Update. . .

Jarrod called about an hour ago and said they were right outside of New Orleans. They are pretty much stuck in traffic from all the other utility companies and people who evacuated trying to get back in. Even though we have been hearing officials on the news telling evacuees to stay where they are because there is no electricity and utilities, people are still trying to get back in! Jarrod said there are no active road blocks so even though they are telling people to stay out, they don't have a way to enforce that right now. He said one of their guys in their convoy was run off the road by another utility company truck and they had to call a truck to come pull him out. He said it's pretty much chaos. At one point during their drive today they all had to pull over because of a tornado in the area. And at lunch they stopped for a quick bite at a Wendy's outside of Jackson, only to go in and find the electricity off! So, they drove on to Vicksburg before getting to stop for lunch. After all that and they have been told that they may be coming home tomorrow?? They will either be coming home or going to Baton Rouge, I guess they have enough people working in the New Orleans area already. . . information they could have used yesterday?!?! Anyway he said he'd call when they got there, and that was over an hour ago. I know they are tired of driving in the stormy weather all day and frustrated, so please send a prayer up that at least they'll get a decent place to sleep tonight!! More later. . . .

Jarrod's headed to LA . . .

Jarrod left about 4:30 this morning on this way to New Orleans. Please keep him in your prayers this next week!

He didn't find out for sure he was going to have to go until about 7pm last night! So we were in a mad dash to get everything together! They told him to pack for a week, but hopefully he will be back before then!

Here is a new news release from Entergy. . .

Sept. 2, 2008 @ 11:30 a.m.                                                                               Hurricane Gustav made landfall Sept. 1, at 10 a.m., near Cocodrie, Louisiana. At the peak, 850,000 Entergy customers, primarily in Louisiana and Mississippi, had lost electrical service due to the storm. Hurricane Gustav caused the second largest number of outages in company history, behind only Hurricane Katrina. Gustav restoration rivals the scale and difficulty of Hurricane Katrina restoration.  As of 11 a.m., more than 826,000 customers were still without power throughout the Entergy service territory.  Nearly 24,000 Entergy customers have been restored whose electrical service was disrupted by Hurricane Gustav. Bad weather from the storm continues in the Entergy system, impeding progress to restore service and assess damage. Early assessments indicate extensive damage to Entergy’s system in Louisiana.  The number of outages already known to have been caused by Gustav is the second highest in Entergy’s 95-year history. The only larger number was 1.1 million during Hurricane Katrina, which has been described as one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

I guess he picked a good week to be gone, since I am so busy! There is something planned every night until Saturday, so maybe I won't worry about him as much?!? Maybe, but doubtful!

I will be posting updates as I hear from him!