IrishEyes

I was in new Orleans some years back on holidays while travelling around Georgia, Louisianna, Mississippsi and Alabama. It's hard to fathom that N.O. has been decimated. And thats only by looking at pictures on the TV and Internet.

When I saw it first I almost had the same feeling I shivered through when I saw the WTC collapsing on 9/11.

The good thing is that you were able to rescue some of your personal belongings - the stuff that makes a home. Unlike fridges and freezers that are almost throw-away goods. (unless u take the fridge that was floating through the house).

I'll wait with great interest to see what some of your pictures look like. It would be great if u could show some of the surrounding area as well.

Sl?n and have safe day.

(Did u know that one of the very few, if not the only, Irish word to make it in to general American-English usage is Sl?n (Leat). Means good-bye. Stretched in to in to So long.)

kscarrol

photos can be seen here...


http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=11j7w5...r&x=0&y=-h9xnns

IrishEyes

Incredible.

Simple1

wow, this is truly incredible, @ least your life & loved ones are in tact. you can always re-build even if it takes awhile. A life you can never replace no matter how much money you got! Your house looks pretty much in tact, except for most of the furniture, the structure looks in tact, so your good insurane company better get on their job and fix your house up BETTER! you have a good reason to renovate now, stay blessed.

cobradav

How heart breaking that must be from an individual impact and to your neighbors/friends as well. Just short of a war zone. Yet there will be some point in time when u will look back and give a chuckle such as when viewing the "world" on your thermostat.

stream

Very sad to look at. The important thing is that you and your family are safe.

DXXXi

What a mess. Good luck with the insurance adjuster tomorrow.

kscarrol

Very true cobradav! We did laugh at that one. It was really amazing to see where things ended up. I had heard someone describe it as a giant picking up your house, shaking it up and then setting back down. That turned out to be a very accurate description. With the addition of mold and mud...

The worst part for me was the wine storage cabinet. It was the black thing (looker like a refrigerator) sitting on top of the metal table in our den. I had a case of 1963 Dow's port in there, along with plenty other expensive wine. Oh well, lesson learned, no sense saving the stuff, just drink it!

robg

Good luck to you and your family. I hope the rebuilding process goes as smoothly as possible.

As for the port and other wine, your comments are right on target. For many years I saved my best bottles becasue no occaission ever seemed important or special enough to warrant opening them. When I finally got around to opeing one of my prized bottles, it was corked. While you certainly learned a lesson the "hard way" we should all learn to apprecate the little things every day.

kscarrol

Meeting went as well as can be expected. As expected my insurance company (USAA) is basically totalling everything in my zip code. Didn't even really want a detailed inventory of contents, though we were clearly going to blow through our content coverage. For those who have never dealt with this, flood coverage has relativley low structure and content limits and will not cover the entire loss. The scary part happened when I asked how long it would take to process the claim. He said could be up to 8 weeks but that he was in a hurry to simply document all his assigned proprties because he had been told they were going to start bulldozing my area on Oct 14th! Most folks have not even been in to evaluate their property. The big insurers (Allstate and State Farm) are basically not talking to their clients and are telling people they've already been by and taken photographs and will be in touch. This is going to be ugly for a lot of people. We are so much more forunate than most, many will be filling bankruptcy over this. We like many others will be left owning a piece of land that no one can build on and that even if I, or someone else wanted to, who would insure it. May not seem like that big an issue, but in land locked New Orleans, the land value is a much bigger portion of the overall value of a property.

There is a large piece of land not far from my house which they are now using as a dumping ground. Sad to see, the pile is over 30 ft high and stretches for hundreds of yards. And this is just from downed trees, not from destroyed houses. I'll add a couple of pictures to the gallery I've already posted...