Chapter 2: Katrina's Coming

Its 11:30 and we are surprisingly slow.  I know they

said that there is a storm in the gulf but I don't

think it's that serious. 

"Si-Si, you need to see this."  Our hostess Leslie

tells me walking up to the television.  Even our local

entertainer Jeremy stopped playing to watch so it must

be more serious than I thought.

"Hurricane Katrina is probably the most beautiful and

most dangerous storms of this century thus far.

Already a category four storm and getting stronger by

the minute, it looks like this little lady is headed

somewhere towards the gulf.  We will continue to track

it with new information updated every hour."

Meteorologist Bob Breck says as Leslie lowers the

volume and goes back to her post to call her children.

I go up to Jeremy where he's sitting with my bosses

discussing the weather report.

"We can't close the hotel down just yet Jeremy, we

don't know if this thing is coming towards us or not."

My general manager John says sipping on his water.

"JR, how can we not?  Did you see how big that thing

is?  If it comes anywhere near our coastline, it'll

swallow us whole."  Jeremy said.  I agreed with him

and apparently so did our guests because out of the

twenty guests we had left, 18 of them left after

hearing the news.  Our last two guests were regulars

who have adopted all of us as their children.  Jim and

Kathy are wonderful people who don't have any children

of their own so their affectionately known as 'Momma

and Poppa'.  Meanwhile, Ernesto (my direct manager),

John, Nick, Michael, Jerome, Yul, Vicki and I have one

thing on our minds; getting home to our families so we

can plan our escape routes.