Hurricane Ike

Friday I started thinking I should take this Ike thing seriously. I'd already had all the storm supplies we needed so that really didn't make me worry. I had Michael pick up some extra bottled water and bread from the store on his way home.

He saw the lines at the gas station and decided against getting gas. I should mention we were on E already. We only gas up about twice a month and apparently he didn't think it was a big deal... . I didn't know this yet though!

Anyway.... I tuned into the local news stations around 1 Friday and continued watching until early in the morning on Saturday. Around 3:30 am I dozed off. Up to that point all Huntsville had seen was some strong winds and a tiny amount of off and on drizzle. I was really concerned about our trees in the yard. We'd just had one fall on the house 3 weeks ago and I was positive we'd have one fall again, and was hoping against hope we wouldn't have one fall while we slept.

I had put the dogs and kids in our bedroom that night and when I fell asleep I could hear branches and howling wind. I should mention it wasn't a very sound sleep.

I woke up to the sound of nothing. No lights, no A/C. It was still very windy and at this point it was raining a bit more. Most of the trees had dropped their biggest branches overnight and boy were they loud. We had one land on our bedroom that was the size of a small tree, about 10 inches in diameter and 6 feet long. Several smaller ones were scattered in our yard. We had 2 huge ones in the backyard.

Unfortunately I overlooked finding our corded phone. For that entire day I couldn't call or talk to anyone. Since my sister Clara lives in Dayton and my parents are in Crosby I was worried about them. Our cell phone reception was sketchy at best, and mine flat out refused to let me put a call through.

That first day the kids were going crazy, and so were we. The storm finally settled down around 8 pm here. Luckily we had turned our thermostat down to 60 the previous day so the house was still fairly cool.

During the middle of the day, while the eye was still over us, I drove around and took pictures of the damage. There were huge trees down everywhere! I was in awe of how much damage this storm did.

Before the storm hit I figured it would be like Rita. We'd get some rain, winds, probably lose our lights for a day. That's about it. Boy was I wrong.

Sunday rolled around and I assumed we'd get our lights back on sometime that day, usually they are quick with that stuff here.

Little did I know how much of a toll it took. Since there was no access to tv I had no idea. The entire city was out of lights, there were no stores or gas stations open anywhere. We even had a curfew. Crazy!

Sunday was a hum drum day. We cleaned up the yard, took a walk around the area. I had a little "chat" with Michael about the gas issue (well he asked me why I was stewing :P). I was anxious to look around town some more and get out of the hot house, it was getting to me! lol

We did surprisingly well though, with all of us holed up in the house w/o electric you would think for sure we'd want to kill each other.

Poor Michael, he had the worst of the clean up. He was using the bowsaw to cut up all those branches. He spread it out over 2 days though.

The kids did really well. After the first day of whining about not having the computers to play on, etc they got into the swing of things. They played together and with the dogs and generally had a good time. I even convinced Moira that reading is fun, which is a modern day miracle in itself. Seriously! She read 4 books to me that evening.

The rest of the week was much of the same, more cleaning up. A couple of friends came by to visit. We chatted with the neighbors as we cleaned up our yards. We listened to the not so gentle hum of generators all around us. I can't get that sound out of my head! :-P

Slowly the power started showing up to various parts of town. The gas stations that got their lights first definitely made the most of it $ wise. The price got up to about 4 a gallon here. Crazy. Walmart opened back up on Tuesday and it was like the clouds parted and the heavens rejoiced! Ok, maybe that's overkill. But it was a good sign that things were coming back around to normal again (whatever normal is).

The police here have been great about keeping order. The curfew helped. When the gas stations slowly opened they would head to the ones that were getting lights and cut off all the entrances except one. That way a nice organized line would form. It would have been a horrible mess otherwise. Since all the town signals were off they were at the trouble spots directing traffic.

They shipped Entergy people in from various states and had them working on the city's electric, which was a massive undertaking from what I understand.

I read the papers every day to get my information so I wouldn't go crazy- gotta have my daily news fix.

The last time I'd had the TV on one story really stuck in my mind. A couple had stayed in their house on Crystal Beach. They had called the 911 service to be rescued but it was too late and they had cut off rescues for the night for the safety of the rescuers. Well, the couple were on their 2nd floor of a stilt house there. The water was up to their chest. That was all we knew and it was 2 am at that point....

I read the news today and after I worried about them for days it turned out they were saved. They cut a hole in their attic floor and climbed in. The house swayed around and fell down but they lived. Amazing.

Michael's aunt in Cleveland had 2 trees fall on her house. It's not looking good for them at the moment, they are alive thankfully but the house is in bad shape. One destroyed a nice screened patio they had just added a few years ago, and another fell through their utility room and damaged their kitchen as well. That's the worst I have heard from family so far. My parents and Clara got through to us on Sunday to see how we were.

Michael went back to work on Tuesday and they were running off a huge generator system there. He was able to charge our phones back up and work in A/C. The kids are out of school until Monday. They are using the schools and a couple of churches here as evacuation sites and they are packed. Michael's work got their electricity yesterday. Ours came back on this morning (woot!).

Our friends almost had a tree through their house but another tree caught it and saved them from certain damage. Another friend had a HUGE tree fall in front of her house, from what I can tell it didn't damage the house though. I posted pictures of those.

We had FEMA in town handing out MRE's, ice, and bottled water. A church here was doing the same. Having a hot meal was nice. Note to self: Next home will have a gas stove!

While we didn't get nearly as much damage here as some places did I am thankful everyone is safe and sound. I feel horribly for those that live in and around the Galveston area. We love Crystal Beach and have stayed there a few times on vacation, in the very beach homes that are now destroyed. It makes me sad. I hope that eventually they will be restored and we can once again go visit it.

A couple of things I learned:

Cell phones suck in bad storms. Keep a land line! Make sure you have an old fashioned corded phone somewhere you can find it. Lanterns are a good source of light.

Light Wedges are the best book lights ever. Be sure you have plenty of C and D batteries on hand, because not having a radio is no fun.

Keep some cash on your person and make sure some of it is in quarters (fishing around in seat cushions and drawers for quarters to buy newspapers isn't very fun).

Get a generator and keep some gas on hand, a refrigerator and freezer full of wasted, drippy, soggy food is a sad sight. Having no cold food for days is NOT fun.

My saddest time with this was watching all my food go to waste. Saddddd! Eating lots of dry carbs isn't fun either, lol. The good news is it gave me a reason to give the fridge a good deep cleaning. What else is there to do when you have no lights? Water was abundant and safe thankfully.

My story really isn't comparable to those that lost everything though, so I will end with that. Those are the real horrific stories. We had it good here compared to what some have suffered through.

Let's hope they find no more lost lives due to the storm and that anyone I haven't heard from yet is OK.

I posted more of the photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/donnamanning

Hugs to all

Donna