So Gustav paid us a visit Monday, September 1, 2008. It was an experience everyone in this area will remember for a long time. Records indicate this is the strongest hurricane to hit the Greater Baton Rouge area ever. The damage is devastating.
A tornado touched down in our yard and we lost six oak trees each between 75-80 feet high. However, we were VERY LUCKY and VERY BLESSED. One of our oaks was twisted off by the tornado and a perfect V split down one side and the rear of my mother’s trailer that is located at the back of our property. Our neighbor’s huge live oak up-rooted and landed on one of our tractor implements – not our house. Unfortunately one and a half of our oaks landed on our other neighbors roof, doing both exterior and interior (two rooms) damage, however they were not harmed and we have all let out a sigh of relief. Several homes in our immediate vicinity were completely destroyed, but again, no one was injured. We have a generator, so we were lucky, but gas was very hard to find until Wednesday (and of course it cost a small fortune). We, like our neighbors have started clean up, though for us it will be a long process. We did manage to clear enough in the past three days so we could get my mom’s car out today, which was our fist goal.
We got power a couple of hours ago and are enjoying it completely. I just found out we have cable and internet too. I was so stressed, tired, hot and unsettled I couldn’t read a thing. I finally pulled out a book I’d recently finished and re-read it, because it was all I could manage to concentrate on. The three year old was about to go stir crazy after so many ‘stay home’ days! The eleven year old was stir crazy ‘cause cell service and landline phones have been out for most of the time.
All is much better at our house tonight, I just pray it gets that way for our friends and neighbors and the entire community before long.
I’m including a few pictures below. Glad to be back to civilizationJ 
View from under my carport
Backyard looking towards neighbors house.
Same direction, just more towards my mom's place.
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From street, you can see the blue tarp on neighbor's house and my mom's trailer still can't be seen (behind truck).
From the street view - tree that fell next door into our driveway.
After some cutting (okay, lots of cutting :) you can see how close it was to my mom's house.