Sleeping through Hurricane Ike
September 21st, 2008
Hurricane Ike is going to make landfall at Matagorda Bay between Friday night and Saturday morning, sideswiping Houston. That means that electricity will probably be out for a few days, but I doubt damage is gonna be much worse than Rita. Given the timing, I'll be following tradition and be fast asleep.
Evacuation is not an option because Mom's doing emergency service at the hospital. I might volunteer and pray that the wi-fi works.
A mandatory evacuation has been called for my neighborhood. Therefore, I'm staying. Windows are boarded, computers moved upstairs and wrapped in plastic (I'm on a laptop.) Oh yea, the place is gonna flood. Oy.
In other news, Ike's projected path is starting to look like a penis.
1:30 pm: Left house, left out enough food for the pets. A generator borrowed from my neighbors is hooked up to the refridgerator.
2:30 pm: Made it to Clear Lake Regional Hospital, roomed in the Postpartum Ward, where Mom works. There's a picture on the wall I couldn't stand to look at, a vector graphic of a screaming baby with a message explaining that babies don't bounce easily. Covering it with a napkin seemed to help.
Rather frustrating was that while my laptop received a perfect wi-fi signal, I was still not able to connect to the Internet. Even more annoying was that only a few people were in my position. The IT department was stumped, naturally. Fortunately, I remembered to back up my computer the day before and stored all its documents on an external hard drive. At least now I have several hours of music and a handful of Photoshop projects to keep myself occupied.
6:00 pm: Went into lockdown in the evening, and the emergency generator kicked in.
9:45 pm: Satellite connection went out before 10:00 pm. It was windy as hell outside, so I can only assume that the dish was blown away. At times like these, I have no qualms even with Comcast(ration).
2:00 am: Ike's eye made landfall in Galveston. Ended up sleeping in a chair, an extremely uncomfortable one for someone who can conk out at will in a school desk. If I don't get a connection to the Internet soon, I'll probably go into a cabin fever of sorts.
2:30 am: The eye went straight over the hospital. Wasn't awake to notice, but mom couldn't sleep. She tried to keep the window above me from breaking.
9:30 am: Slept terribly, but slept through the hurricane nonetheless. Some things you have to take pride in. Ike made landfall early in the morning and seemed to be completely gone at 10:00 am, possibly earlier. Woke up with a wet bedsheets; the water seeped through the wall almost everywhere. I "volunteered" to clean up leaks and remove plywood boards from the lower floors.
2:00 pm: Lockdown was lifted, family members were allowed to leave. Not a lot of response there, especially since A: family members tend to stay with patients and employees, and B: some of us didn't have a home to go to.
My at-home next-door neighbors returned from Victoria and were able to call via cell phone. The neighborhood is in pieces, from what they're describing. Two trees fell on my house, one on my neighbor's house. On a positive note, all the walls are intact. That puts my mind at ease, since it means the cat's okay, and everything that was moved upstairs was unaffected. Was the first floor waterlogged? I'll be returning home tomorrow, to a place without power and possibly without running water (the good kind, that is.) At least I'll be in the same boat with 4.5 million Texans.
4:00 pm: family members were kicked out. Those who wished to stay were ordered to stay on a floor that was still under construction. Sorry about the shit pictures, this was on a cell phone.
The sign straight across from the elevator leaves no doubt as to the true intent of this floor.
Open area...
...military cots supplied with no blankets...
...drafty...
...gypsum dust flying all over...
...the windows weren't even completely closed.
Police patrolled the area, carrying what appeared to be automatic weapons. Absolutely not a safe place to put anyone, especially children, people with asthma, those susceptible to hypothermia, or similar conditions. Doubt the place even had electricity.
6:00 pm: after much arguing with the floor's director and threatening to resign and go to court, mom was once again able to secure a patient's room, along with another nurse and her family. Even though satellite was out, I was able to receive two local channels by stuffing a paper clip into the TV's cable port. Nothing on, just Houston Mayor Bill White holding a press conference. Now it's being listed as a tropical storm, and it'll be a depression by the time it hits Arkansas.
7:00 pm: The storm's in Dallas. Results pending.
8:00 pm: Eight hours of work, and Centerpoint Energy was able to restore power to 120,000 people. Only a few million to go.
12:00 am: Sleeping in a chair again. I see the full moon through the window, despite all the cloudcover and subsequent bands of rain still going through. First real happiness I've felt in two days.
I swear to God, I'll drive north just to find a usable wi-fi connection. The University of Houston has its own generators, wonder if they're letting people use their net accounts...
10:00 am: Another night with terrible sleep. Got kicked out of the hospital to make room for patients. No complaints. Listening to the news, and it seems Arkansas is dealing with a tropical depression.
11:00 am: Driving through nearby neighborhoods. Most of them are right out of a low-budget disaster flick.
It usually takes a car accident to knock apart a wall like this.
Two pictures of the same house. It was hard getting the full extent of the damage into frame.
This hill didn't exist before yesterday morning.
A miracle! No, seriously, this guy returned early and was one of the first to get his yard cleaned up. Here's what it looked like only a few hours earlier:
This neighborhood lost an estimated three thousand trees. Some speculate that a series of tornadoes went through there, which wouldn't be unusual for a hurricane of this size.
I also drove around a few key waterfronts; at least the ones that the police didn't block off.
The cars are in the water and the boats aren't. Only in Houston.
Boat storage minutes from Kemah, completely collapsed.
Another boat that's trying to evolve into a bus. A stab in the dark, but this is about three or four feet above the usual high tide.
This debris on the Kemah bridge was not put there on purpose. This is a floodline, or however far up a slope the floodwaters pushed the floating debris.
Miraculously, my own house appears to be in one piece. Save for the trees on my roof, garage, and in the pool, the walls and ceiling are all intact, and there's no water inside. A gaping hole leading into the attic, but that's easily patched up. I am thankful to God the cat is okay.
No electricity. My neighbor was nice enough to string an extension cord from their generator to the house. Now I have a fridge and a TV, which I again stuck a paper clip in to get a reception for local broadcast. I owe them a lot of gasoline after this is all over.
7:30 pm: Mom clocked into work on Friday at 2:30 pm. 53 hours of solid overtime later, she's home, giving me yet another reason not to go into medicine.
9:00 pm: It's been rather quiet the past few hours, mostly cleaning and unpacking. At about this time, a van from KPRC pulled into the neighborhood to report on the tree damage. It was pitch black save for the nearly full moon, giving them a unique angle: "Omigawd, look how dark the houses are!" Excellently hyperbolized, now my house that so happened not to have power is a disaster zone on par with Chernobyl, filled with children and elderly people sleeping all sleeping on one couch. Now you know why I work in journalism?
12:00 am: I'll probably sleep better tonight, now that I'm in a familiar setting. It's actually cooler outside than inside, so I'll be sleeping with the windows open. That'll also vent out that rotten smell that's been developing. Why do things keep dying in my bedroom walls?
9:30 am: Slept a lot better. Hear that the generators at the hospital went out, leading to loss of life. The place is in a panic; they reopened their ER, drew in patients from nearby hospitals, and the only thing keeping tempers from flaring is a squad of riot police with automatic weapons. I have a feeling this is gonna be a rather nonsensical day.
The University of Houston reopens tomorrow. As much as I want to go back to a place with air conditioning, big hot meals, and a stable Internet connection, no dice. I cannot guarantee the bus system will be operational in my area and I have no way of finding out if it is. Maybe Wednesdsay.
11:00 am: Driving around. A lot. A grocery store opened in my area with limited power. Flypaper seems like a good term. Passed by a pack of big rigs run by FEMA, giving out bottled water and MREs (military food.) The line of cars is going around a couple blocks; I don't think there were ever that many cars in the neighborhood before. No one I recognize either; they're probably traveled a distance to get their hands on a case or two of free army food. There was a system: a car waits half an hour in line, drives up, pops the trunk, then three people throw water, ice, and a case of MREs in, close the trunk, and you're on your way, staying no more than twenty seconds. Must be important, about a half dozen National Guards were guarding the trucks, Hummers and all.
The Salvation Army was also present at several points of distribution.
4:00 pm: A patient of my mom's gave us a propane tank and four MREs. Jesus Christ, their house is maybe ten minutes from Kemah, and it looks like it had a no more than a drizzle. They even had power, the last thing I expected from an establishment a less than ten miles from a boardwalk that was almost completely underwater and will cost $100 million for the Landry's Corporation to rebuild. They've made themselves a new buddy.
5:30 pm: Went around and took some more pictures. Whoever returned is trying their best to clean their yards, whatever they can lift. There's a cold front coming through the area, so no one's complaining about being outside. Traded a MRE I got earlier today for two cans of pre-cooked ravioli.
It may not look like much when all these branches are spread out over the lawn, but raked up, the piles can get over six feet in height.
7:30 pm: Whatever's left of Tropical Depression Ike had left the US and is now in the North Atlantic.
Centerpoint Energy has been able to restore power to half a million people. Admirable job, but this will wear on the patience of the 4 million still waiting. Unavoidable. Got the grill working, and making dinner.
Rather annoying is that various government agencies and charities are giving means of contact and registration on TV and over the radio. It's bad enough that only a handful of people without power are able to watch TV, but imagine having to go to FEMA's website to register, without power, or if you have power, without Internet.
Here's a challenge that I invite the Federal Emergency Management Agency's headquarters to partake in: go to your fusebox, hit the breakers along the top. Take your servers offline. You are allowed as much time as you need to back up and/or print out essential documents so you can continue your duties. You can keep the landlines, you are entitled to two gasoline-powered generators, and you can use any battery-operated device. Try to go 24 hours in that condition. If you can manage that with no more trouble than the people you're advertising to, I'll never say a bad thing about you again. If you accept this challenge, you're at liberty to visit my site for advice.
9:30 pm: Gonna try to kick it early. Darkness getting to me. Rather enjoy the moonlight. It's like a computer screen.
8:00 am: Received word about how important my neighborhood is to the electric company. My area is pretty much at the bottom of the list of places that need it most. Therefore, I should expect power in about four weeks. On the bright side, 50-60% of Galveston now has power. Even though the mayor declared the entire island uninhabitable and refuses to let anyone in.
As a rule of thumb, whenever there's a major power outage, the first 50% of lines fixed are the easiest, and it gets dramatically harder from that point. It's often a predetermined pattern: major grid first, then outlying areas, then lines leading to houses according to Centerpoint. The second half are usually destroyed poles, trees sitting on the lines, and other similar dangerous conditions. Therefore, it wasn't all too helpful to hear that 50-75% of all people would get their power back in a week.
The University of Houston reopened today. Unfortunately, since I rely on a now-broken bus schedule to get there, I'm out of luck for possibly the next few days. The highway entrances are probably flooded anyway, meaning a good chunk of the student body is screwed until further notice.
8:00 pm: The neighborhood's doing something that hadn't happened in about a year: the street's coming together to eat dinner. That's usually reserved for National Night Out or whatever it's called.
10:00 am: Getting into the swing of things, living a century behind the rest of the United States (the Amish don't know what they're missing.) Get up, grill breakfast, listen to the radio, curl up in the corner of the room and suffer from email withdrawal, work outside, then read a book. Very predictable routine.
FEMA is under considerable fire for its blanket denials to those it says should register. To complicate matters, it's telling those who are rejected to reapply, which ties up their already stressed phone lines and eats bandwidth. Advice: set up a line of computers at various points of distribution. That way you can deny everyone who attempts to get help more easily.
Got a call back from the University of Houston, and the Art Department is pretty much holding off its classes until they can get simple things like plumbing back in line.
Centerpoint was able to restore power to close to one million of its customers. Over one million to go. Drove past these guys yesterday, God bless them.
After much searching, I was lucky enough to find a wi-fi hotspot. Oh, exploitable.
4:00 pm: The Army Corp of Engineers is sponsoring a program for those with damaged roofs called the Blue Roof Program. Basically, if you qualify, they come to your house and lay a blue tarp over the hole in your roof. It's designed to last for two weeks until you can get proper repairs on it. They did the same thing in New Orleans, turning the city blue from an aerial view. Gonna try to get that hole in the roof covered by applying.
6:30 pm: Thanks to the media, there is now a new mental disorder that doctors are at liberty to diagnose and prescribe disorder-exclusive medication for: child hurricane anxiety. Yes, I understand that post-traumatic stress disorder is a very real and very serious condition, but now whenever a child gets scared by 140 mph winds and exploding transistors, there's a specific name for it. I predict that in a year, it'll be a nationwide epidemic, the way ADD (a.k.a. ADHD) was affecting whatever child pediatrictians laid their eyes on in the 90s. Children in California will probably be excused if they dance on the desks at school, because they saw wind maps on Wikipedia. As a result, doctors will come up with a revolutionary new anti-child-hurricane-anxiety drug to keep said children under control. It will be called Ritalin.
Thankfully, the hurricane's after-effects are no longer the only thing local channels broadcast anymore. Back to crappy daytime court shows and crappy primetime reality shows.
Started living primally. Without electricity or Internets, I have to rely on my hunter instincts to forage for food. Successful hunt through the jungles, should eat well tonight. Neighbors complaining about missing pets. Meanwhile, the tribe is deciding who be sacrificed to...ooh, look! Power's back on! Guess that mean's this page is finished.
Saturday, September 22, 2508
The Secretary of Homeland Security was reported as saying, "Wait, what? There was a hurricane in Houston? We ought to do something!"
The Full Extent of the Hurricane
Bear in mind these figures exclude the damage rendered to Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, which was 82 deaths and $4.5 billion in damage.
Despite its status as a Category 2 hurricane (based on wind speed,) the surge it created was more consistent with a Category 4. The flood peaked at 22 feet above sea level, even more than Tropical Storm Allison that so devastated Houston 7 years earlier. At its peak in the Gulf of Mexico, Ike was a Category 4 hurricane with a consistent surge.
Galveston, the first place hit, was, well, screwed.
See that wall? The Galveston Sea Wall, which ran the length of island, was built in 1902 as a response to the 1900 hurricane, in which 6,000 residents were killed. While effective innediately hereafter, it didn't work too well this time around. The entire island was underwater, and with cruel irony, gas leaks (presuming) led to 15 houses burning down. A fire destroyed 150 boats in storage. 20 homes have collapsed completely and the Strand was basically a swimming pool. Despite the mandatory evacuation, about 40% of the population was not able to leave.
Bolivar Peninsula received much of the same treatment. Crystal Beach doesn't exist anymore, having been 14 feet underwater.
Matagorda Bay, the place I first thought would be hit, took it fairly well. They got a storm surge between 3 and 7 feet.
Nassau Bay, Clear Lake, League City, Webster, Texas City, Pasadena, and Seabrook all got flooded and wind-damaged. The Nassau Bay Hilton Hotel provided lodging to a handful of refugees, and part of the hotel got blown apart (no serious injuries.)
The Pasadena Convention Center, which also sheltered refugees, is now roofless. Kemah got totaled, just like in Allison and Alicia.
Even two months later, Todville was still a disaster zone. I'd estimate 80% of these otherwise expensive waterfront estates vanished completely.
There used to be a house on those stilts.
There's the house. A nicely-furnished kitchen, anyway. Despite the value of these properties, many of the residents lived modestly. There were mom-and-pop businesses there that are now just concrete foundations with a mailbox out front.
When El Lago got flooded and many of its houses broken into, those who returned were mostly saddened by the loss of many of their old oak trees. The LAST place I expected to be overidden with hippies.
Alvin and surrounding areas are still waterlogged as per the most recent date on this page. No power, trailer homes were tossed around like empty tin cans. FEMA has taken very late notice.
Downtown Houston had it pretty crappily, too. The bayous overflowed and much of the city went dark. North Houston seemed to luck out. Katy lost power briefly, but seems to be doing fine now.
Dallas got wet, lost power for about 48 hours.
Detroit, Michigan and its surrounding areas received a substantial amount of flooding, despite its long distance.
As said before, about 4.5 million people lost power. Centerpoint Energy, which provides power to 2.1 million of those people, predicts that it'll take 2-4 weeks to return electricty to everyone, even with more than 600 independent crews with 11,000 personnel and assistance from outside sources. Keep in mind that there are 5.6 million people in the Houston metropolitan area.
Nine states reported a loss of Internet access, all Comcast customers, as far north as Pennsylvania.
Inexplicably, all the schools I passed immediately after the storm were in excellent condition. No broken windows, no punctured roofs, barely any fallen trees nearby. I have come to the conclusion that God hates children.
Whatever poor performance FEMA seemed to do during Hurricane Katrina, they significantly improved this time around. Sure, I'm willing to zing them for telling people without a proper connection to register at their site, and I'm even more willing to stereotype their nonresponsiveness (face it, I'm mean.) However, from my standpoint, they came in good time, with plenty of supplies. Not to mention that they're working hours a day in riot-prone conditions. Multiple charities came in, faith-based and otherwise with volunteers coming from as far as New York, so as least for my area, you can't say that we were ignored (I can't speak for the majority of Houston, where FEMA was likely to miss several key locations.) Furthermore, I doubt Kanye West is gonna heartbleed over Bush not caring for Galveston's tourists.
Overall, about 65 Texans died (202 missing as of writing this) out of 14,000 people who refused or were unable to evacuate, and the storm cost $27 billion in damage, making it the third costliest hurricane in American history, behind Andrew and Katrina.
In the end, Neil Frank, chief meteorologist of KHOU and former director of the National Hurricane Center, noted the unusual nature of the storm. A 45-mile eye with slow (relatively speaking) winds and a disproportionately large surge. No one can be blamed for this, and no one could have prevented it. It would appear that we have learned at least a little from the weakling that was Rita. There's still a way to go, but we'll recover.
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