Rita evacuation pictures
worst traffic jam of all time...
Glad to be home & have electricity finally

-Mark
Here's some pics of 45 by NASA 1 on Friday. Pretty much the opposite!!
Also, a couple of pics of an apartment building on El Dorado that burned down on Friday night during the wind (can't really call it a storm).
The fire scared the CRAP out of me. I live downwind of it, and woke up in the pitch black, no power, and smelled smoke!!!! I hauled *** and ran around my condo building looking for the fire, and found it across El Dorado. The wind was so strong it was pushing the thick smoke straight into my complex.
I video'd the fire, but don't know how to upload it.
Last edited by jawsk2; Sep 27, 2005 at 03:32 PM.
I really hope your friend had insurance, because that's horrible to lose everything; very glad he wasn't home. A firefighter I know said it's being investigated for arson. I was figuring the Firestone might have been torched by the owners; it's changed hands so many times I thought maybe it wasn't profitable and they tried for insurance, but that's purely my opinion. The apartment that burned on the other side of El Dorado, right by the Jack in the Box was started by an old lady who walked by her drapes with a candle.
I don't know what started the one at El Dorado Way condos.
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but my back patio cover (built exactly the same and 3 feet away) is totally fine. also heard that both my back patio doors were laying in the middle of my backyard, they were propped back up against the house and braced.no trees in my house luckily and more lucky is the fact that i dont have 8 feet of water in my bedroom.
my house is about 2 miles away from the neches river (which feeds into sabine lake) and is only 11 feet above sea level. we put our spare car (saturn) on jackstands in the driveway as high as they would go, put the camaro on the second floor of a parking garage, packed up everything worth more than 100 bux, and hauled ***.
we left and headed for the lake, but most of the roads on the "evacuation route" had turned into parking lots. we were able to cut down some seriously sneaky backroads and made it to the lake in only 7 hours (usually takes 2). took my grandparents 14hrs and they were closer than us to begin with. some of the roads we went down were dirt logging roads lol. i swear i was looking at the gas guage every 2 minutes.
evacuating and sitting in lines for ice and gasoline was almost surreal feeling. felt like the end of the world in more ways than one. my nervousness and restless mind made it even worse. the lake house (on toledo bend) sucked after the power went out but we are sitting high and dry in dallas now

rant = off
p.s. - did anybody else go through the same thing?
Glad to see everyone made it ok.
Josh

