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
