Here I sit in Houston, waiting for the storm. We are as prepared as we can be, nothing left to do but wait. I have posted some pictures on myspace
www.myspace.com/demivi
I will post more pics as I get them. Right now it is pretty boring
Geister, my son's family came to stay with us and he stayed in Houston at the House. Hope you are all doing OK and weather the storm OK.
Frank winn
Hope all yall come thru ok. Hope your son comes thru ok Frank.
Thanks Pam, I worry about him and didn't want him to do it, but he let me know that he thinks I would have done the same thing in the same circumstances.
Time to get the prayers and the guardian angels goin'.
We will be praying for all!!!! :angel:
Your families will all be in our thoughts and prayers, also. I have some cousins who live down that way, I need to be checking on them.
Liberty County which is where I live northeast of Houston has been under mandatory evacuation since 4 pm yesterday but I am going to sit it out. Worked in Porter until 4 pm today and traffic on 59 was pretty scarce. Now I am just waiting for the power to go out which it always does.
I ran from Rita and I don't think I will ever do that again. Sitting in the car on the road surrounded by stranger was scarier than sitting it out at home. Of course if I had children or Mother was still with me I would have one of the first ones to leave.
Ms Bear
I've been watching some live streaming on another forum and it looks pretty rough for Galveston with much worse yet to come. My prayers for all of you in harm's way. I can't understand why anybody would stay on a low barrier island with a 20 foot surge expected.
Right now there is a lot of flooding from the storm surge or the bayous backing up from the high water. So far the rain hasn't started yet and already several subdivisions and roads are flooded.
I'll be thinking of you all...It's going to be a long night. Stay safe.
giester and Ms. Bear, most likely neither of you have power right now, but am praying that you are both safe and okay.
I have a good friend who is making do in Houston without power. She was smart enough to fill up the tubs in the house with water, so that the toilets could still be used and a spit-bath could be taken. My thoughts and prayers will be with all of you who are trying to get through this time.
I've been watching more of the live streaming. Houston downtown has lost a lot of glass in the tall buildings, the Reliant Stadium roof had some damage and Galveston really got swackered. The old Balinese Room that was out on the pier is on the beach and just toothpicks and the causeway is full of debris, including buildings. At least 20 homes collapsed and several burned. Many were severely damaged. No power, no safe water, but the people generally seem to be in good shape. No death toll as of yet, too soon.
We have so many wonderful people that work for power companies from all over the United States and Canada here and amazingly they had my power back on Thursday Sept 18th at about 9:30 pm. The store at work at didn't get power until Friday so we haven't been able to stock meat and perishables, risky when the only power is from generators and gas is hard to find. Now that we have power on they will start receiving the meat tomorrow and we will all be helping get it stocked.
This storm was so much wider than most and caused a lot of damage to a lot larger area than usual. Still a lot of people without power and could be as late as Oct 5th. I didn't have cell phone signal for several days and lost land line phone service Saturday night, called the phone company last night to report it and it was on my end. I got it working this morning and now I have phone and DSL.
I ran from Rita but opted to stay for this one and I was okay by myself but wasn't emotionally prepared for how lonely it would be until I was able to get back to work or in the evenings with no tv or radio. I will have a battery radio for the next one. Went up town today and Sonic was open, a good sign. Still have a lot of trees down and roofs missing around town.
We have been very blessed with temps in the 70's in the daytime and 50's at night. So far have seen very many mosquitos which are almost always a problem here.
Thanks to all of you for your prayers.
Ms Bear
Where are you located, Ms. Bear?
Glenn Illg, of Howard, is in Louisiana right now, helping out. Don't know for sure where exactly. He's been there a couple of weeks already.
Ms Bear, it's nice to know you are alright and taking tiny forward steps toward normal. I've been keeping up still with the Houston TV stations and I'm very impressed with how much you all are helping each other. They said the mosquito planes have been up and will keep spraying, so hopefully not too many folks will be carried off by bugs. Didn't you say you are northeast of Houston? We had some electrical trucks from here go down too, so there must be lots of people from all over trying to get the power back up. I'm glad you cooled off some, I just can't imagine how awful it would be in that usual heat and no power.
I am at Cleveland, about 50 miles Northeast of Houston on Highway 59. Conroe is about 20 miles west of us on I-45 and I have heard they had a lot more damage than we did. We haven't heard about any tornados but from the way the trees look we think there were some.
Not enough good can be said for all the people who have come to this area to get power restored and trees cut. They have several places where they have them staged, portapots and tents, ways to feed them but we have talked to some that are sleeping in their trucks.
Ms Bear
My nephew went down there to work. He's with a tree crew. They left on the 12th. They have been sleeping in their trucks. He thought he might be gone at least a month. Glad it is him and not me. Oh heck, he's young he can take it.
Greatguns,
When he gets home please tell him how much we appreciated him and all the others.
Ms Bear
MS Bear my nephew has been down there for 3-4 weeks, he went down after Gustav, he is hauling heavy equipment for FEMA and also working on cleanup. He told me this week that there are crews there from Canada helping out. Our son lives in Houston, he didn't have any damage on his house in Houston, and he got power back late yesterday. There were lots of trees down in his area and trees on houses. He was able to get to the house they have on Galveston early today, it has considerable damage.
I'm sorry to hear your son's Galveston place was damaged. No sea wall where it was?
Thanks Diane, we still have our Grandchildren here with us, our son stayed there thru the Hurricane and our Daughter-in-law went back Thursday. They have power now and their house in Houston made it thru in great shape. Their Galveston home is on pirates beach and that area got hit pretty good. There is a seawall but it didn't hold back all of the water, however it only got up 3-4 feet on the pilings, it did not get into the main part of the house. The lower part has breakaway walls and that worked great. The main damage and content loss was in the lower part. In any case I am just thankful they are all ok. The material things can always be replaced.
we regained power last friday...so that was a week for no power and 3 days with no water. All of Houston is under a curfew from midnight to six am. There are still major roads that are closed due to trees, and many stoplights that are still not working as I type this. We did get to know our neighbors really well though. We sort of had a barbecue block party the last night without power.
you can see some pictures at
www.myspace.com/demivi
It's good to hear from you again. It sounds like you all have done very well considering the loss of "normal" for awhile. I know there have been more lives lost than has generally been reported. I'm still watching the updates as they they come up on the Houston TV stations.
Quote from: Diane Amberg on September 13, 2008, 05:58:19 PM
I've been watching more of the live streaming. Houston downtown has lost a lot of glass in the tall buildings, the Reliant Stadium roof had some damage and Galveston really got swackered. The old Balinese Room that was out on the pier is on the beach and just toothpicks and the causeway is full of debris, including buildings. At least 20 homes collapsed and several burned. Many were severely damaged. No power, no safe water, but the people generally seem to be in good shape. No death toll as of yet, too soon.
Galveston got pounded hard. The pictures and video that ya'll were watching of the waves coming over the seawall...that seawall is about 16 ft tall. Galveston will recover...it always does. The worst of the damage was on Boliver pennisula in a small community called Crystal Beach. THere is nothing left. One of my employees in part of the USMC hurricane team. His outfit was the first to hit Crystal beach after the storm (they got there via amphibious tanks). He said that everything looked like broken matchsticks. Their objective was to collect bodies (he was also involved in Rita and Katrina), and he said they pick up about 15. Not as bad as it could have been.
He was mostly amazed by seeing boats on top of the Causeway and in peoples living rooms. Now understand these houses are on stilts 10-15 ft in the air and the causeway is one of the tallest bridges down here.
I have to say that I am really proud with how the people of this area responded to the storm. Everyone stayed friendly (no poor pitiful me) and the city and county governments responded quickly (we had trash pickup the monday after the storm..not storm debris though). To heck with fema we helped ourselves and our neighbors. There is still alot of clean up that needs to occur but all in all we are fine.
Ike may have been only a Cat 2 but it did more widespread damage then Alicia (cat 3) in 1983.
I was 8 years old when alicia hit and it did not scare me like this storm did. Around 1:30am the night of the storm I stepped out on my front porch. The wind was whipping the trees around and all of a sudden I heard this whirring whistle and the oak tree in my front yard and in my parents yard just started twisting and slamming from side to side. I decided to go back in the house and I could barely get the storm door open.
I didn't go out again until the next day to take pictures. All night you could here things pelting the windows. Things banging on the roof, on the side of the house. Aluminum bending on the shed in our back yard. I kep thinking the eye is about to come and then it is all down hill from there. BOY were we wrong. The back side of the storm was even worse then the front, which is highly unusual. So for 3 - 5 hrs we took 80-100 mph winds from the east then we had 90-110 mph winds from the west for about 4 - 5 hrs.
anyway i'm done for now...thanks to everyone who kept us in their prayers
ps these photos are from
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=weather/hurricane&id=6390528
giester2, I am glad to hear you are okay. We will feel the effects for quite some time but not something I want to go through any time soon.
Ms Bear