03 May 2009

UPDATED tom konvicka forecasts severe weather high winds possible electrial outages for central louisiana


news report from noon monday 04 may 2009 on sunday 03 may 2009 storm

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aired from 8:33 am cdt sunday 03 may 2009

UPDATE 10:09 a.m. cdt monday 04 may 2009: we have to say that mr. konvicka hit the nail on the head with this forecast. shortly after posting this vid our electricity went out. then, the extremely high wind and torrential rains came -- it was giving us gustav flashbacks...so that wasnt good.

around 1:00 p.m. we went to check on elderly relatives who live in hickory grove. they were fine other than electric and phone service being out but we could see that there was a lot of destruction on the loop with large trees down in many places, including one large tree down across power lines near holloway baptist church.

as far as we could tell, the local radio stations sucked in providing any storm news coverage whatsoever. they all seemed to be carrying syndicated programming and had no studio people on site.

one local radio station that we had never heard of before -- red 104, seemed more interested in reciting their cutsey tag line: "crank this bitch up, yo!"

the bruce springsteen song, "57 channels (and nothin' on)" in which the boss was singing about cable and satellite t.v. could also apply to the radio dial.

around 10:00 p.m. we phoned up cleco, we werent calling to complain we were just wondering if they had any estimate as to when power would be restored to our area since by that time even hickory grove had electricity.

the operator at cleco was very kind and courteous and told us that power wouldnt be restored until sometime monday since the crews had stopped working for the night but were going to go back to work very early this morning.

we thanked the operator for the information and hung up but was a bit taken aback since we thought that it was cleco's policy to work continuously until all power had been restored.

it wasnt until around 7:45 this morning while we were listening to ksyl the bob and steve show, or whatever its called, when cenla chapter of the red cross c.e.o. leann murphy, phoned in about the destruction in dodson, montgomery and surrounding areas.

ms. murphy said that the red cross needs volunteers to help answer the phones to free up staff to go out in the field as well as volunteers to help pass out water etc. if you can help out and/or provide financial assistance -- their website is www.cenlaredcross.org.

our power was restored at 8:48 a.m.
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