More Gustav -- rain and damage

I wound up at work again today, so I thought I'd give y'all another update.

The wind and rain damage from Gustav turned out to be a little more extensive than I'd original thought, though not drastically so. There are lots of large old oak trees down in the older parts of town. Lots of damage all over town. Though deaths and injuries seem to have been relatively modest, given the chaos, the property damage will probably be the largest we've ever seen in this area. Probably the most expensive storm Baton Rouge has ever experienced.

To add a touch of symbolism . . . Many of the old oaks standing in the gardens in front of the State Capitol building have fallen over or lost large limbs. Those oaks have stood there for eighty or ninety years. They play a significant part in our local culture, you could say. They are a very popular place for brides to take wedding photos arrayed in their elaborate dresses . . . They will be missed.

They're now saying it may take up to a month for power to be restored to some parts of East Baton Rouge Parish. That's a lot worse than I'd anticipated, too. They're focusing on hospitals and major businesses first, which is fair. There was a tremendous amount of damage to the electric grid. There are thousands of lineworkers scurrying around right now. I wish those guys the best. With any luck, the rain will at least let up on them tomorrow.

I'm not actually sure if state employees will be returning to work (well, those lucky non-emergency kind) until Monday. State buildings still don't have power, which means there's nothing for office workers to do without computers, lights, fax machines, and what-not. We've got the main servers running thanks to generators, but there's only air-conditioning for the computers, not us hot, sticky humans. :-p That's fair, though. We adjust to the heat better than those machines and they're providing some very important information to the area and the world right now.

Wish us all luck on getting back lights and power before the end of September! I'll write about any further info I gather, but news, TV (33 & 44), and radio are probably your best bets. You probably won't hear from me again until I get power next week, though I may reply to some comments. All will be well. It's the guys doing the hard work of moving trees, restoring power, and preventing further flooding that I admire today . . .