Apologies for not posting after the storm. Ike, One Year Later

First let me apologize for the cliff hanger type ending of my Ike blogging. The power went out at about 3:00 am and I hadn't set up a dial up account with which to post updates on just generator power (I added this to our hurricane planning, so it shouldn’t happen next time). In the days after the storm, we were preoccupied with keeping the generator running and cleaning up the debris around our house. We were also pretty shell-shocked. Some coastal area communities were simply gone. Takes kind of a toll on your energy.

I guess I just haven't felt like updating the storm blog since there was no inherent danger. Its been a full year since the worst Hurricane to hit Southeastern Texas in twenty five years came ashore. Guess its time to finish the story.

I'll try to summarize where I left off.

I spent most of the evening outside, under the overhang between the house and the garage. In retrospect I probably should have stayed inside because I find that I don’t like it much when the wind picks up and blows the trees any more.

Let me talk just a second about the experience. We spend so much time down here preparing for this kind of thing that the whole thing seems almost commonplace. In the early fall, I look forward to the first UH game, the kids start school, we pine for cooler weather and we get ready for any threats from the Gulf. I didn’t really give much thought to riding out the storm because that is what we do. Evacuation is much more dangerous as we don’t live in a storm surge (severe flooding) zone. Run from the water, hide from the wind.

Check below for the preparations that we performed before the storm. Pretty much the recommended routine but I have learned something. The best you can do is just barely good enough. Even with all the prep, we weren’t ready to be a week without power. Nor was I ready for the ferocity of the storm.

The most striking thing was the sound. The swooshing of the trees was kind of like white noise blasted at full power from theater speakers. And it went on for 12 hours straight. Amazingly, the other sounds of the storm were loud enough to break through as well. For most of the night, you could hear transformers popping, trees breaking and fences giving way.

The lightning was blinding. In the last post I mention green lightning. That was actually the transformers around the neighborhood blowing up. The purple lightning was from the storm.

I will admit to a certain morbid curiosity about experiencing the storm. This was probably one of the main reasons I stayed outside. The other was boredom and fear of the unknown. I took the graveyard shift. I wanted to be awake if something happened to the house or if tornados seemed likely. In that case I would have gotten everyone in the stairwell closet. I figured the more time the better. In any case, I’m not eager to repeat the event. At one point our 50 foot Pecan tree bent almost to the ground and then bent the other way towards the neighbor’s yard. I’m not sure I wanted to see that.

Jules and Aidan woke up at about 5:00 am when the worst of the storm was over. I crashed. By the time I got up at around 10:00 am, the storm was mostly gone. Since the power was out, we moved into our Travel Trailer that I had parked in the driveway. It had suffered no damage.

I ran extension cords and began plugging things into the generator. We came into the house occasionally but mostly, we hung out in the trailer (air conditioning). Thankfully, the first cool front of the year pushed through the area and life was less sticky than it could have been.

The things we longed for most were Gasoline and Fast food. Neither was available anywhere for at least 3 days. I keep a 15 gallon external tank and our little boat holds about fifteen gallons. I had filled both before the storm. Our generator runs through about 4 gallons every 12 hours or so. We had enough to get by. A couple of our friends came by to check on us (and bring extra gas) in the days after and we all faired pretty well.

The neighborhood was pretty wrecked and the rebuilding has really just recently wrapped up. Other towns didn’t do so well.

Most of the houses in Galveston were severely damaged. The beachhouse that we stayed at on the Bolivar Peninsula was reduced to a slab. We had been there the week before to celebrate Julie’s birthday. In fact most of the Bolivar peninsula structures were swept into Galveston Bay. I never heard a death toll from Bolivar but I had heard eyewitnesses of bodies on the ground after the storm. I haven’t been back since. Their healing process will take years and their businesses will never be the same. Jules and I have spent many important moments on that stretch of coastline. To have it simply disappear is like losing an old friend.

I’ve only been back to Galveston a couple of times. The first was last November. There were abandoned sailboats stretched across parking lots and most things were still closed. I took Aidan surfing recently and things looked much better. I’m hoping to get back a couple of times in the fall.

As I try to wrap this up, I’m not really sure what to say. Its true that we were really fortunate. I won’t say blessed because #1 I don’t believe God has anything to do with these sorts of things and #2 Why weren’t others equally blessed. You can’t have it both ways, either God is responsible for these things and cruelly fickle or he doesn’t get wrapped up in the particulars and we need to look out for ourselves as much as possible. I choose to hope for the latter.

Bottom line, Bolivar was on the coast and is now gone. We’re further inland and thus more protected from the Gulf storms. No magic here. Still, many of us consider all of southeast Texas home and I mourn for any great loss of life or property in this region.

I’m glad the tropics are quiet. We need a couple of years to rebuild but more importantly the whole region needs time to get over the gunshyness that happens after surviving any disaster. It’ll take some time before we trust the Gulf again.

Thanks to all who read this and once again I apologize for neglecting it so long. Look for the next post when we need to communicate with everyone during a possible emergency.