Ike Update

We survived!

Ike was bad, but we were very lucky. No damage to our house, and just two minor issues with our fence.

The winds started really picking up around 10pm on Friday night, and by midnight, we had lost power. The kids were all in our bedroom. Brandon was in his portable crib, Hayden was between us, and Julia was spread out across the bed at our feet. This was fine when the AC was on, but once it started heating up, it wasn’t pleasant.

I ended up on the couch. Kudos to my well built house! It didn’t shake, rattle or creak one time. The plywood on the back of the house was ideal, as that’s directly where the wind was coming from. There were some real hard gusts of wind, several of which woke me up in a panic. Luckily, the kids slept through all of it. I was really worried about Hayden. But even when we all got up around 6:30 or so, he didn’t seem too freaked out about it. We lit candles and they had cereal.

We started out looking out of the windows that were not boarded up to see the damage in our neighborhood. We spotted our fence areas, and we saw another house with some significant roof damage. When we looked out another window, we saw shingles all over our front yard. Alarmed by this, Mike ran outside in the wind and rain and did a quick circle of our house to see if they were ours. Thankfully, they were not.

The winds were gone by about 10am, and we ventured outside to walk down the street. We saw the same things over and over: knocked down fences, some roof damage, broken limbs, some big, some small.

Listening to the radio all day, it was quite upsetting to hear that power was out to nearly all of the Houston area, and their estimate was that it would take 2 to 4 weeks to restore it! Hello? Houston is the fourth largest city in the US and a major energy city. Like Houston Mayor Bill White said, that’s completely unacceptable. He called for immediate federal assistance. What I don’t understand about this is that for a week, we knew this storm was coming, that it was probably going to hit the Texas Gulf Coast. Why were teams not pre-positioned? Why was Federal Assistance not at the ready? One caller into the radio station said just this, and was “put in place” by the radio announcer who said they were doing the best they could. I’m sure they were, but he totally missed the point.\

Even more frustrating was knowing that my friend, Anthony (who I also work with) living just across the road in an adjacent subdivision a quarter mile away, had only lost power for an hour. AN HOUR.

We took a drive in the afternoon, mainly to enjoy some AC in the car for a while, but also to see the damage throughout New Territory. Mike and I noted that none of the power lines were down or snapped. And we saw not ONE single Reliant energy truck, car or van out and about. This was late in the afternoon, well after winds had subsided.

We stopped by to check on my Aunt Di. Becky and her twin boys were staying with her. They didn’t have power either. We made a deal to call each other when we got power, and we’d migrate either way!

By 8pm we were all on each other’s nerves. The kids were absolutely stir crazy and cranky from being hot all day. We enforced an early bedtime in the living room, with pallets on the floor for the kids. Mike and I removed the plywood from the back of the house (by hand screwdrivers!!!!) so that we could open the windows. It really didn’t make a difference though, because there was no breeze at all. I gave each of the kids a wet washrag to try and cool off, and I was sitting and fanning each of them for a while.

I think Mike and I were both at the point of thinking what an awful night this was going to be, when VOILA!!! The power jump-started! Brandon and I did a happy dance! SLAM! Windows were shut, fans cranked up to help cool down and we were all snoozing happily an hour later.

My mother, Michael’s parents and his brother and sister still do not have power as of 9am today. His brother’s house has a bit of roof damage with some leaking into the house. They lost their entire back fence. Michael’s parents had not damage other than a tree down in the front yard. My mother did not have any damage at her house.

We realize that we were very lucky. Mainly that we were all safe during this really bad storm, but also that life will resume to day normally for us. We can’t get satellite yet, so we still haven’t seen what the rest of our city has encountered.

Thanks to my cousin Dawnie for leaving me a comment and wishing us well.