Finally - pictures!

After a stupidly long time where I couldn't find my camera charger but had my camera, then I couldn't find my camera but had my charger, then I couldn't find the cable to upload the pictures (moving is hard!) I finally have all the pieces in one place and the time to upload some pictures!

This post's pictures will be about Hurricane Ike. We have some photos from the trip back to Houston from Lafayette and what we saw (this was on September 20, 2008).

Here are a few of what we found in Houston, as well as the condition of the house when we got back. The Frinks had already come by and cleaned up the branches out of the yard, so all we got to see was how high it was piled at the curb.

Lastly, the condition of the downed power lines that caused us to be without electricity for 11 days.

Next post will be some people pictures!

Hooray for modern inventions!

I am very very happy to report that we got power back yesterday afternoon! Woo Hoo!

I had no idea how difficult it really is to live without power. We were constantly searching for how we were going to 'survive' the next few hours -

where are we going to get our meals? Our stove is electric and the refrigerator hasn't been on for over a week.

where are we going to get a hot bath?
our water heater is electric too, so we were left with frigid running water.

how are we going to keep our perishables cool?
every bag of ice we purchased was melted in the coolers within a matter of 12 hours.

how are we going to sleep through the night?
the first night was comfortable enough with the cool front, but each night after that became progressively worse, especially for me at 7 months pregnant.

should we suffer through the stifling heat of a closed up house or leave the gaping hole open where our bedroom window was blown out and sacrifice ourselves to the mosquitoes?
all of the windows of the house we are renting are sealed shut, so there was no hope for fresh air or circulation. The only window that is "open" is because a tree branch crashed into it during the storm.

What a nightmare. I am so thankful we only put up with that for 4 days and 3 nights and the rest of the time we were in a much better state in Lafayette.

To celebrate our newfound civility again, we took hot showers, got dressed in some nice duds, and went out to dinner at a Thai place we hadn't tried yet. Ah, it felt good to be normal again!

SUPER BIG THANK YOU to those who helped us out!! -
The Frinks, who were kind enough to clear out our yard while we were still gone, clean out our fridge from the fuzzy scaries inside, let us come over and swim in their pool, and help us set the bedroom back to normal again after discovering all the glass everywhere.

Jenn who graciously opened her home to us for two days for hot cooked meals, a hot shower and laundry facilities. We loved spending time with you!

Bartek who was so sweet and kindly opened his home to us in the middle of the night after we called him at 1 am on the last night without power and asked if we could crash on his floor. The heat and humidity and the mosquitoes were so bad that I just couldn't take it anymore! By 12:45 am we had packed a bag and Dudley into the car and ventured into the city to find refuge. Bartek didn't even hesitate to say yes and 45 minutes later we were snug inside of his apartment with wonderful blessed air conditioning.

Also, thank you Mom and Dad who were so great to have us invade their home for 9 days!! The RV was great and the hospitality was more than we could have hoped for. We enjoyed seeing you.

Special thanks goes to my nephew Nic who wanted his Aunt Natasha to stay in Lafayette one more day so much that he offered to make me an apple pie in return for one more day. How could I say no to that! :) And boy, that pie was yummy-licious!

the cause of our problem

By daylight it is easy to see why we have no power. There is a gigantic tree that got ripped right out of its roots that decided to pull down an entire section of power lines on its way down to a twisted death. I say twisted because that's kind of what it looks like...the 4 or 5 lines that came down are all twisted around the gnarled branches. In fact the residents of the house that the tree fell in front of say they believe it must have been a small tornado that picked everything up and dropped it back down again.
They say they've had the city councilman from our neighborhood out to look at things and centerpoint has been out multiple times as well. All they say is that its a big project...then they leave.
There are people from centerpoint out there now so everyone cross your fingers for us!!!

Houston by candlelight

We are back in Houston tonight and are sad to say we do not have power at our house! We really thought that we could have it by now. With a 30ish percentage of people still out in our zip code we chose to look at it like there was a 70 percent chance we had lights. Alas, no power!

We went to the Frinks tonight to swim and cool off.

Ike Update - Thursday Sept 18 2008

The local Houston newspaper, the Houston Chronicle, has made their website a very useful tool to read about all the efforts going on in Houston after the hurricane. You can see the paper here:
http://www.chron.com

I found a cute article featuring contributions from Houston folk on things like what they've been eating during the power outage and how to keep the kids entertained:
http://blogs.chron.com/weatheringike/living_without_power/

Another gallery of photos. These span from way north of Houston (Conroe) to Southeast of Houston on Galveston island.
http://www.chron.com/news/photogallery/In_Hurricane_Ikes_Aftermath.html

Here is an article from the paper regarding power:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/6008231.html

As of noon today, there is 29% of the people left in my zip code without power. The article referenced above says that all of CenterPoint's main grids and stations and stuff like are operational again, except for the one on Galveston island. Now they are shifting to going out to individual areas to restore lines. This will essentially reduce the number of restored residents per fix from the thousands to the hundreds. But, that means progress is being made!

Alberto got the call from his company that they are back up and running again. I have been working nonstop all week from my parents' house on a deliverable for my own job, which bounced back pretty quickly after a few hours of regrouping on Monday. (Since we all work remotely anyway, and we get emails on our mobile devices, it's not like we were at any big loss for the office being out of commission. The only thing most people have had to wait on is power for their computers.)

We couldn't have left Lafayette before now anyway because I've been tethered to an internet connection and phone line since Monday afternoon trying to get the deliverable done. I am happy to say that as of noon today, it is DONE! At least until next week.... :P

So, it looks like we'll be headed home tomorrow. Even if the power isn't back yet, we know it won't be long, and we hear the weather is still quite nice at around 80 degrees thanks to the cool front that came through earlier this week.

I hope to take some pictures of how our property turned out to show how Ike treated our street.

Ike Updates - Wednesday, September 17 2008

Things are really starting to pick up in Houston. I can't say the same for Galveston.
The Mayor of Galveston had instituted a 'look and leave' policy from 6 to 6 for residents who just couldn't wait to get back and see what was left of their home. However, I have heard that she has suspended this.

One of Houston's local new stations has a running blog of all of the businesses that are open - this incluedes banks, drug stores, and businesses that sell food (restaurants/groceries) and ice and fuel. Of course, the liquor stores have to be included too! The list is becoming very long, and I was happy to see that our local Walgreens and Kroger are on the list today. Our local bank branch is not yet open.

CenterPoint Energy's website is back up, and they report this morning that 62% are still without power:
http://centerpointenergy.com/staticfiles/ike/outages.html

They've also posted a zip code breakdown of power/no power, and I can see that for our zip code, there are a total of 5,973 still without power, to make up 41% of the zip code.

Here's an outage map of the Houston area, as of 8:00 pm CST on Wednesday 9/16:
http://centerpointenergy.com/staticfiles/CNP/Common/SiteAssets/doc/Ike%20outage%20MAP_9.16_8PM.pdf. The red areas are those still without power.

Tracy let me know that they got power back at their house on Monday night and were quite happy about that. The water boil restriction has also been lifted, and hot water is beginning to flow into showers again! Small but important victory!

The city of Houston has changed its curfew hours from 9 pm-6 am to 12 am-6 am. The mayor says the curfew is in place primarily for the safety of roads and neighborhoods. This curfew has also been extended to Monday 9/22 (from Saturday 9/20)

Here is a link to photos:
http://www.khou.com/perl/common/slideshow/sspop.pl?recid=12016&nextimage=0
This appears to be a collection of photos sent in from residents to the news station. There are a lot there, so it may take an extra few moments to load.


It's looking a lot like we'll be ready to head home tomorrow. We'll make the decision once we know for sure that the power has or has not been restored to our house today. Tracy's instincts told her it would be, and I agree. Cross your fingers everyone!

Ike updates - Tuesday Sept 16

500,000 people in the Houston area have now had power restored. I think this means another 1.5 million are left to go. I can't check the CenterPoint website because it's been down for 2 days.

I talked with my friend Jenn last night - she is the one who works for one of the news stations - and she echoed what Tracy told me on Sunday. Houston is not devastated, just severely inconvenienced. Roads are not impassible, and the flood waters have largely receded. They haven't gotten rain since Sunday morning, and there is not any more rain expected for around 5 days.

With no power for going on 4 days now, many people who thought they'd just wait for the lights to come back on are deciding to head out of town and stay with relatives for a while. The same is true for Galveston, which is a good thing because the Galveston mayor has been asking people to get out and let the clean up efforts begin for days now.

Here is a link to a broadcast I found on the internet. This one is not local news, it's national, but it illustrates the destruction of Galveston well:

Galveston mayor: 'There's nothing to come here for'

We are thinking about heading home tomorrow. Will keep you posted.