Our home miraculously sustained only minor damage, compared to many others. We lost some shingles from the 4th floor roof, which allowed some water to seep into the 3rd floor, so our carpet in that room is getting rather stinky.
One of our two air-conditioning units was flipped off of its pad onto its side by the wild winds swirling around the house.
Both of our fences on the west and south were ripped up. One huge chunk is simply missing, and the others pieces are leaning and halfway out of the ground.
We lost our 15' tall oak tree in the front and many limbs off of the old 40' elm tree, but, somehow, the tiny 4' tupelo weathered the storm.
But that's really about it. All of our windows survived, without putting any plywood, shutters, or tape over them.
We feel extremely lucky, because there was a ton of devastation. There were a few dicey moments there, however, when it felt like our whole house might just get blown away.
Following is a rather lengthy timeline of events, interspersed with feeble attempts at humor.
Saffer-Simpson Scale
category 1 75-95 sustained wind
category 2 96-110 sustained wind
category 3 111-130 sustained wind
category 4 131-155 sustained wind
category 5 156+ sustained wind
Picture of fish driven into a chain-link fence in Orange, Texas. Those poor things were shocked by the power of the storm too.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10
It looks pretty certain that Hurricane Ike is coming this way, but they're saying Corpus Christi. But that still means that we would be on the "dirty side" of the storm, the east side, where the winds and rain are most intense. But Corpus is far enough away that the effects here would likely not be that bad.
Ike wobbles west and north, but it's still headed for this general area, and the eye is huge. While that's good - a tighter, smaller eye is a stronger storm, so a larger eye would be a weaker storm, in general - it's also bad, because it spreads out the devastation to a wider area.
Our media of choice is KHOU-TV (CBS) ("the Beautiful People" except for Dr. Neil Frank). They're more "calm," and don't seem to have the breathless hype that KPRC or KTRK have.
Ike's landfall is predicted for late Friday or early Saturday. I'm not sure which is worse: getting a storm at night when you can't see anything, or getting a storm in the daytime, when you can see it, but you're likely hiding anyway. Either way, it sucks.
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11
9/11. While the nation pauses to reflect on that day 7 years ago, we in SE Texas are getting prepared for a big hurricane, because Ike's path is now closer to Freeport than Corpus, and that's bad for us.
We cooked up a ton of meat, knowing that, when and if (and I was leaning towards WHEN) we lost power, we could always gnaw on meat, like animals. Only this would be cooked meat.
I also retrieved our ice chests and fetched several bags of ice from our corner convenience store. No electricity?? No ice. Ugh, and it's been 95 degrees most days, with high humidity. No A/C makes Houston unbearable in the summer.
My job let me go home at noon to "make preparations" for the storm, and don't come back until Monday. Or, at least, call up the emergency line to see what was up after the storm. The wife's employers would have none of that. Nothing stands in the way of business!
Some communities much closer to the coast than we are have decided to issue mandatory evacuations. I can't imagine. Having to suddenly scramble to gather together important papers....having to decide what's really important, fill up your car with "stuff" and just leave most everything else for an unknown period of time...
In the pic below, a force of 10,000 utility workers stands ready to put Houston's electrical grid back together after Ike.
Now, if you live in an area that could issue mandatory evacuations on a somewhat regular basis because they get a lot of storms, I suppose that you should be prepared for such. At least better prepared than we are. We're not in any of the Evacuation Zones (but we're close to one), so we have not really, really thought about that too much. But we still gathered some insurance papers, passports, birth certificates, etc. and kept them with us, just in case.
But having to leave your home and not know what's happened to it during the storm....wow....
I prepared two areas for us to hide from the wind: one on the 3rd floor, in an interior closet with no windows; and the "Harry Potter Closet" under the stairs on the 1st floor. I set down blankets in both and made sure that the TV would operate well enough in both locations. Ice chest in each place, and an electric fan. We figure that we'll go to the 3rd floor first, but if it gets really bad, we'll huddle under the stairs.
We started moving all of our plants from the roof into the 4th floor rooms. This time, we're also moving all the furniture inside too. We have a cast-iron table with a 150lb weight on it, so we figured that it would be fine. Wouldn't it?
I also filled up lots of bottles of water and put them in the freezer for freezing. When they freeze, you can put them up in the regular refigerator and they'll help keep everything in there cool. Or you can put them on your body for an icy blast. There's a takeaway for you.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
It's a beautiful day in Houston, but hot, and The Beautiful People keep changing landfall predictions further and further up the coast (east), towards Galveston. Towards us. Great.
As feared, the wife's employers thought that since the storm wasn't going to hit until late Friday night, why shouldn't everyone come to work? So she did, while I did more preparations for the storm.
With Ike expected to hit around midnight tonight, that would mean we should expect, here in Houston, Hurricane force winds (>74mph) for at least two hours BEFORE that, and Tropical Storm force winds (>39mph) for another hour or two before THAT. All-in-all, we might be looking at six to eight hours of continuously strong, sometimes VERY strong, winds.
There is a general panic among the citizens. Or maybe it's just me. I have a real sense of foreboding about this storm. We already have plenty of batteries. No generator, though. (Gotta fix that.) There are long lines for gasoline all over town. Several stations are already out.
6pm - It's become cloudy and we're starting to notice strong gusts of wind. The wife is cooking up a storm, in the kitchen, while I finish getting everything off of the roof.
Ike's eye is huge, around 80 miles across. They're saying that, although the storm is still a Cat 2, and they don't expect it to grow any, they are expecting a storm surge akin to a Cat 4 or Cat 5. It's just about too late to evacuate. If Ike's strength had increased to a Cat 4 or 5, we would have been long gone.
They're talking about a 15' to 25' storm surge, not only on Galveston Island, but also all along Galveston Bay, which would be pretty devastating. I don't think that's ever happened.
8pm - We're getting rain, but not much, and the radar now looks like Ike is going to hit the West End of Galveston Island, where there is no seawall protection, but a very recent multi-million-dollar home development about halfway complete. There could easily be nothing left there. Why do people build there? Because it's beautiful? There's practically no land at all....almost IN the water already. Beachfront ain't cheap.
10pm - The winds are really buffeting the house so we decide to go up to our first refuge. The wife thought she could handle it while in our regular bed, so she tried that for a few minutes until a really hard blast sent her scurrying into the closet.
It wasn't long, however, before the house began rocking, lurching, and creaking with a greater frequency, and we decided to head for Harry Potter's Closet on the 1st floor.
Midnight - It's much more sturdy and stable on the 1st floor, but we can hear horrible sounds outside. Crashing, loud thumps, groaning, screaming wind....and we have no idea what's going on...but no glass breaking...
I've got my laptop, and, surprisingly, we still have electricity and an internet connection. Thank goodness for this fan in here, because it's hot inside this closet, even though it's cool just outside the closet, because the A/C is still going. But I don't want to open the door too much or often, because we're right by the front door, which is mostly glass, and it's crazy out there.
Houston is really smack dab in the path of Ike. Now they're predicting that it might just travel up I-45, which happens to pass only about 1/2 mile from our house. It's a direct hit.
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 13
2:10am - Ike makes "landfall." Ground zero appeared to be Bolivar Island, across the channel east of Galveston. There are large clusters of beach houses all up and down the coastline here. The storm had been drifting eastward but ran out of ocean before it could get too far east. Unlucky for us.
Amazingly, we still have electricity. It goes go out now and then, and the fan will die, but it keeps coming back on within five or ten seconds. I peek out of the door at the front door and see multiple flashes of blue and green light, which must be transformers blowing. I don't think we were getting any lightning, but I'm not sure I would have been able to even hear the thunder over the howling wind.
5am - After what seemed like a tense eternity, our electricity finally went out for good. I had not slept a wink. I found it impossible. The wind and noise outside was bad enough, but the actual space in Harry's closet is really only enough for one person to lay down and stretch out. There was too much going on to sleep anyway.
All I can do now is listen to the radio (KTRH), since my battery-powered TV suddenly quit working for no apparent reason.
7am - The sun starts to come up, and Ike is finally passing us to the east. Now we're catching the strongest winds wrapping around the eye from the north. I've never seen so many intense bands of rain and wind hitting one spot as we got this time.
8am - We crawl out of the closet and made some coffee with our old-fashioned "Tico" coffeemaker we picked up in Costa Rica years ago. There's no electricity, but we do have gas. No electric starter for the gas. but fortunately, you can strike a match, turn on the gas, and it lights. At least we can have some hot coffee....just what this sweaty body needs.
About the only things working are our cell phones. Our regular phone line was working fine, if I only had one of the old-fashioned, non-electric phones hooked up to it. I didn't. All of our phones are cordless electric, which is why no one could call us on our land line. This is another item that must be purchased before the next storm, one of them old-timey phones.
I took a look around the house and noticed that one of our A/C units was on its side in the back yard. Fucking wind flipped that sucker over, and it must weigh 80 lbs.
We kept instinctively dodging as another gust of wind would rattle and shake the house.
I hear one guy on the radio say that this area of the nation (SE Texas) produces about 25% of the entire nations energy supply, so all of you in the rest of the country better help us!
Noon - Nice lunch of previously cooked brisket, with mustard, pickles and cheese. The winds are finally starting to die down.
KTRH reports that just about ALL of Centerpoint's (Reliant) electricity customers are without power. That's about 2 million households, representing about 4 million people.
But KTRH radio is already pissing me off. All morning, they're running anti-Nick Lampson (U.S. Democratic House member, took DeLay's seat) ads, multiple times, sponsored by the United States Chamber of Commerce, fer chrissakes, during their storm coverage. WTF is the US Chamber of Commerce doing inserting itself in political races anyway? And this ad goes on and on about how "liberal tax policies are hurting America!!" and "Nick Lampson wants MORE TAXES!" Typical lying bullshit. And then the DJ's come on and talk about how politics should never enter into storm coverage. Hey, JP, got a mirror?
KTRH actually had Nick Lampson on to talk for a moment about the storm. I wonder if they told him, or if anyone told him, that they were running attack ads aimed at him? Too bad Obama didn't predict the future and buy some ad time on KTRH too. When a storm like this hits, people flock to the radio, because most of them still have a battery-powered radio or two around.
Have some sensitivity and suspend attack ads during a catastrophe, willya? Oh, the ad time had already been sold and scheduled? It's out of your control? Yeah, sure, ya lyin' sack o' shit.
2pm - Ugh, now they're having all the Republicans on, one after another. John Culberson, Kevin Brady, John Cornyn, Kay Bailey Hutchinson. And no more Lampson.
Culberson is getting all excited about a contingent of "first responders" that are "staged" at Tully Stadium, in NW Houston. These poor first responders have no food or water (after they finish the lunch they're having). Culberson is appealing to the citizens to bring these heroes food and water. What?
My question is: what kind of an entity brings in a bunch of people to help other people, but they don't give the helpers any supplies like food and water? Sorta sounds like sending troops into battle without the armor and weapons they should have, doesn't it?
In short order, thousands of Houstonians have flooded the area with food and water, and Culberson gets to play the hero among the heroes. Retch. The guy is a pig, and no amount of lipstick would help that.
They also had Joel Osteen on, Houston's favorite prosperity gospel-mongerer. His big message was that "God is still in control." Oh, really, Joel?
"God is still in control!"
If God is "still" in control, why did he allow this devastation in the first place? Just for shits and giggles? So we would all flock to him in fear of our lives? What kind of "control" is this?
Osteen also said, rightly, that in times like these, we have to rely on friends, neighbors, and family to help each other. I could do better on that score....
Ray Nagin, the Mayor of New Orleans, opens his city and hotels to any evacuees from Houston. Just ask for the "Nagin Rate." Houston helped New Orleans Katrina refugees immensely, and it was really nice to hear him express such affection for our city and its people.
But KTRH is pissing me off. Now they're cutting off a guy who started complaining about how the conservatives have been slashing FEMA and other agencies. KTRH is the one that started injecting politics into the atmosphere by running those ads, even though they are not connected in any way to the storm and its aftermath.
Grrr...but what should I expect? Just look at KTRH's daily schedule. Ostensibly, they CLAIM to be a news channel, when in fact they are just another right-wing hate machine.
9 a.m. - 11 a.m. - Joe Pags (only moderately offensive)
11 a.m. - 2 p.m. - Rush Limbaugh (the worst demagogue of our time)
2 p.m. - 5 p.m. - Sean Hannity - (a disgraceful "human being")
5 p.m. - 8 p.m. - Michael Berry (Limbaugh wannabe)
8 p.m. - 10 p.m. - The Mark Levin Show (fascist wannabe)
That's KTRH, so-called "Newsradio." More like Spewsradio. And this level of hatred is repeated in all major cities across the country.
Oh yeah, the hurricane...
Fortunately, we had plenty of ice and food. The authorities recommend that everyone have at least 72 hours worth of supplies after something like this, if the power goes out. We paid attention.
Unfortunately, it's also hot, sticky, humid, muggy, and nasty inside the house. The heat just drains me of energy. That, plus I haven't slept in 30 hours. Not looking forward to sleeping in this heat tonight.
Thank goodness for my battery-powered fan. It fits in the palm of your hand, but, with fresh batteries, it delivers quite a nice breeze. Need to get another one or two of these, and perhaps a stronger one too that uses D cells.
9pm - We tried to sleep in the heat. Unsuccessfully. Worst night of sleep in a long, long while, even as tired as I was. Wake up drenched in sweat, wipe it off, try to go to sleep, wipe off the sweat....
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 14
We're getting lucky. We're going to get a cool front this evening, and they're promising low humidity, with lows in the 60's and highs in the 80's, which would be wonderful. A taste of fall.
There's God again, in control, looking after us and giving us a break. What a joker he is. Hey, thanks for Ike, pal. What a rush that was.
6am - this impending cold front due this evening is starting to fire up storms in advance of it. The Beautiful People say that the cool front is "tapping" into the plume of Gulf moisture that Ike left in its wake, and it is POURING at the rate of 3-6" per hour over much of the city. We're getting massive flooding now along I-10 and I-45, AFTER the hurricane is long gone. Great, more roof leaking...
The hurricane wasn't enough, eh, God? Now I-10 and I-45 are turning into giant lakes, which they didn't do during Ike, hampering relief efforts. I dig this control shit. Fortunately, our street is not flooding. Thanks for looking out for me, Lord. Sorry about all those other guys.
Noon - The torrential rains have finally moved south into the Gulf. Another brisket sandwich for lunch. I've already run through four "AA" batteries for my portable fan. Got plenty more. Got plenty more sweat too. Now I'm losing the weight I gained pre-Ike.
2pm - I called MetLife, our home insurance provider, to initiate a claim. Took no time to contact a real human. Impressive. Needless to say, they're swamped, but since our home is habitable (only a little roof damage and some leaking) they will have an adjustor contact me as soon as possible, but it could be a few days. They said if I had to make any repairs to make the place habitable, do it, keep the receipts, and they'd work it into the claim. Sounds reasonable.
6pm - After a sweltering, miserable day with no electricity, the cool front starts to filter in, so we go up on the roof and catch a nice breeze.
We have a portable propane grill, so we set that up, grilled up some steaks and had a nice dinner on the roof. We can see downed trees and blown over chimneys from the roof, and some windows blown out of buildings downtown. We're hearing some horrid reports on the radio about Galveston, Freeport, Surfside, Bolivar, Crystal Beach, and just about everywhere along the coast. The storm surge was a monster.
I called the emergency number for my company to discover that our offices will be closed until Wednesday. So far. Downtown took a direct hit too and there is a lot of glass all over the roads.
8pm - The temps are so cool now, we pull the futon out on the deck and plan to sleep under the stars tonight. Most of the city is dark, and I could see stars I hadn't seen in years. And the moon...wow...it's full tomorrow night. Off in the distance....what's that? Lightning? Again?! Is it going to rain again? It's getting a little too cold already, so we went back to our regular bed.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 15
7am - The wife gets a phone call from a co-worker, and her building is actually open! And she has to go to work! And, oh, how lovely, Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch seem to be the next icons to fall on Wall Street, and since the wife's job is rather intimately tied up in the financial world, she's going to go to work.
How lovely, she has to be there for this financial meltdown. Not a good day to be away from work, with Wall Street crashing again, and clients in a panic. Lord, when will we get rid of Bush and the Greedy Old Prepublicans (read: McCain) so we can put some sanity back in these markets?
A stroke of luck: we had hot water! After a couple of hot, sweaty days, we discovered that our gas water heater was working fine, and so the wife was able to take her first hot shower since Thursday.
Still no electricity at the house, but the cool front is bringing in wonderful dry breezes. I sat in my chair by the window and read much of the day, unable to connect to the outside world with anything more than a mobile phone. It was rather wonderful, really.
Sitting amidst all the carnage, I had a really nice day.
Ice seems to be the #1 need in the area, but we can't seem to get any out to the people. FEMA is having trouble coordinating the relief efforts (surprise!) Mayor Bill White has said that FEMA WILL be expected to fulfill their obligations. And we appear to have turf wars brewing: FEMA blames the state, the state blames FEMA, the city blames the state and FEMA.
Hundreds of FEMA trucks just sat idling at Reliant Stadium, full of ice and food, and yet....they were just sitting there.
The KTRH nazi's said that all Walgreens and CVS's were open today, so I took a quick drive to discover that neither of them near us were open. Figures. I shouldn't trust KTRH. I detoured downtown to discover that half of the trees that line downtown's streets have been blown over. Even some old oaks that line both sides of the reflecting pool at City Hall were lost. What a shame. Several streets were blocked completely due to all the debris. Traffic signals that survived were hanging at odd angles above the streets.
4:30pm - OUR ELECTRICITY IS RESTORED! At this point, only about 25% of Centerpoints customers have power again, which is about 400,000 people. That's not bad in a city of this size.
Earlier in the day I noticed a couple of utility trucks slowly driving through our streets and not stopping. This is a good thing. If they drive slowly, they are not seeing any serious obstructions or problems that would require them to stop and work on the problem. So if they just cruise through, your lines are in good shape, and the problem will be elsewhere, and that's a good thing.
8pm - Finally, a good nights sleep. It's so cool outside, there's no need for air conditioning. Hey, where's that blanket?!
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16
Life is returning to "normal" for us. We are among the lucky ones. We woke up to a gorgeous sunrise this morning.
I grieve for all those people whose homes were demolished by Ike. There are some reports that some persons on Bolivar that wanted to evacuate simply could not get out because the highway was already impassible, so they had to ride out the storm. Many homes - hundreds of them - in that area are just gone. Simply gone. Not even any debris. Just gone.
Hundreds of homes were destroyed in Baytown.
Here's a before and after shot of Crystal Beach on the Bolivar Peninsula.
25 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico were destroyed. There's no word on any oil spills, but I guarantee you, there are some oil spills out there.
12 refineries in this area are shut down until further notice. And yet the price of a barrel of oil continues to decline?
The seawall of Galveston is just a pile of rubble, that stretches as far as the eye can see. The old Balinese Ballroom, situated on a pier out in the Gulf, is gone. The Mayor of Galveston has been urging any Galvestonians still on the island to leave, because there is no water, no sewage, no electricity, and no gas. It's a potential health disaster. And the mosquitoes are swarming. An estimated 40,000 Galvestonians had chosen to stay in the city.
Today the Mayor initiated a "Look and Leave" policy for all those Galvestonians who had evacuated, so that they could at least examine their property to try and assess what would need to be done.
The evacuees have been clamoring to know when they could return. Finally, the Mayor relented, and when word got out, there was a massive crush of cars trying to reach Galveston on I-45, the only way in at the current time. All those who returned had to show I.D. to be allowed on the island and had to leave again by 6pm.
By 4:30pm, there were a couple of thousand cars stalled on I-45. There was no way they were going to even make it to Galveston by 6pm. People began running out of gasoline, and that is something that is already in very short supply.
Finally, the Mayor decided the idea was not going to work and canceled it, forcing hundreds of people to turn around before they'd even gotten to Galveston. No telling what they're going to try for Wednesday, but some people simply pulled off the roads, planning to sleep in their cars overnight to be able to get to the island early in the morning. But then the Mayor suspended the plan. So they may wake up and find out that they can't get back on the island. Whatta mess.
This was a monster storm. But the aftermath is becoming worse, much worse, than the actual storm itself.
This is something that is relatively under-reported in an approaching storm. While the media is preoccupied with wind speeds, forward motion, storm tracks and warnings, they really do not emphasize very much what to expect AFTER a monster storm hits you.
You should expect to lose power for a number of days.
You should have plenty of bottled water and ice.
You should fill your bathtubs with water to use for flushing toilets.
You should have a generator and know how to use it.
If your local authorities suggest that you evacuate, EVACUATE!
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There is an animation of Ike's path here. That sucker just cuts right through Galveston and Houston. Thank goodness (for Houston) that Galveston is a "barrier island."
I must sleep now.
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