After a very long weekend dealing with hurricane issues, I am pleased to be back here blogging.
Hurricane Ike was only a category 2, but from the damage it caused, you probably would have thought a much worse storm had come through here. My love and I stayed with his father for the night of the hurricane. Early Saturday morning is when all the chaos started. Around 3:45 the winds picked up to about 80-90 mph in our neighborhood. The trees were nearly snapped in half with the high winds, but ended up only losing branches. A few shingles from our roof were torn off, and the entire back fence disappeared into the bayou behind the house. We lost power from 11:30ish Friday evening until Saturday afternoon.
After the curfew hours for that night expired we went back to our apartment to survey the damage. We had electricity, but no water. There was no flooding, or structure damage and our vehicles were unharmed. We were very concerned how the apartment was going to be since we just moved in and there is another complex being built next to ours. Almost all of the shingles were ripped from the roof, and many of the hardy plank boards were peeled from the walls leaving exposed wiring, insulation, and the interiors of the building visible. Thankfully though, the debris was not blown into our walls or windows, and it looked the same for the rest of the families that live around us.
We had no running water for 2 days (we had plenty of drinking water but we forgot to fill up our bathtub before we left, so there was a point where we were very concerned as how to flush the toilets and clean) and it was almost impossible to make a phone call. Although we had electricity, we had no cable or internet service. The gas station across the street as well as every other one with power has had a line of cars no less than 40 waiting to get gas for their cars and generators. Many gas stations actually had police directing traffic to the gas pumps.
We were very blessed during and after the storm. All the stocking up on groceries I had been doing paid off tremendously. We went out Sunday to the grocery stores that were open to get bread, milk, etc., but everything we needed was gone and the checkout lines were very long. Sunday we got up at 5am to get to Wal-Mart when they reopened the store. The store had been without power for a couple days by then, so all the dairy, meat, frozen foods and the produce department shelves were completely cleared off and it was all thrown away. We were told that our one location lost about $300,000 in food.
For those of you who are not in the area here are a few pictures of some of the damage:
Hurricane Ike was only a category 2, but from the damage it caused, you probably would have thought a much worse storm had come through here. My love and I stayed with his father for the night of the hurricane. Early Saturday morning is when all the chaos started. Around 3:45 the winds picked up to about 80-90 mph in our neighborhood. The trees were nearly snapped in half with the high winds, but ended up only losing branches. A few shingles from our roof were torn off, and the entire back fence disappeared into the bayou behind the house. We lost power from 11:30ish Friday evening until Saturday afternoon.
After the curfew hours for that night expired we went back to our apartment to survey the damage. We had electricity, but no water. There was no flooding, or structure damage and our vehicles were unharmed. We were very concerned how the apartment was going to be since we just moved in and there is another complex being built next to ours. Almost all of the shingles were ripped from the roof, and many of the hardy plank boards were peeled from the walls leaving exposed wiring, insulation, and the interiors of the building visible. Thankfully though, the debris was not blown into our walls or windows, and it looked the same for the rest of the families that live around us.
We had no running water for 2 days (we had plenty of drinking water but we forgot to fill up our bathtub before we left, so there was a point where we were very concerned as how to flush the toilets and clean) and it was almost impossible to make a phone call. Although we had electricity, we had no cable or internet service. The gas station across the street as well as every other one with power has had a line of cars no less than 40 waiting to get gas for their cars and generators. Many gas stations actually had police directing traffic to the gas pumps.
We were very blessed during and after the storm. All the stocking up on groceries I had been doing paid off tremendously. We went out Sunday to the grocery stores that were open to get bread, milk, etc., but everything we needed was gone and the checkout lines were very long. Sunday we got up at 5am to get to Wal-Mart when they reopened the store. The store had been without power for a couple days by then, so all the dairy, meat, frozen foods and the produce department shelves were completely cleared off and it was all thrown away. We were told that our one location lost about $300,000 in food.
For those of you who are not in the area here are a few pictures of some of the damage:
Above: This is a statue on the Galveston Seawall in rememberance of the 6000 people who died from the stom in 1900. The Seawall is approx 17 feet tall, meaning that the storm surge came up our beaches, and up at least 12-17 feet high for the water to come up over this statue.
Above: This is a picture to show how the seawall normally looks. The wall doesn't look very tall here, but in person it's about 3x the average person's height.
Above: JP Morgan Chase Tower in downtown Houston, almost all the windows were blown out sounding like a million people breaking glass bottles on the ground at once.
Above: a huge tree that was uprooted in Houston
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