Update on Ike

We lost phone service 24 hours after the storm, so have been completely cut off since then. No power, spotty (at best) cell phone. Thanks to having natural gas, we had hot water, which was wonderful. Our neighbor let us borrow enough juice from his generator to keep the fridge running, which was a blessing. We cooked some wonderful meals on our gas grill and Coleman stoves. Our preparations were pretty good — there’s not much I would have changed except maybe getting a gas can to help keep the generator up next door. My wife spent 8 hours on the road on Sunday looking for gas and didn’t get any, but things were better yesterday and we only waited 1 hour in line at the local Wal-Mart for a fillup. We haven’t had to worry about water/ice/food at the FEMA pods since we were well stocked.

We moved today to the med center area of Houston, where we have everything we need, including electricity and internet service. Trying to get caught up as we work on figuring out how to keep the business running where I work in the daytime. We hear that power might be back to 80% of households in that community by Friday. Hopefully phone service, too. The mail was delivered yesterday, to our amazement, and garbage pickup is taking place, so some semblance of normalcy returns.

We’ve seen more of our neighbors in the past three days than in a three month period normally. We’ve been governed by the sun, because once it goes down, there’s not much left to do–though that changes now that we’re in the med center and have real, live, tee-vee!

A lot of my coworkers had houses damaged by falling trees, but the number of reported fatalities in the area is low at present, though that could change once more of the coastal communities are explored. Galveston is exit-only, and they’re aggressively encouraging all those who stayed behind to weather the storm to leave now because there are no services of any type whatsoever.

It’s been quite an ordeal. An analogy occurred to me — it’s like being stabbed. The injury itself occurs very quickly, but the damage and recovery persist for a long time afterward.