Rita is Here

Time for an update.

So it's 2:00 p.m., Friday, September 23, 2005. My sister's birthday. Happy Birthday Sis! Remember in my last blog that I said it would probably take Beth 8 hours to get to Austin. It took her 28, yes, TWENTY-EIGHT hours to go less than 250 miles. For her it was a nightmare. I was too scared to sleep. Never in my life do I ever want to go through what I experienced in the past 36 hours. There are many, many thoughts and emotions associated with it and Beth and I will spend many hours trying to sort them all out.

For now, the important thing is that Beth is safe. Dante and Picasso (our 2 mini-dachshunds) are safe. I LOVE VOLKSWAGEN!!! and they will get a BIG letter of THANKS from me in the near future. Beth drives a Passat, and when she left our home her gas tank was full. When she got to Bastrop (30 miles outside of Austin) 26-27 hours later, she still had 1/4 of a tank of gas. The batttery in her car is dead due to the extreme heat, duration of the trip, and not being able to go faster than 10 miles an our for 28 hours, but she didn't get stuck on the side of the road without gas. I am eternally grateful.

I am going to be at LBJ County Hospital until the storm passes. We have some critically ill patients that will be our help should we lose power and backup generators.

Regardless of what you may hear on the TV and radio. IT WAS ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE THAT PEOPLE LEAVE WHEN THEY DID! If they had started the evacuation 24 hours later, many, many people would have needlessly lost their lives. They system worked. Maybe not 100%, but it worked. We wil lnever know how many people were
spared because they made the decision to leave, even if they did sit on I-10 for 16+ hours.

Time to get down to business. Take care, and I'll again when I can.

Because of His grace,

Jeremy