Hurricane Ike

Hurricane Ike rolled into Galveston in the early morning hours of Saturday, September 13th.  Ike caused major damage to the island, including taking out the historic Balinese Room.  Ike continued north into Houston and East Texas creating havoc along the way.  The eastern portion of the Texas coast took the brunt of Ike's fury, while Ike was more of an inconvenience to Houston and the surrounding areas.  On Wednesday night and all day on Thursday, Paul and I, along with my brother and sister-in-law, headed to League City to help my parents prepare for the storm, boarding up windows, packing pictures for a trip to higher, dryer ground, moving clothes and furniture upstairs.  There was a different feel around League City that day compared to the days preceeding Rita.  Rita was a panic.  To me, it seemed with Ike, like everyone knew, without a doubt, that the hurricane was going to hit dead-on and everyone was quietly working to take care of what needed to get done and get out.  There were no massive traffic jams on the freeways, no real lack of fuel before the storm.  It was really, very different.

 

Paul and I headed to Jodie and Randy's for a little hurricane party in the late afternoon on Friday.  My parents and Emily were already there.  Jodie and my mom spent a large chunk of the afternoon at Costco stockpiling supplies.  We headed over to relax, eat and enjoy everyone's company before the storm.  

Here is a video taken around 5:30 Friday evening of Andrew, Mom and I watching the clouds starting to roll in to town.

Our intent was to wait until just before the storm got bad and then head home, to sleep in our own bed, and to be here in case we need to sure up the house if anything happened.  Around 10 o'clock, things were starting to get a little hairy, so we decided it was time to hit the road.  We said our good-byes, despite Jodie asking us not to go, we were headed to the car, when Randy asked if we knew if we even had power.  Paul called our neighbor and found out that our neighborhood lost power about an hour before.  Apparently 

the transformer in our backyard blew, raining a shower of sparks down on the tin roof of the neighbor's shed.  The sparks danced across the shed catching the Magnolia tree in the adjacent neighbor's yard on fire.  Luckily, another neighbor saw this happen and called the fire department, who responded quickly and extinguished the fire. 

Well, given the fact that Jodie and Randy still had power, and we didn't, our decision was made.  I was really wishing I had listened to myself earlier and grabbed my toothbrush and blanket.  :)  At that point, I decided it was time to have a beer.  

We settled in and began watching the various newscasts begin reporting stories across the Galveston/Houston region.  I decided that if I were looking to get drunk, I could easily do it by drinking anytime someone on tv said the phrase "hunker down."  Wanting to have my wits about me should something happen, I refrained.

After an eventful night, which consisted of little sleep, we lost power at 2:30 am, I decided to give up on sleeping around 6:30 and join my mother and brother-in-law on the front porch, watching the storm. 

Jodie and Randy's street the evening before Ike blew through.

The view from their front porch as the sun came up on the tail-end of Ike.