Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Yes, I'm Alive
Well, I'd say this is the longest I've gone without posting and updating everyone on our lives. And there's a pretty decent reason for that -- well, for at least part of the past month I've nearly gone without saying a word here. And that reason is Mr. Ike.
Hurricane Ike bore down on the Gulf Coast and forcefully came ashore the night of September 12. And we stayed here for it. And it was one of those experiences. People now tell us we've been initiated. The kind of talk about how we "don't understand" and all that always made me scoff. People here get scared of rain, and when it falls below 65 degrees, so I figured they were being dramatic. I've lived in the Northeast and the Midwest and so unless your storm is also bringing 15 inches of snow or a tornado that might rip my house from its very foundation and turn it into a bunch o' splinters, spare me.
Well, turns out when a Category 2 hurricane hits your city pretty much directly, it's kind of scary and can lead to unimaginable disaster. Yeah, yeah, I know... you knew that already. But this is my story.
Early the week of Setpember 8, there came warnings of Hurricane Ike. He was way, way, way, WAY offshore but there was a chance he could hit Houston. Sure, just like there was a chance Edouard could. We got a day off from work for that, and it was so meek it was gorgeous out by 5 PM and the wife and I went for a bike ride.
Well, Ike continued approaching and decided to set a course for Galveston and then Houston. By Thursday, it wasn't just news anymore -- it was time for action. The city mandated people in two "zones," Zone 1 and Zone 2. (Houston is zoned for disasters, so that they can say "Zone 1, you must evacuate! Zone 3, you stay where you are!") We live in Zone 3, and were being told to stay put.
Thursday many offices began to close early to let people tend to things or to get the hell out of town. And, you know, because many of their employees lived in places with mandatory noon evacuations. It was starting to feel real.
I mapped out back road routes to San Antonio, Dallas and Austin and put them in my car. That way, if we had to go, I wouldn't be among the other 3 million people all entering the same Interstate highway at once. The stories from Hurricane Rita three years ago were all horrific and all the same -- taking 12 hours to drive across town, etc.
Our office, and nearly all others, decided to close for Friday as it was now expected that Ike would make landfall between Friday evening and Saturday morning. I went home and we had a very normal Thursday night, aside from the panic on the news and the calls from relatives asking what we were going to do.
By Friday, full-on freaking was happening. Our offices were closed, so we prepared the house and got ready for what now appeared to be a sure thing -- Ike was going to crash right into Galveston and proceed the 50 miles up to Houston. We live in Southwest Houston, less than 45 miles from Galveston.
I taped each and every window in the house so that if they did blow out, the glass wouldn't go everywhere. I brought in all objects from outside. Patio furniture, gazebo, hammock, chairs, grill... everything. I'm not sure a hammock could become a flying object, but winds were expected to be 110 MPH+ at landfall. Not taking any chances with that.
By Friday evening, we had done all we could. Some relatives were incredulous that we were staying put, but the press conferences specified that people in our county should "shelter in their homes." If you were told to evacuate and hadn't yet, they were warning people to write their SSN on their arms in sharpie so that when they were found later they could be identified. As one official put it, "This isn't a matter of 'riding it out.' If you live in the evac areas, your home will be gone."
They were now evacuating a town that we enjoy visitng and having dinner in... and a town we almost bought a home in when we moved here. And it's about 15 miles from us. We began paying closer attention to the news.
As the evening wore on, we realized we weren't going anywhere. Nobody in our neighborhood seemed to be, either, although a few had boarded up all of their windows. I felt this was a bit excessive. After all, if it was 110 MPH winds at landfall, there's no way it would sustain that as it crossed 40-50 miles of land. Usually they lose steam fast over land. How wrong an assumption that turned out to be.
By the late evening, we'd started just hanging out with our neighbors and drinking beer. I was in the neighbor's driveway across the street as the night wore on and Watersyne was inside one of the houses with the ladies. Eventually, the girls came over there, too, and we had on music and talked and had all of our dogs there, too (ours plus the neighbors' made three of them).
It began getting really windy around 10 PM and continued gusting as the night got later. Around 11 or so the rain began and we moved our chairs into the garage and continued our pow-wow.
The music was good, the beer was flowing, and the company was good. We were making the best of it.
At 11:55 PM the electricity went out, abruptly as it always does.
It's even weirder when you're looking outside at a neighborhood of tightly packed houses and everyone's lights, including garage sconces, all click off at once. It's very silent and very eerie. With only the moonlight to show us the way, we were happy to have made sure we had flashlights at our sides for this very moment. I will admit, I didn't think the power would go before midnight. In preparation, we had set our central air unit down to 70 degrees (normally it's at 75), which made our house feel like a meat locker. But depending on how long the power was going to be out, the house might actually stay cool for a little while.
We went to bed around 1, with the wind at even higher levels and the rain steady but not torrential.
At about 3 or 4 the storm came with a fury, screaming winds, driving rain, enough to uproot huge trees and tear down large fences in back yards. I was exhausted and beginning to get a head cold so I actually slept through most of it. I only remember waking up when my wife said, "I think I hear the dog crying." I just prayed a window hadn't broken out in the living room or something.
In the morning, I got up and took some video, noticing that our neighbors both had trees down, while we had some leaning considerable. Even some of our lower-height bushes were leaning and almost uprooted. As it turned out, the hurricane maintained its nearly Category 3 status and plowed through all of Houston with 110 MPH winds.
Downtown was severely damaged and much of it was impassable for days. Around us, not only was all power out, but traffic lights were also completely missing in many areas.
We drove through the neighborhood and immediately felt lucky. Despite minor foliage damage and no power, we hadn't suffered anything severe. We weren't hurt, we had no property damage... so we were lucky.
Others were not so lucky. As you've no doubt seen, Galveston was essentially leveled. Hundreds of houses are literally gone, and who knows how many people missing. In our development, one house in particular had one tree fall on their house and had another fall on their car. Yikes.
Friends of ours had trees on their house, enough to cause a leak in their master bedroom, chasing them, their little girl and one of their moms out into the living room. That had to suck.
We weaved through the area taking pictures and simply feeling, as I said....lucky.
Our offices were officially closed for most of the following week. Each night we spent outside with our neighbors and all of our dogs and kids. We cooked out every night with whatever we all could cobble together. My very kind neighbor let us plug a fridge in our garage into his generator so we could at least keep some things cold and also run a power strip to my workbench where we could charge cellphones, blackberry, ipods... you know, the essentials. Heh.
The storm had knocked out power at 11:55 PM on Friday, September 12. On Wednesday, September 17, we still had no power and a friend called me. He'd obtained a small generator and asked if I wanted to buy it from him because he managed to actually get two. The smaller one is only 1000 watts, which means it can maybe power one medium-sized fridge and not much else. I felt it seemed like one of those smart investments in case this situation happened again. When you have electricity, buying a generator seems like a silly idea. But when you don't have power for days on end.... well, they become lifesavers.
So I bought it and got it running. It's small, very compact and runs pretty well. When you plug in the fridge it sort of bogs down for a few seconds but it comes right back. I ran it for the evening on Wednesday and then left it off all night with the fridge closed tight until morning. First thing Thursday morning, I re-started it and it ran all day long on a tank of gas. When it ran out around dinnertime, I decided to give it a rest and then planned to re-start it after dinner and run it into the evening.
Thankfully, while we were outside and eating an italian pasta feast cooked up by my lovely wife, the power suddenly came back on. You could hear people throughout the neighborhood cheering, and at one point two power company guys came through the street in a pickup truck and everyone cheered for them. (Although taking a week to get the power back on doesn't seem applause-worthy, we were just happy to have it.)
So that's our story from the week following Ike.
Hopefully, regular posting will resume here shortly.
Hurricane Ike bore down on the Gulf Coast and forcefully came ashore the night of September 12. And we stayed here for it. And it was one of those experiences. People now tell us we've been initiated. The kind of talk about how we "don't understand" and all that always made me scoff. People here get scared of rain, and when it falls below 65 degrees, so I figured they were being dramatic. I've lived in the Northeast and the Midwest and so unless your storm is also bringing 15 inches of snow or a tornado that might rip my house from its very foundation and turn it into a bunch o' splinters, spare me.
Well, turns out when a Category 2 hurricane hits your city pretty much directly, it's kind of scary and can lead to unimaginable disaster. Yeah, yeah, I know... you knew that already. But this is my story.
Early the week of Setpember 8, there came warnings of Hurricane Ike. He was way, way, way, WAY offshore but there was a chance he could hit Houston. Sure, just like there was a chance Edouard could. We got a day off from work for that, and it was so meek it was gorgeous out by 5 PM and the wife and I went for a bike ride.
Well, Ike continued approaching and decided to set a course for Galveston and then Houston. By Thursday, it wasn't just news anymore -- it was time for action. The city mandated people in two "zones," Zone 1 and Zone 2. (Houston is zoned for disasters, so that they can say "Zone 1, you must evacuate! Zone 3, you stay where you are!") We live in Zone 3, and were being told to stay put.
Thursday many offices began to close early to let people tend to things or to get the hell out of town. And, you know, because many of their employees lived in places with mandatory noon evacuations. It was starting to feel real.
I mapped out back road routes to San Antonio, Dallas and Austin and put them in my car. That way, if we had to go, I wouldn't be among the other 3 million people all entering the same Interstate highway at once. The stories from Hurricane Rita three years ago were all horrific and all the same -- taking 12 hours to drive across town, etc.
Our office, and nearly all others, decided to close for Friday as it was now expected that Ike would make landfall between Friday evening and Saturday morning. I went home and we had a very normal Thursday night, aside from the panic on the news and the calls from relatives asking what we were going to do.
By Friday, full-on freaking was happening. Our offices were closed, so we prepared the house and got ready for what now appeared to be a sure thing -- Ike was going to crash right into Galveston and proceed the 50 miles up to Houston. We live in Southwest Houston, less than 45 miles from Galveston.
I taped each and every window in the house so that if they did blow out, the glass wouldn't go everywhere. I brought in all objects from outside. Patio furniture, gazebo, hammock, chairs, grill... everything. I'm not sure a hammock could become a flying object, but winds were expected to be 110 MPH+ at landfall. Not taking any chances with that.
By Friday evening, we had done all we could. Some relatives were incredulous that we were staying put, but the press conferences specified that people in our county should "shelter in their homes." If you were told to evacuate and hadn't yet, they were warning people to write their SSN on their arms in sharpie so that when they were found later they could be identified. As one official put it, "This isn't a matter of 'riding it out.' If you live in the evac areas, your home will be gone."
They were now evacuating a town that we enjoy visitng and having dinner in... and a town we almost bought a home in when we moved here. And it's about 15 miles from us. We began paying closer attention to the news.
As the evening wore on, we realized we weren't going anywhere. Nobody in our neighborhood seemed to be, either, although a few had boarded up all of their windows. I felt this was a bit excessive. After all, if it was 110 MPH winds at landfall, there's no way it would sustain that as it crossed 40-50 miles of land. Usually they lose steam fast over land. How wrong an assumption that turned out to be.
By the late evening, we'd started just hanging out with our neighbors and drinking beer. I was in the neighbor's driveway across the street as the night wore on and Watersyne was inside one of the houses with the ladies. Eventually, the girls came over there, too, and we had on music and talked and had all of our dogs there, too (ours plus the neighbors' made three of them).
It began getting really windy around 10 PM and continued gusting as the night got later. Around 11 or so the rain began and we moved our chairs into the garage and continued our pow-wow.
The music was good, the beer was flowing, and the company was good. We were making the best of it.
At 11:55 PM the electricity went out, abruptly as it always does.
It's even weirder when you're looking outside at a neighborhood of tightly packed houses and everyone's lights, including garage sconces, all click off at once. It's very silent and very eerie. With only the moonlight to show us the way, we were happy to have made sure we had flashlights at our sides for this very moment. I will admit, I didn't think the power would go before midnight. In preparation, we had set our central air unit down to 70 degrees (normally it's at 75), which made our house feel like a meat locker. But depending on how long the power was going to be out, the house might actually stay cool for a little while.
We went to bed around 1, with the wind at even higher levels and the rain steady but not torrential.
At about 3 or 4 the storm came with a fury, screaming winds, driving rain, enough to uproot huge trees and tear down large fences in back yards. I was exhausted and beginning to get a head cold so I actually slept through most of it. I only remember waking up when my wife said, "I think I hear the dog crying." I just prayed a window hadn't broken out in the living room or something.
In the morning, I got up and took some video, noticing that our neighbors both had trees down, while we had some leaning considerable. Even some of our lower-height bushes were leaning and almost uprooted. As it turned out, the hurricane maintained its nearly Category 3 status and plowed through all of Houston with 110 MPH winds.
Downtown was severely damaged and much of it was impassable for days. Around us, not only was all power out, but traffic lights were also completely missing in many areas.
We drove through the neighborhood and immediately felt lucky. Despite minor foliage damage and no power, we hadn't suffered anything severe. We weren't hurt, we had no property damage... so we were lucky.
Others were not so lucky. As you've no doubt seen, Galveston was essentially leveled. Hundreds of houses are literally gone, and who knows how many people missing. In our development, one house in particular had one tree fall on their house and had another fall on their car. Yikes.
Friends of ours had trees on their house, enough to cause a leak in their master bedroom, chasing them, their little girl and one of their moms out into the living room. That had to suck.
We weaved through the area taking pictures and simply feeling, as I said....lucky.
Our offices were officially closed for most of the following week. Each night we spent outside with our neighbors and all of our dogs and kids. We cooked out every night with whatever we all could cobble together. My very kind neighbor let us plug a fridge in our garage into his generator so we could at least keep some things cold and also run a power strip to my workbench where we could charge cellphones, blackberry, ipods... you know, the essentials. Heh.
The storm had knocked out power at 11:55 PM on Friday, September 12. On Wednesday, September 17, we still had no power and a friend called me. He'd obtained a small generator and asked if I wanted to buy it from him because he managed to actually get two. The smaller one is only 1000 watts, which means it can maybe power one medium-sized fridge and not much else. I felt it seemed like one of those smart investments in case this situation happened again. When you have electricity, buying a generator seems like a silly idea. But when you don't have power for days on end.... well, they become lifesavers.
So I bought it and got it running. It's small, very compact and runs pretty well. When you plug in the fridge it sort of bogs down for a few seconds but it comes right back. I ran it for the evening on Wednesday and then left it off all night with the fridge closed tight until morning. First thing Thursday morning, I re-started it and it ran all day long on a tank of gas. When it ran out around dinnertime, I decided to give it a rest and then planned to re-start it after dinner and run it into the evening.
Thankfully, while we were outside and eating an italian pasta feast cooked up by my lovely wife, the power suddenly came back on. You could hear people throughout the neighborhood cheering, and at one point two power company guys came through the street in a pickup truck and everyone cheered for them. (Although taking a week to get the power back on doesn't seem applause-worthy, we were just happy to have it.)
So that's our story from the week following Ike.
Hopefully, regular posting will resume here shortly.
Labels: everything's bigger in Texas, Houston, Hurricane Ike, hurricanes, Mother Nature has a weird sense of humor
