Back from Katrina/The Gulf Coast

Wow! eventful weekend to say the least...first of all, somehow our travel agent managed to get me tickets into an airport that had not reopened after the storm...so I found myself on Friday at the Charlotte airport at 5:45 AM trying to get rebooked to a different airport BUT one that had an available rental car!! it ended up being Mobile AL. As it turns out, it was all due to divine intervention...INSP was going live with a benefit on Saturday night...I managed to get on a small 2 seater plane (they left the door open so that I could tape) and I was able to get pictures of Bayou La Batre where the Bubba Gump scenes were taped for Forest Gump...storm surge waters put the boats a quarter mile inland and there they sit...I don't know how the heck they'll get them back in the water...

I was able to find a FedEx that was delivering and was able to get my areal footage as well as some other devastation shots to INSP and they made air on Saturday night... I spent the night in my car Friday night (no hotels), and by a miracle of God, I ended up car #3 in a gas line of over 50 cars...I filled the tank (which the rental car place had given me with only a quarter of a tank!)...having filled up the car, I was able to venture out to north of New Orleans to Picayune Mississippi, and to Slidell...I met up with The Convoy of Hope guys there and was able to coordinate a live Satelite Phone uplink to INSPs live show at 9pm E...the later part of the afternoon me and a new friend of mine by the name of Curtis went to Slidell....The town is flattenned! the destruction is undescribable...I taped about 3 tapes worth of footage and took a bunch of pics...as the night fell and curfew began I headed east to Gulf Port...I ran around from town to town shooting all day...after all my running around (controlled and strategically mind you-there is a terrible shortage of gas) I spent the night in my car again, this time about 15 yards from a police checkpoint they offer to let me park there as there had been several carjackings the night before...that was cool of them... I got up today at 6 am, reloaded my camera with a fresh battery and hit Gulf Port (which till now I had only seen at night)...Gulf port was even worse than Slidell...I shot about another 3 tapes there and then had to make my way back into Mobile with brief stops in Biloxi and Ocean Springs...

My trip ended back in Mobile where I got back on a plane to Charlotte where I spent just enough time to take a shower, repack a bag, label all of my tapes and get back on another plane to Washington DC where I am now falling asleep at the keyboard as I write this...thanks for all of your prayers...they got me through the weekend...!!!!!