Day 2, First Day of Work

As the sun came up on Tuesday morning, I could finally see the damage here. The huge sign for the hotel is still standing... kind of. The large metal pole is still there and the framework for the sign is there, but there is no sign. All the plastic surface was blown away. It's totally trashed.

As I drove down I-10 to my FEMA trailer headquarters, I was amazed by the amount of destruction that's still here. Most of the street signs are mangled, twisted pieces of metal. There is junk lying absolutely everywhere! It looks like a garbage truck drove across every square foot of the state with the garbage falling out. The huge billboards on the sides of the interstate have no signs on them and the metal framework that held up the signs are all bend all the way over. Some of the humongous poles are just snapped in half.

As I approved my exit, there was an Exxon station to the right with much of the roof ripped away and debris lying everywhere. Dump trucks full of collected debris are everywhere.

I pulled into my new workplace, which is the site of a former outdoor flea market. We've turned it into a trailer holding and distribution center. My new office is two double-wide trailers connected together. Inside are card tables and old, metal desks, with many people sitting wherever there's room with their company issued notebooks. Maps of the local area are all over the walls, extra computer equipment is in the hallway, it's loud, and it's busy. A meeting with about 20 construction workers is going on discussing assessing sites that may be feasible to hold multiple trailers.

I found my co-worker from Oak Ridge in the room, whom I'm replacing. He shows me around, introduces me to the people I'll be spending the next 24 days with, then shows me the ins and outs of the software I'll be maintaining. Near the end of the day, one of the workers comes over to discuss a problem with the software with one of the guys who's heading the IT project there. I sit in to become a part of it. People have been here along time and are frustrated, so tempers flare easily.