From the Inside of Hurricane Ike In Houston

I have weathered the rather large Hurricane Ike with my wife, our two cats, and a cat-in-law here at home in Houston, Texas.  I wrote these notes around 9:45 AM local time and have finally been able to get this posted.  I was able to take a picture of the street here after we walked out, sorry if it is a bit blurry because the wind was still going pretty hard. It might not look like much, but that street doesn’t really end there.  There are several trees lying across the road.

It was a long rough night as it sounded like howling banshees in between the flying tree branches hitting the house.  Sometimes the wind gusts around 2AM to 5 AM were so strong that you could feel the house slightly shaking.  The good news is that we are among the lucky so far.  The south wall of Hurricane Ike is passing over the city and the clouds have gone from that nasty dark gray of a smoking-cadaver lung to light gray with some white mixed in.  Thw winds are still giving some strong gusts, but the worst looks like it has passed.  Some how we actually still have electricity at our home.  Hopefully that will last but we could always get shut off for emergency systems.

We started getting bad weather early last night and the hurricaneitself hit in the middle of the night.  It was way before the hurricanehad even started when my parents called and said their power was out,which was around 7:30 PM local time.  The rest of the city looks to bewithout power and that may continue for quite some time.  We arenestled in between downtown and Memorial Park, and the grids thatstayed up with power are the downtown grid (us) and around the MedicalCenter.  Some other locations in Houston have power and some haveintermittent power or scattered power. But most of the city is dark.During the night we saw many flashes of bright white light followed bylarge popping noises, so it is likely that many homes in theneighborhood are without power even if the grid here made it fine.

Now for the sad part.  Many residents to the south of Houston did notleave in the mandatory evacuations.  With certain parts of the coastand low-lying areas being completely submerged it is hard to imaginethat many of these people haven’t paid the ultimate price.  During theRita evacuation when everyone was worried about another Katrina, it wasestimated that more people died in the evacuation and return than wouldhave died in the hurricane, so very few people wanted to leave.  It wasa mistake.

The loss is going to be catastrophic in and around Galveston andreports are putting much of the coastal highway and neighborhoods andcities under multiple feet of water.  The surge was said to back up theHouston Ship Channel, which will in turn back up Buffalo Bayou andother small waterways.  The sewers and drains are full and overflowingaccording to some telephone calls and messages I have received.  Theseare from people like us that live on higher ground.  I can only imaginewhat it is like elsewhere.  Oddly enough, there are some parts ofGalveston where reporters said there looked to be no severe damage atall and it looking like wrecking crews had gone to work literally a fewhundred feet away because the damage was so bad.

There are no real reports yet on the oil infrastructure.  While youknow there will have been substantial damage, it so far seems as thoughthe infrastructure hit might be less than some might have thought.Downtown is littered with broken glass that isn’t from car vandals.  Itis from all the skyscrapers getting hit by debris and then getting thewindows literally ripped off the buildings from wind and pressure.

Today and tomorrow and even in the week are going to be someinteresting times.  There have been thousands of distressed emergencyservices calls which were not able to be answered for safety’s sake.Trust me on this when I tell you that if you would have driven aroundlast night around 3AM you would have been insane.  The hope is thatthose who were going to stay put did not and at least went to higherground.  The sad part is that many did not.

There is only one Hope Diamond.  There is only one U.S. Constitution.At the end of the day everything else is just stuff, none of which youcan take with you.  Cemeteries are already full of people that othersthought they couldn’t survive without.  Let’s hope things aren’t as badas they may have been or could have been.  This Houstonian isdefinitely in that camp.

Jon C. Ogg
September 13, 2008