Hurricane Ike---Our First

Greetings from wind damaged and water soaked southeast Texas!! I guess it only takes a hurricane for us to contribute to the Sned Thread. For FHE tonight, we decided to take pictures and detail our experience for everyone. So here goes.

The hurricane in Eric's words:

The fence fell down. There was a lot of damage. Shingles fell down from the houses or blew from other peoples houses and blew over here at our house. The tree tipped and then we fixed it. And then it was okay, but we didn't put the straps on though, but it was okay. We thought it was going to tip out and rip, but it didn't. I don't know what the green lightening was. We slept in the closet and it was soo...sooo...hot and we had our flashlights on and the lights went off earlier and we thought they'd go off in a while. I wanted the rainbow flashlight. And we played Uno and had cookies and milk. The rain was coming down onto our house and slamming onto our house. It was loud in the closet. The Uno still worked and we listened to the radio and we woke up early in the morning. I was getting itchy but I put back on my shirt and then Kiersten woke up and we all woke up because it was hot and stuff.

We ate breakfast the next day. We sat in the garage and I rode my scooter in the driveway. We were fixing the tree and mom was fixing dinner and then mom was screaming because the power went back on. We thought we wouldn't have power for a long time and we were lucky.

The morning after, dad and I drove around in the grey car and saw a lot of damage. The nice park was wrecked from all the rain and wind. My school was okay though. School was canceled on Friday and I don't have school until Wednesday.

Dad pushing the tree back into place (though I helped too).

Ike from Rachel and Cameron's perspective:

Work closed it's doors around noon Thursday letting everyone go prepare for Ike. I didn't leave until some time after one though because I had to finish a few things that had bar dates over the weekend, and I didn't know when I'd be back.

After filling up the cars with gas, we went to Home Depot that night to buy a few supplies. If we had a truck, we would've purchased wood to cover our windows, but as recent home buyers, we didn't have a large automobile or many of the tools necessary to complete the job. So we hoped for the best and got some thick covering to add to our tarp should we need to cover up a broken window or worse.

Friday was more anticipation as we constantly had the TV on showing the predictions of when and where Ike would make landfall. We were grateful that the trajectories switched from making landfall at Freeport according to Thursday morning's analysis to Galveston or more East and up through downtown Houston. Freeport is almost due South of where we live and a little bit West, which meant that we would've been on the "dirty" side of the hurricane and that the eye would pass right by or even over us. Being in the the eye itself is fine, that is the calm part. But the worst, i.e. strongest winds are right around the wall of the eye which also would've passed over/near us. No thanks.

Luckily, by Friday morning the trajectories changed, and it appeared that Galveston and downtown Houston were the ones that would be hit. Not that we were wishing/praying for others to be in harms way. But we acknowledged the blessing of not being in the main path of Ike anymore, and what's more, to be on the West side, which is typically less powerful.

After going to the store one last time (though not necessary as we had a lot of provisions, but we had the time, so why not make sure) and picking up the yard and house for any loose items, the waiting game began.

We took this picture of the sunset.

It was amazing to feel the wind come from the Northeast, but see the entire cloud formation generally moving North, while the clouds themselves were rapidly moving in a South Southeast direction. Essentially, they were swirling in a circle like you see the entire hurricane formation do from space and we were on the West side of things. It was a sight to behold.

And here was the more ominous view facing Southwest towards Galveston and the coast

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After taking some pictures we went inside to put Kiersten down and wait for the inevitable. At around 8:00 p.m. we lost power. This was a little earlier than expected since it wasn't raining, lightning, or generally stormy where we were. But, we are part of an extensive grid in the Houston metro area, and a failure in one location can cause systemic failure. By that time, Ike was just off the shore of Galveston. We switched our flashlights on and decided to play Uno in the dark. We each won a game, and decide we should just go to bed. Eric went down first and Rachel and I stayed up to make some final preparations. We then went to bed around 10:30 in the master bedroom closet except for me. I wanted to listen to the radio and keep up to date on the formations. So I took the crank-radio Mom and Dad gave us a few years back and went to another bedroom with fewer window surface area, laid down, listened, and waited.

The wind and rain started pelting us around midnight, but wasn't terrible. It reminded me of a few severe thunderstorms in Nebraska while growing up. After catnapping for 45 minutes or so, I woke up around 12:30 to more pounding and started listening to the radio again. After going up and down the stairs a few times to check the rooms/windows and look out at what I could see, I decided to check on everyone in the closet. Rachel and I then got up and repeated my previous walk through the house. We then both went into the other bedroom to listen to the radio, especially because the closet was so hot by now. After hearing the intensity of the storm increase, we both decided it was time to stay in the closet. So we went into the hot closet, and tried to sleep some. I still had the radio on, listening through an earpiece to not disturb Kiersten or Eric. Rachel fell back asleep meanwhile. I couldn't/didn't want to.

Eventually, 4 o'clock came around and I noticed that the storm intensity increased again. By now though, the eye was approaching or already at downtown Houston. Since we live almost due west of downtown, we were at the closest spot to the eye that we would get, which meant it would be the most intense portion of the hurricane for us. I could tell with the increased pounding the windows and walls were taking. I got out of the closet to check on things and noticed our front tree was bent almost at 35 degree angle and the light pole across the street was shaking like mad. By 5 am, Kiersten woke up followed by Eric. We all awoke as a family and just listened to the pounding the house was taking. We could hear something moving around on the roof, which I assumed was the satellite dish being torn off the roof. I went up into the attic to see if there was any leaking, but thankfully couldn't find any.

By 6:30 a.m. most of us had fallen asleep again and didn't wake up until 8:30 a.m. The storm was still going on outside but it wasn't as bad now. By 9 or 10, it had largely subsided with just some rain remaining. We made it through the night without any of our windows breaking. Our tree survived but was at a 40 degree angle from the ground. We found a few shingles in our yard but didn't know where they came from. Our roof looked fine from all angles, though I haven't been able to go on top of the roof to be for sure. Eric and I drove around the neighborhood to see how things looked. Overall, not bad at all. Fences were leaning or knocked down, a few trees broken with most leaning, and only a few roofs with noticeable portions of shingles missing.

To my great surprise, my satellite dish was still attached to the roof, but I discovered what was flapping around and making the noise on the roof. This part of the satellite was found on our lawn.

I am amazed that the wind tore this off, as well as severed four cables, but that the dish remained attached to the roof. Wow.

We spent the day cleaning up the yard some, but mostly speaking with our neighbors, and

sitting in the drive way reading or playing since it was much cooler outside than inside. By 6 pm, we were very blessed to have the power come back on. A miracle considering our provider has 2.3 million customers with 2.1 million without power. They were anticipating up to 3 weeks for some areas to be without power. I thought we would at least have a few days, but it ended up not even being 24 hours. Although, Sunday morning we lost power again, but it came back by 3 pm. We went to church for sacrament meeting. It was good to see some of the members and discover that most were in fine shape. We expected to help out some with clean up though the stakes down nearer the coast were hardest hit.

All in all, we feel very blessed and protected. Lastly, a picture of our Cabbage Patch Doll.