of Hurricane Rita. <br />
<br />
New Orleans, which had just started to let residents back in, suffered renewed flooding in the low-income 9th Ward, which was where the main levee break had occurred after Hurricane Katrina. With Hurricane Rita, the waters overtopped the temporary repairs and washed much of them away as they rushed into the areas that had just been pumped dry.<br />
<br />
In an early view of Baton Rouge after Hurricane Rita, we had different scale of impacts but similar impacts from Rita compared to Katrina.<br />
<br />
Widespread power outages, but more intermittent this time. Wind gusts apparently knocked out some circuits. In my area, power was on, then off, then on, then flickered off-on-off, returned about 1am for 5 minutes, then back off until 8:30am — back on until 8:55 and off until about 9:45. A few attempts to power on again. Then off. Weith Hurricane Katrina, it was off, period.<br />
<br />
Wind: Baton Rouge was much closer to Katrina, so we had much more wind — both in the amount of wind and the strengh of the wind. Before, the winds were from the west and north. With Rita, they are from the East and South, so the impacts are different. Thank goodness we had no appreciable rain between katrina and Rita.<br />
<br />
At 10am, we're having a very few gusts of wind, but mostly light breezes. Rain has stopped for a while. Baton Rouge got only about 1 inch of rain from Katrina. We're about 3 to 4 inches now from Rita — this time we were on the "wet side" (the east side) of the hurricane.<br />
<br />
I can't wait for the power to return. The last few attempts were for 1 or 2 seconnds. Not only are we still having wind gusts, but as the day gets warmer, house air-conditioning systems are triggering as the power comes on. This puts a huge, instantaneous load on the circuit. I thing this overload is what is tripping the systems now.<br />
<br />
[time passes]<br />
12:40 — Power finally returned, maybe for good this time. Using my portable power system (combined battery + inverter to get 120v AC), I saw on our little TV that DEMCO, our power company, had 21,000 people without power in Baton Rouge and that Entergy had 61,000 without power in Baton Rouge. These are almost the same numbers as those reported during Hurricane Katrina 3 weeks ago.<br />
<br />
The rains continued…<br />
<br />
Power went out again shortly after 1pm. It returned again about 2:30, with a number of subsequent blips and brownouts. As frustrating as this has been, I am thankful that I already have power. And, don't have the flooding and wind losses of people south and west of Baton Rouge.<br />
<br />
<center>Original article posted to <a href="http://www.thenextwindow.com/exit.php?url_id=696&amp;entry_id=145" title="http://www.thenextwindow.com" onmouseover="window.status='http://www.thenextwindow.com';return true;" onmouseout="window.status='';return true;">www.TheNextWindow.com</a></center><br />