On October 3, 2002 - at approximately Noon - Hurricane Lili came through Lafayette, Louisiana.
We first lost power (from the electric grid) at about 11:00 am. From then until 1:00 pm, which was during the worst of the storm, we were running off of our big APC battery.
After it became clear that power was not coming up any time soon, we began makeing provisions for cutting-over to our diesel generator. At about 1:30, we cut-over to generator power and continued like that until about 9:00 pm. Fortunately, since we are located downtown, our power was restored quickly. However, the rest of the city is in the dark -- its an eerie sight to see.
During all this time we were very busy - changing over power connections, shutting down non-critical machines, modifying routing tables as our T1 circuits were occassionaly up and down. All-in-all, our disaster plan worked without a hitch. During the entire ordeal, while we lost individual circuits, we never lost any of our critical connections. It's been a busy day! Thanks are in order to Mike, Glenn, and Bob (as in The Bob)-- all of whom helped out in keeping us connected.
At this time, large portions of the city are still without power (about 80%+ without). Last night we heard that Cox lost a tower, we've tried pinging multiple known cox addresses and are getting no response. We assume this means that they are down, however, maybe these machines are just off? What's curious, though, is that we've also tried pinging known gateways in Abbeville and New Iberia -- on many different providers backbone (AT&T, Cox, Worldcom, et al) -- all appear to be down.
Added some new photos to the site. If any of you reading this have any photos, please mail them to lili@lafayettedata.net, that way we can add to this rather interesting collection.
It appears that some parts of the city are coming back to life. The major intersections now have traffic and street lights; Johnston & S. College, West Congress & University, Pinhook & University, Kali & Pinhook, W. Congress & Betrand -- all appear to be working.
As far as power goes, it seems to be coming up in patches all over. The hardest hit in Lafayette, seem to be in the Saint Street and Grand Ave areas. There is general destruction all over, but these areas seem to be the hardest hit. I think that it will be at least a couple more days before power can be brought back to some of these areas.
Most of the city is back up with power now. I would estimate that about +85% of the city is lit. The sections still out are some of Saint streets, Grand Ave, E Bayou Parkway, Louisiana Ave, and Bendel areas. LUS has done a good job getting this much accomplished so quickly, all major intersections now have working lights. Additionally, LUS should be happy how well their fiber has withstood all of this. As far as I know, all the major LUS fiber customers (GDS and WOW), never lost their fiber connections. Hopefully, by Tuesday or Wednesday all of this will be behind us.
Most of Lafayette is back up with power (about 90%), however, there are still some areas of town without. Last night a friend sent me some links to some pictures from the Eunice areas (caution: some are kinda big). Here they are:
You can see more images from Eunice if you just browse through the directory here. They're not labeled, but you may recognize some of them.
We've got some more images of Lafayette coming in later today, so check back in the afternoon.
Added some pics of Cypermort point (thanks RR) and some various Lafayette shots
Will be adding some more pics that viewers have mailed in within the next day (thanks all)
| BlockBuster on Congress | |
| Street Near Cafe Vermillion (downtown) | |
| A wall that fell on a car downtown | |
| Barrys Parking cover at Apt | |
| Random Houses | |
| Tree by Chris's P-boys | |
| Damage to Jefferson Tower (downtown) |
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| Damage to LBA Building (downtown) |
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| Fallen light in road by Barry Apt | |
| Mike and Steph House | |
| Tree fallen on Moss Street | |
| My neigbors missing roof | |
| Street at Oaklawn | |
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