2008 Hurricane Season

[Voar Tok 4]

Well, here in Houston, we currently don't have any of the rain bands yet, but the wind is strong enough that it has already started snapping old trees. I have stuff planned for this hurricane.

[Easy Bakes 253]

300K with out power

Still clear skys in Dallas.

[Ntq€310 1]

i havent been updated yet, has it made landfall?

[sedimenjerry 1]

It made landfall sometime in the early morning.

Its now North of Houston and a little east of I-45.

[hamsterTK 93]

Haha here in College Station we are fine. A few leaves on the street and that's it. Not even as bad as the windstorm a few months ago that destroyed the fence down the road and smashed patio furniture into my neigbor's brand new Honda CRV....

Strangely there are 3 small towns to the west, Lyons, Somerville, and Caldwell that didn't even really get hit by the storm but not only is their power out but since the water wells don't have electricity the water is out too.

[Sim shady 12]

Lol...so I had my cross country meet this morning, but we only had a little rain. Looking outside now, there is an absolute downpour going on and some vicous winds. Ike is big...

[TimeMaster 4]

Ike now just a tropical storm. But it got a direct hit on Galveston...

[Micah 16]

Power is back! I've been without power since 1am Saturday morning.

I lost 50% of my fences and the tops of all my trees in the backyard. I lost huge limbs in the front yard and one almost crashed into my house; however, I was extremely fortunate compared to the other people on my street. Trees through homes, shingles gone, wood paneling taken off, trees through many cars, and big limbs down all over the place.

But there is one thing that is extremely odd and something I still don't understand...

Not a single window in my suburb-town is broken! Imagine that.

The night during the storm was hectic. I only got 30 minutes on sleep because all of a sudden I heard a loud boom. Turned out to be the first fence of many to fall. The peccan trees in my frontyard were literally swaying from one part of the ground to the other. I'm surprised they didn't snap.

I sleeped for a good 11 hours last night (this is the night after the storm). But all the other people only slept 2 hour because of the heat. I don't know... maybe I can just deal with heat easily.

Anyway, I waited 2 hours in line at Kroger but they were out of a lot of items, including batteries, bread, and ice. After we left Kroger, we just couldn't believe the amount of water that must have been coming from the north towards our area. In less than an hour, the parking lot started taking on heavy water and this was during a time when it wasn't even raining anymore. So, we decided to leave Kroger and the lines to all the gasoline stations stretched as far as the eye could see. Literally. Most places don't even have fuel! They're simply waiting because the people can't move anymore or their car will die.

2.5 million still without power and that's only Centrepoint Energy's costumers. For some odd reason, I'm one of the first ones in all of Houston to have power, though downtown does have power and parts of Pearland (a suburb-town about 20 miles south of Houston).

I'm simply glad that me and my family and those that evacuated here from the coast are safe.

If there's anything else anyone would like to know, ask away!

Edit: Oh yeah... no school til Wednesday, but we have to make it up in the summer. My cousin who is spending the rest of the week here doesn't have school until September 27th!

Re-edit: Btw, I live in the northern part of Houston. Specifically, the northern part of Harris County in a place called Spring.

[cheese91 9]

Wow Marc, that sounds intense.

Glad to know you and your family are safe, and that there was no major damage to your home.

-Addie

[Micah 16]

Yes, thank you. And I meant to add that I truly appreciated all the MSN messages I recieved from both regular members and staff members as soon as I came online. It was heart-warming especially since I can't reach any of my friends at the moment because the phone lines are down and we're not allowed/supposed to take any of the main roads at the moment.

And yes, there was no damage to my house at all; just my property. Only the roof looks green with all the leaf fragments on it.

[Micah 16]

Update: Well, still can't contact anyone. I'll get a signal every once and I while, but that's it. I actually did travel one of the main roads and it looked like everything except the gasoline stations and shopping centers didn't have power. I found out from a local radio station that there are only 4 or 8 neighborhoods with power (out of thousands) in northern Houston. Mine is one of them and I discovered the true reason why we recieved power... turns out our neighborhood is connected to one of the largest water treatment plants in the north part of the county so it makes sense for us to have the power first in the area.

As for school, well... ummm, yesterday they said that we wouldn't have school 'til Wednesday. Today, however, we won't have school until weeks from now. The damage is literally that bad. Sucks though that we'll have to make all of this up during the summer and this is my last damn year of high school!

[Voar Tok 4]

Micah: Well, classes have resumed for me, but that has to do with the fact that I'm in college. We can't add days to the end of summer, and they don't like having to extend the semester anyway.

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

Back in 2005, they canceled school down here in Florida for about 2 weeks during Wilma (my school lost its roof!), so I hope you enjoy your time off Marc Glad to know you're okay.

[Zelgadis 638]

Got a call from my mother today.

I was stunned to hear that Ike was still at hurricane force when it roared through Northern Kentucky on Sunday afternoon! As far as I know that's never happened before. My grandparents just got their power back but my brother is still in the dark, it seems. Supermarkets and discount stores are still on generators. Gas station lineups are unbelievable. Trees are down everywhere.

I guess I'm very lucky that the storm dissapated between Kentucky and Toronto. It didn't end up being much here.

ISF

[Rymac91 15]

I live in (South)West Ohio, and until just today(Wednesday), I've been without power, (running)water, Internet, Phone and TV since Sunday Afternoon(that's 3 days, or to be more precise, around 77 hours).

I never suspected the IKE remnants to cause so much damage here without rain.

The wind was strong enough to break some of our privacy fence's posts, and bring a huge section down.

It's one thing to lose power, it's a whole different situation to lose running water, and phone. I'm so glad we had the swimming pool to siphon water to flush toilets.

All in all, the only thing we lost was, alot of food, some privacy fence, and a few branches, which I'm grateful for, especially after driving around my neighborhood, I discovered some had trees fall on houses, fences, cars, trucks, telephone lines and other trees.

[Meg 368]

A follow up story to Hurricane Ike . . .

As Katrina showed, many people will not evacuate without their pets.   Usually, if the pets are evacuated, they do not go to the shelter where the people are.  Animals go to their own shelter.  When hundreds of animals are gathered in a shelter, someone has to do something to take care of them.

My sister is an animal lover and has been trained to work with animals who have been evacuated.   She was deployed after Hurricane Ike and sent to southeast Texas.  She was told to bring camping gear and her own food supply since they were not sure where she could sleep, what she could eat, or if she could shower.   (Personally, I think this sounds awful but it's her idea of fun.)

There are two pieces of good news here: 

She wound up not far from hym, our very own moderator.   He was kind enough to offer her entrance into the campus dining hall and use of his shower in the dorm room.  I thank him for making her stay in Texas much more comfortable.  As the saying goes, it's a small world.  These days, that can mean that RL and online life can intersect in unexpected ways.

It turned out that she also had access to a FEMA camp for rescue workers. 

Here is an overview of camp:

 

 

This camp was not for evacuees; it was limited to rescue workers.   As you can see, spelling is not their strong suit.  My sister had rapid deployment credentials so she qualified.

 

 

It’s not a good picture, but here is the “living room”.

 

 

And they had a gym

 

 

Each person got a cot and a trunk they could use as a foot locker.

 

 

Some people had been there a while and had made their space cozy.

 

 

They may not look like it but these are shower trailers:

 

 

Here is the old style

 

And the newer version:

 

 

And, this is a row of outdoor sinks:

 

  

They even had a laundry room

 

 

I glad to see that FEMA has gotten it’s act together enough to set up something like this.  But I’m not surprised that my sister liked the shower in the dorm room better.  And she liked the dining hall food better too.  And she certainly enjoyed the kind and thoughtful attention she received from her cyber-nephew.  Even though she didn’t try to explain that term to her co-workers.  

[Easy Bakes 253]

Good for Hym, and your sister.