Rita Countdown
It’s only a couple of hours left until the hurricane Rita comes. Luckily, it seems as if she evades the city of Houston, and goes towards the smaller city of Port Arthur instead.
So, far it’s only fun to be here. Right now, it’s blowing and raining heavily where I am (Montrose, Houston), but of course it’s nothing compared to what it will be in the eye of the hurricane, i e in Port Arthur a couple of hours from now…
We have had “a hurricane dinner-party” here in our fabulous bed&breakfast: tamales with guacamole, beans, olives, and red wine, and apple crisp with blueberry ice-cream.
It was also some kind of a make up-press conference: because two of the people staying here are “refugees” from New Orleans, and the rest of us guests are curious journalists, we asked them all kinds of questions during dinner. Like most people who have left New Orleans, they have no idea if they will ever go back or not. Their houses are completely destroyed.
I and my co-field worker Thomas Nordegren (Washington correspondent of the Swedish radio) were going around the city today. No people around, except for occasional homeless – _everything_ was closed! Restaurants, food stores, car halls, churches, tattoo parlours – everything. Hard to understand, since everything – like elektricity – was up and running. There was not one opportunity to get food anywhere.
Except, of course, where we are staying. Tomorrow we will get spring rolls! And then it’s time for barbequeued meat, because even if there is no electricity they have propane gas here.
I could write a lot about all the people we have interviewed today – homeless people, confused elderly, bar hoppers, and others, But I have to go to bed and get some sleep now. Two hours left!
/Gunilla
