Ike update from a corner of Houston. How are others Ike affected doing?

Parent Cafe
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<p>Well we survived Ike. I slept through, but wife unit watched it in person. We lost power. We were bracing for several days without power. It came back last night @ 11:30. No damage to our house and the houses in our sub-division. We have three mature oak trees and almost 30% of leaves are in our yard. Similar situation with other people too. Yesterday, we filled up eleven 55 gallon trash bags and 2/3 of the yard still needs to be cleaned. It was difficult with ground still wet. It is difficult to scraps up all the leaves. It also rained very heavily this morning. We also lost few sections of fence. Our neighbor lost a mature Oak tree. Fortunately it fell away from the house. It seems that cell phones were not getting any calls. The land line was working with a real old (20+ years) corded phone.</p>

<p>We were fortunate.</p>

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<p>Glad to hear your neighborhood is okay. If I lived closer, I’d ask for some of the leaves for my compost pile.</p>

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<p>I’m glad that your family is safe and that you escaped with little damage.</p>

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<p>My cousin lives in El Lago - it is located between Galveston and Houston. The house sustained minor damage. A tree fell and, thankfully, just clipped the corner gutter area of the house. The house did not flood. They are without power - said it might take 2 - 3 weeks for it to return. She said that the pictures on TV are accurate - boats from the area marinas have washed up on the highways, etc. She said that they are feeling very fortunate this morning.</p>

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<p>Glad to hear you are safe Simba, and that you had little damage. Invite a friend over for AC in a few days.</p>

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<p>Simba, I’m glad that you and your family are safe!</p>

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<p>Updated elsewhere, but will update again here. Still no power but iphone was BEST PURCHASE EVER!! No water, unfortunately. Still have plenty of bottled and stored to drink, though. Downtown is CLOSED, three blocks from me, it has power but heavy damage at many bldgs. </p>

<p>Brother is on med center property and got power back yesterday. Rice has power and Internet. Everyone is safe but the campus is a wreck and campus remains closed thru tomorrow. Took pics of the damage around the city and will probably post those today. Good luck, all.</p>

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<p>Looking forward to your pictures and VERY happy everyone is ok!</p>

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<p>Was there a reason you didn’t obey the mandatory evacuation order? My understanding is that people who stayed and need help increase the risks to those who have to do the search and rescue.</p>

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<p>There was not a mandatory evacuation order for the majority of Houston, in fact, we were told to stay put so the people who needed to evacuate COULD. Believe me, if I had a choice, I would not sit here without power or water for 36 hours… And counting.</p>

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<p>Thanks- my source has been the Weather Channel, too much Ike coverage at the expense of the rest of the country last week- the Midwest had weather woes before the impact of Ike.</p>

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<p>wis75, this is a HUGE misconception that the national media is helping to spread. The vast, vast majority of the greater Houston area not only was NOT under an evacuation order, but we were told by government officials to STAY PUT! They kept saying over and over, “Run from the water, hide from the wind.” Basically, almost everyone who was not in the flood surge area was told not to evacuate in order to not clog up the roads so that our neighbors to the south could get out.</p>

<p>As you have probably heard on t.v., in 2005, during the runup to Hurricane Rita, a cat 5 hurricane which was headed straight towards Houston before it veered east into the east Texas/Louisiana area, everyone in Houston was urged to evacuate which resulted in the biggest traffic jam in the history of the world. I had the dubious honor of being one of the participants in that traffic jam.</p>

<p>They did not want that to happen again, so they developed a disaster plan which urged most Houston residents to “shelter in place”.</p>

<p>Also, sometimes whether one was under a mandatory evacuation order was debatable. In my case, at first they ordered only the zip codes in my county that were touching the coast to evacuate. Then, they said the whole county needed to evacuate. Well, we knew that was ridiculous in our case. We are 40 miles inland and at 52 ft. elevation. We aren’t even in the cat. 5 surge zone. We are not in any city limits, but two cities on either side of us, one SE of us and one N of us, were exempted from the mandatory evacuation. We used common sense and did not evacuate. Well…H did not evacuate. I did, because my dad was convinced I would drown, and I was seriously afraid he would have a heart attack because he was so distraught. </p>

<p>So, when you hear that 100,000 or 140,000 did not evacuate from mandatory evacuation zones, that may be true, BUT they will not be doing search and rescue except on Galveston Island, Bolivar Peninsula, Surfside, and further east along the coast…right along the coast. There is no need to search the rest of the mandatory evacuation zone. And yes, those people along the coast on Galveston island should have left. There is quite a lot of buzz about that around here - that those who have to be rescued should have to pay a fine and they should be charged with child endangerment for keeping their kids there.</p>

<p>Cross-posted with aibarr and wis75</p>

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<p>I used to live in Beaumont, 90 miles east of Houston. There was a mandatory evacuation ordered and I have friends who ignored the order. There’s a correlation between the number of years lived near the gulf coast and how seriously people take evacuations. I’m sure they figured this was only a category 2 storm and Rita was 5. Luckily for them, the storm surge predicted never materialized. No one in Beaumont has electricity now and the water treatment plant is not operating (no water and sewer) and there are no projected dates for repairs. This should get them to leave. Many of my friends did have beach houses on the Bolivar Peninsula which were completely wiped out, but I’m guessing most of those homes were in the $100,000-$200,000 range. Beachfront homes are around $300,000.</p>

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<p>I keep checking the various Ike threads to make sure all our TX friends are checking in as they can. Looks like a pretty wild ride for many.</p>

<p>Ike has started blowing it’s way north. My D, in Oxford, Ohio, just called to let us know they are without power, and to warn us that her phone battery doesn’t have much charge left. (I told her to text from now on.)</p>

<p>They haven’t had any rain, but the winds have been tremendous. Apparently a tree fell on power lines and the entire city (village?) is without power. D said that either the cafeterias aren’t open, or those that are have long lines. Her dorm is having a “pot luck” with everyone bringing whatever food they have to share. Guess there will be lots of crackers and peanut butter. Wish I’d already mailed the care package sitting on the dining room table. I told her to stay inside. She didn’t need convincing.</p>

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<p>Ike winds hit us harder than it hit my daughter at college in Austin, so close to Houston! Austin just got a little wind on Saturday. Meanwhile, here in the Midwest:</p>

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<p>The power outage starts about 1/4 mile west of my house, so we have power. Lots of trees and branches down.</p>

<p>I’m thinking of your daughter an all of the other kids at Miami, binx. It is hard to be without power in a dorm.</p>

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<p>Ike passed through N. KY and Cincinnati today with gusts of 75 MPH. There is extensive wind damage in the area. Approximately 75% of area customers
(600,000 people) are without power tonight. The governor of KY has declared a state of emergency. Most schools and many businesses are closed.</p>

<p>My husband and I are among the very lucky few who have power. Our electricity was out for about 5 hours this afternoon. We stocked up on ice for the long haul, figuring we might be without power for days. We were quite surprised when the lights came back on this evening. </p>

<p>Our local TV stations (all located in downtown Cinci, which is one of the few areas that did not lose power) have said that crews that had been sent to the Gulf region have been recalled. They are getting a few crews to come from the Carolinas to help us, but they can’t get much assistance from neighbors that would normally come to our aid because they are either suffering power outages themselves or they have travelled to the south to help out there. Duke Energy officials say that it may take more than a week to restore power to the entire metro area. There are many, many trees down in the area, lots of downed power lines, and blown transformers. </p>

<p>I was very lucky - I only have very large branches to deal with, not entire downed trees. My chain saw and I will be busy tomorrow.</p>

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<p>My 80-ish parents are in NE Ohio and called us an hour or so ago from my mother’s cell to tell me that the wind was blowing at somewhere around 55 mph, they were having intermittent power outages and that their land line wasn’t working. </p>

<p>The irony here is that she was really worried about us and hardly slept Friday night watching Ike reports on CNN. On Saturday morning when she called to check on us, I teased her and asked her if she worried when there was bad weather in Cincinnati or northern KY because they are about as far from her as Galveston is from us. I guess I better not use that analogy again…</p>

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<p>This morning’s paper said we had 336,000 people without power last night. My son is disappointed to hear that the power is back on at his high school (I think most schools have their power back this morning, but some are closed.)</p>

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<p>timely – thanks for the real story. Those of us far from Ike really only have the media as info sources, so it can be hard to know what the truth is.</p>

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<p>The wind came through here in Western NY last night - enough to wake me up, and I am a pretty sound sleeper! Lots of trees and wires down - the two utilities I work for are trying to restore thousands of customers, while a third is trying to restore my town - and our winds were probably less than half of what the people in Texas got. What a storm - we can’t send mutual aid crews to help those in Texas until we we’re done with our own problem!</p>