We lost power early Thursday morning (8AM). I was still in hurricane preparation mode, gathering water, batteries, non-electric phone, etc.

Four hours before high tide my daughter Stephanie and her boyfriend, TJ, walked down Brown's Neck Road. When they returned, they were soaked and said the tide was up to her chest. She felt we should evacuate, but being a native, I felt we would be OK. I had my doubts after that incident, but didn't want to incite fear so I quietly went to the garage and began raising treasured items off the floor!

Most of the Berekman family were run out of their Brown's Neck home due to tide and came by to wait out the storm. They had a generator but by that time I had already lost my refrigerated and frozen food. We were able to hook up the TV and get some of the newscasts, which were awesome.

As the brunt of the storm set in, I watched the water rise across the street where the Masonic Lodge is. I kept a close eye on that water level throughout the storm and it never fell into the street, although the houses on the East side of Hunts Neck were sitting in a lake of water.

When the storm was over, I felt there had been a protective shield around my house. No water had entered my yard, no tree damage. We were counting our blessings.

Friday morning early I went riding around town to see what damage had been done. It was a humbling experience to see the devestation our community had sustained. Taking pictures was solely for the sake of recording history because I hoped none of us would have to go through this again. The phone was on intermittently on Friday, but began working in full force by Saturday.

By Saturday morning I was not enjoying having a soda over my morning coffee and as soon as I thought about how much I missed my coffee, the electricity came on! I couldn't believe this! I quickly fixed a pot of coffee and jumped in the shower - ah, the finer things in life! That day I opened my house to friends and family who needed hot showers, to charge their cell phones, eat, sleep, or use the phone. For a week I would leave my house unlocked with an open invitation to family and friends to come by when they needed to, whether we were home or not.

I, too, caught Zoom's on the first day they reopened. I noticed a worker waiting for the owners to open, asked if they had gas, and decided to wait for them to open. After hearing of 3-5 hour waits in gas lines, I considered myself lucky to only have to wait 35 minutes to buy gas.

As the week wore on and people began pulling their damaged belongings out of their houses and clearing tree debris, it was so sad to see what people were going through. I hope Hurricane Isabel is the storm of this century, our 100 year flood plan storm, and that we don't have to experience anything equal to or worse than what we just went through.

I do feel that with the power, cable, and telephone lines down that the crews were not only overwhelmed by the massive amount of work to do but did develop a plan to work through the problems together. And, acts of kindness were everywhere. There are those who lost everything, including some of my own family members, and it is those folks we should be turning our attentions to now.

Donna Evans Rigney