For those of us who live in the middle of the State Ophelia was absent. We had maybe two or three rain squalls and a small tree limb fell on our sidewalk, but I think it might have been a crazed squirrel escaping the evil-eye my dog was throwing its direction. The storm is so amazingly slow it remains to be seen how badly the coast was(is still being) hit. At this point it looks like besides some expected flooding there isn't any major damage.
The slightly humorous side that those of you who don't live here might not have seen is the huge FEMA presence. They have been here since Tuesday with trucks and people and lots of things that loudly display FEMA so that we all know that they are right on top of things. The local news channel asked one FEMA official if perhaps their large presence was overkill for this category one storm and after a bit of wavering he had to admit that it was. The Governor made some remark about us having more experience than FEMA at these things which was humorous but with 61 shelters open on the coast for a minor hurricane, perhaps he is right. In no way should that reflect on the Katrina problems though, the population difference is quite large.
Posted by dmason at September 15, 2005 09:17 AM