As Gustav approaches...

We thought some might be interested in what's happening in our part of the world. Everything and everyone is completely focused on Gustav right now. We've never watched a hurricane's movements so completely before. We have our home pages set to the National Hurricane Center and the MEMA (Mississippi Emergency Management Agency) website, and there's a new advisory out every few hours.

For those of you who don't know where we're living now---time to get out the map--we're in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

So far it looks like Hattiesburg won't be as badly affected as it was with Katrina three years ago, but they're expecting high winds, rain, and possible tornadoes. A big fear is damage from falling trees (the city lost 1/3 of all its trees last time, which is a lot since Hattiesburg was cut out of a forest). Apparently damage is always worse to the east of a hurricane (and we are east) because of the counter-clockwise movement of the storm.

The third hour of church was a combined meeting where they made sure everyone was prepared and answered questions, last minute instructions were given etc. We had to fill out a sheet with all our contact info saying how much water we had etc. A member of our ward works for the fire department and so came to church in jeans to give us some info and then left. We have members of the church from the near coastal town of Slidell living in our ward building.

For about twelve hours today they turned both sides of the major freeway, the I-59, into north-flowing traffic to facilitate evacuees from the coast. The roads have been jam-packed but traffic seems to be lessening a bit now. We're hoping that means most people got out early. To further facilite evacuation, they've turned all lights green on the north/south flowing highway 49 which runs through the center of town and are blocking east/west access to the road except for four e/w roads in town that are overpasses.

I think Jeff and I are personally in a very good spot in town. We're in a second floor apartment, and we don't have many trees close by that could fall on us etc. Clouds are already quickly rolling in from the south, and they expect the rain to begin around midnight (I take that back--it just started raining and blowing hard right now).

Oh, for those of you who are wondering about my job prospects, I was supposed to find out Friday if I got the job I've been interviewing for, but they had to cancel the last interview so that they could coordinate evacuation efforts for their campus in Gulfport. So it'll be at least another week before I know.

Also just found out that all schools are closed Tuesday.