The Saturday before the storm, the girl I was dating at the time was in Picayune, MS. with her three younger siblings. I had just found out about the course change of the hurricane and started making plans and preparations. I realized that my girl\'s parents were in Las Vegas for a business meeting and weren\'t scheduled to be home until later the following week. I called and asked how her preparations were going and she was frantic. I dropped my plans and drove to Picayune, MS, where the eye of the storm was headed. This house was an old plantation house form the 1800\'s. I don\'t remember the specific details of the house\'s layout that well. I can remember that it was a rather large house and had an awkward addition to the left side of it. It wasn\'t out of place on the outside of the house, but on the inside you could see that it stuck out like a sore thumb. There were many windows. I remember this because I had screwed what seemed like hundreds of sheets of plywood up to cover them all. In reality it was maybe about 30 - 40 sheets of plywood. There were TONS wind chimes and yard ornaments hung up in the many pine trees that are common to that area of Mississippi. My girlfriend\'s mother collected them. There was a normal sized kidney shaped pool in the back yard and lots of pool furniture to be jam packed into a small basement in the back of the house. When we thought we did a good job of securing the house, we retreated inside and waited for the storm to come. \r\n \r\n Within hours the wind was howling like I had never heard before. As we were peaking out of the front door, small pieces of trash and debris whipped by the house while the larger pine trees were bent over, stressing to fight the wind. One large branch had crashed into and smashed 4 cars that were parked in front of the house. When the eye came it was very serene. There was a slight drizzle and absolutely no wind, not even a breeze. Fallen trees had littered the landscape. The pool I mentioned earlier had turned black with runoff rain water and was littered with small branches and leaves. \r\n\r\n After about 30 minutes we were rushed back inside as the second part of the storm was starting to pick up. It was just like a rough thunderstorm, nothing compared to the first half.\r\nWe had to wait 3 days before large crews came and cut all the fallen trees from the streets. We were not able to leave the house unless it was on foot, but even then it was extremely hazardous from all of the downed power lines and some of the fallen and broken trees were unstable. The heat and humidity was intense. The only way to take a shower was from freezing well water, but it was no use, you were sticky and sweaty 5 minutes after your shower.\r\n\r\nFortunately my girlfriend\'s father was pretty well off, financially. After the roads were clear, he paid a team of 10 men to completely clear out his yard and make repairs to damaged areas of the house (which were minor). I on the other hand was unable to return to my home in Metairie, LA as the area was closed off to the public and spent the next 3 weeks in my mom\'s air conditioned house in Laplace, LA which had all the comfortable amenities I had taken for granted prior to the storm.