Ike

by publius

First, thanks for all the notes of concern - much appreciated. We're all fine. I'm iPhone blogging so forgive typos and lack of polish. It's actually been nice to be isolated from news given that the election was driving me insane.

Anyway, as you may know better than I, Ike caused some serious damage here. I presume most of Galveston is destroyed. Houston also had extensive damage. I'll post a few pictures eventually but there are thousands of trees and poles ripped from ground - many landing in peoples houses. A few observations:

First, I fear Ike may put a cloud of sorts over otherwise booming Houston. If a direct hit Category 2 can cause this much damage, then a Category 4 could be an absolutely devastating blow. It's frightening to think what could have happened with a stronger storm. I'm not sure what you can do about it, but its a concern going forward.

Second, I will never again "ride out" a hurricane. It's hard to truly understand just how scary and powerful they are. You sit for hours upon hours as these massive gusts come and go - wondering whether your window will blow out. They're like labor contractions from hell - you brace every few minutes for a new gust during the peak of storm. Anyway, next time, my happy ass will be in Austin.

Third, it is sort of humbling - and fascinating - to see just how much bigger nature is and how small you are in the grand scheme of things. It's easy to forget how everyday worries rest upon invisible assumptions that you have things like water and electricity. I'm not claiming I truly experienced want or anything. I am one of the lucky few that already has power. But these give you a brief glimpse into what things could be like. Though there is something to be said for reading by candlelight. And everyone has really pitched in to help each other around the neoghborhoods.

Anyway thanks again. I'm not sure when I'll have broadband again but it could be a while. But I'm hoping the tracking polls will look a bit better. :)

Comments

[MeDrewNotYou]

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to call you crazy for riding it out. It is good to hear that you and the family are okay, though. Stay safe!

[hilzoy]

Hey -- welcome back to the internets! Glad you're all OK.

I remember my own "wow, nature is very very powerful!" moment. It was a magnitude 7 earthquake. I was lying in bed, maybe 30 or 40 miles from the epicenter, thinking: this thing is shaking entire counties. It was pretty amazing.

[allmaya]

In June of 2007, Marble Falls had 15" of rain in about four hours. I cannot begin to convey how utterly demoralizing it is at 3:30 in the morning to have the water rushing into your home.

You are right -- get the hell out next time.

[Meditative_Zebra]

Publius, I'm glad to hear you and your family are okay.

I have a friend who just got married last month and moved down to Houston. I feel awfully sorry for him. This is a heck of a way to be introduced to a new city.

[jesurgislac]

Glad you're all safe and well.

I have to admit, going strictly by description from others who have experienced that kind weather, I probably would not try to "ride out" a hurricane unless I had really no alternative - you add to my trove of second-hand experience that this is really not a good idea.

Not but what, you know - you did it: no one was harmed as a result: and all knowledge not gained harmfully is good.

When you get broadband back and have time, it would be great to hear more about how you coped.

[bbrugger]

1985.

Elena's going to Louisiana. No, Florida. No, Gulf Coast of Mississippi. It seemed like the reports changed every twenty minutes. We were ordered into shelters on the Air Force base. Moved furniture, stocked our supplies, kenneled our pets, boarded our windows- and were told never mind, go home, wait, come back.

Spent the storm in the shelter on base, sleeping on the floors in the offices and work rooms, other military families all around us. It was hot and weirdly quiet when they let us go outside the back door to smoke and exchange gossip from base HQ and police scanners.

The unit commander himself came down when it was time to board up the door as the winds picked up. None of us knew if we'd have anything left to go home to.

Big sturdy government building, rated to survive bombs, you know? And still as the wind went on and on and the trees started snapping it was scary as all hell. Like the wind was alive and angry and not going to stop until it got in.

The eye went right over us. The commander opened the door and sent out a security detail to mark off an area right around the door with tape. Stay inside the tape if you go outside, everyone WILL come back in immediately when the order is given.

I thought 'yeah, right, after hours cooped up in here people are going to argue'. But when we got outside it was so quiet and so clear and you could see the building was sitting in a field of downed trees and power poles and flipped over cars and unidentified debris and rubble. And you could see it sink in for people- this is only half way over and what will we find when we go home?

When the winds began again we went inside without needing to be told.

Atferwards we found buildings gone to the foundations, we found homes with roofs so torn the insulation in the attic had soaked with rain and the weight of it all had pancaked the ceilings down, covering and destroying pretty much everything left in those rooms, we found we couldn't get into our houses without chain saws.We found no water or power or gas or phones- but the stores that could were open. We started calling the frequent rain squalls Nature Showers and would run outside gasping at the cold water and hurriedly scrub our bodies and wash our hair.

We had seven extra people in our little cottage because their homes were not safe. We spent a lot of nights lying on blankets on the hoods of the cars pointing out constellations. We spent a lot of days cleaning up and hauling things to the curb- and there were two trips to emergency room because, frankly, in those conditions a nail through the bottom of your foot from an unseen board was tetanus just waiting to happen.

For a week or so we camped out like nomads in a post-apocalyptic novel.

The day the Power truck (all the way from Atlanta) showed up and started restoring poles and lines we were thrilled. We made them pitchers of lemonade. The gas and water crews were there that day and the next.

I would never 'ride out' another, these days. I know how lucky we got, even with that shelter plan, not to have faced a monster like Katrina or Ike. I'd be packed and headed north with the dog and the cats so fast there'd be a sonic boom.

I'm glad you're all okay.

[Gary Farber]

Since the most recent open post has gone off the sidebar, I'd like to note that another longtime blogger has gone off to war, this time in Afghanistan. Probably few folks around by this point know Bruce Rolston, but I've been reading him since late 2001 or early 2002, and I hate to have another person to worry about in a war zone. I'm just selfish that way.

So I'm pointing out his blog and existence to others, even though there's no sign at present he'll be blogging.

Wish I could do more.

[Brett Bellmore]

Riding out a hurricane can be fun, but you really need to have prepared your home well in advance for it, by doing things like installing hurricane shutters, and having it checked to see that it's properly constructed. It's not for the unprepared.

[Jesurgislac]

This seems to be the thread for sharing personal experience of "riding out hurricanes", so do share, Brett.

[Peggy]

Agree with Brett. My Mom's house in Florida has hurricane shutters, which is standard. In her part of FL, shutters get put up at least once a year. Do people in Texas normally have hurricane shutters? or do they rely on plywood?

[Brett Bellmore]

Well, my mom lived in Davie, FL for some years, and while I never was down there for a big blow myself, I've got her reports. She used a special film applied to the windows, rather than the shutters, but did have the house checked to see that it met code. (Important, since the building inspectors were on the take in some areas.)

About the worst she experienced, aside from having to rely on candles for a while, was water being blown in under the front door, (First floor was tile, no biggie.) which was being pressed against the frame so hard it couldn't be budged. Not that she'd have wanted to go out in those conditions, mind you...

It was a bit of a party, some of her friends from closer to the coast would come by to visit for the duration.

[John Thullen]

I'm glad you and yours are safe, Publius.

Now, what to do about the financial hurricane that took out Lehman Brothers this weekend, caused Bank of America to buy Merrill Lynch (a fishy deal), and may flood the streets with uncounted worthless paper from American International Group, one of the world's largest insurers and an incredibly complex finanacial edifice.

Washington Mutual is next.

I wonder where the capital is going to come from to fix the damage in Houston and salvage Galveston.

[Adam]

It didn't even rain in Austin.

[DrDave]

Publius:

Glad to hear you survived intact.

I also have family in S. Florida who have hunkered down through numerous hurricanes. Even with post-Andrew construction (all block with cable ties between the foundation and the roof supports, storm shutters, reinforced doors, etc.), it is still a hairy proposition.

[Incertus]

Glad to hear that you're doing okay, Publius. I've ridden out my share of them--I was camping about 12 hours before the aforementioned Hurricane Elena came back through Louisiana and had to haul ass back to the evacuation zone before the storm tore my tent up by the stakes. And I rode out Wilma in an old Florida house 3 years ago--a concrete bunker-like structure--which wasn't too bad, though the ten days without electricity afterward got a little wearying.

But I always figure that if you make it through alive and with most of your stuff intact, you did better than average.

[wades]

@Jesurgislac: This seems to be the thread for sharing personal experience of "riding out hurricanes", so do share, Brett.

From my email archive, dated 11/1/05 and titled "Eye of the Storm":

After 20 years in Sunny Florida, I have seen the eye of a hurricane
from the inside. I am not anxious to repeat the experience.

Aided by the fact that putting up shutters is a laborious ordeal, I
convinced myself that Wilma was likely to blow itself out to a minimal
hurricane or tropical storm by the time it got here. Hence I had a
good view when it came through as a cat 3 storm with the northeast eye
wall passing right over us at about 9 in the morning. The scariest
part was watching the lawn furniture my neighbor left in her yard as
it flopped around. Fortunately a medium-sized oak tree fell over into
her yard about a half-hour in, and the stuff got trapped in the
branches. The close second-place fright was seeing the glass in my
sliding doors flex, with a displacement of what looked like at least
an inch (but was probably less) in the centers of the panes. I had to
keep chasing Janel and Melody away from them, wondering if I shouldn't
take them into the laundry room and wrap us up in blankets.

At about 11, the wind died down and I was able to take the dog outside
for a little bit. There were clouds overhead most of the time we were
in the eye, and a drizzle of rain. It did clear up enough to see the
sun for a few minutes before the western wall came through, but we
didn't get to see the preternaturally-clear-sky vista one reads of in
hurricane stories.

Just as the winds of the southwestern eye wall began to really blow,
Shane opened the front door and excitedly reported seeing a pickup
truck bed liner flying down the street. The girls rushed to join him
and I was forced to remonstrate with them to get the deleted> door closed and get inside.

The meteorologists assure us that the trailing quadrant of the storm
is less bad than the leading one, but everyone I've talked to disputes
that about Wilma. It was during the second half that I began to hear
our roof tiles coming off. There was more rain then, and instead of
always flying horizontally it occasionally blew onto to pavers behind
the house so forcefully that it resembled the action of a pressure
washer.

We came through it in good shape though... last Spring we had a
contractor look over our roof and repair a bunch of cracked tiles.
This appears to have been a good investment, since we lost only a few
while many of our neighbors had piles of tile fragments around their
houses.

About 80% of the houses in our neighborhood did not put up any
shutters at all, and none of them suffered broken windows or worse. (A
broken window, in a hurricane, is supposed to be the precursor to
getting one's roof blown off). Nonetheless, I'm sure the next time
there's a hurricane warning almost everyone will be laboring to get
the shutters up. I know I will.

[Slartibartfast]

I'm glad to hear that your family is well, publius. I think you'd have had to go a long way from home, and when you and a couple of million others are doing that, there's always the question of where do you stay.

I recall back in 1983 or '84 a fairly substantial hurricane hit Houston, and swiped Dallas pretty good as well. The streets in downtown Houston were, as I recall, covered with about a foot and a half of pulverized glass. Alicia, maybe.

[CaseyL]

Publius - great to hear that you're safe and well. Now don't do that again :)

I lived in South Florida from 1969-74, and again from 1983-88, and we never got hit the times I was there. The closest I've come to being in a hurricane was way back in '76, when one traveled up the East coast as far as the Carolinas, and Atlantic City NJ (Where I was spending the summer) got sideswiped by the edge.

I was working at a souvenir shop that summer. We spent the morning frantically moving merchandise to higher shelves, covering the shelves with tarp, and fastening everything down. Then the shop closed and we were all directed to go home.

I walked down the Boardwalk while the wind picked up. It wasn't anywhere near hurricane strength, but still powerful enough to push me this way and that across the boardwalk. At one point I had to wrap my arms around one of the lightpoles, the wind blowing so hard I was convinced it would pick me up and flap me like a banner.

That's as close as I've ever come, and as close as I ever want to come.

[serge]

I,for one, do not blame you for riding out the storm. I live on a beach near Charleston, and I have this raging argument with my wife each storm about me staying put. I know it's stupid, I know it's damn near crazy, but I will not again go through what I had to after Hugo in 1989. Local government, the police, the Nat'l Guard were as fucked up as they possibly could be. Forget FEMA (or FEEBLE as I called them), GHW Bush hadn't seen fit to name a director yet.

I could not get back onto my island for days after it was safe to do so. In the meantime, subsequent torrential rains caused even more damage than the storm itself. When one has ceded all control to the state, you feel it really quickly. It's not pretty. And, shit, I'm not even a Libertarian.

[serge]

I,for one, do not blame you for riding out the storm. I live on a beach near Charleston, and I have this raging argument with my wife each storm about me staying put. I know it's stupid, I know it's damn near crazy, but I will not again go through what I had to after Hugo in 1989. Local government, the police, the Nat'l Guard were as fucked up as they possibly could be. Forget FEMA (or FEEBLE as I called them), GHW Bush hadn't seen fit to name a director yet.

I could not get back onto my island for days after it was safe to do so. In the meantime, subsequent torrential rains caused even more damage than the storm itself. When one has ceded all control to the state, you feel it really quickly. It's not pretty. And, shit, I'm not even a Libertarian.

[serge]

I,for one, do not blame you for riding out the storm. I live on a beach near Charleston, and I have this raging argument with my wife each storm about me staying put. I know it's stupid, I know it's damn near crazy, but I will not again go through what I had to after Hugo in 1989. Local government, the police, the Nat'l Guard were as fucked up as they possibly could be. Forget FEMA (or FEEBLE as I called them), GHW Bush hadn't seen fit to name a director yet.

I could not get back onto my island for days after it was safe to do so. In the meantime, subsequent torrential rains caused even more damage than the storm itself. When one has ceded all control to the state, you feel it really quickly. It's not pretty. And, shit, I'm not even a Libertarian.

[cw]

Just to add some humor, when I was in the Air Force in the early 70's we evacuated all our airplanes to a neighboring base, only to be met in mid-trip by all the planes from that base evacuating to ours. Talk about a clusterf---. Luckily the hurricane missed both bases, and I suspect both commanders took credit for their actions.

[serge]

Have no idea how I managed to post my comment three times....apologies to all.

[Slartibartfast]

It was the storm, serge.

[wonkie]

I've never been in a hurricane but two years ago out here in Washington state we had gusts of up to one hundred miles per hour one memoralble night.

It was just flat terrifying. Trees falling every where. One tree that fell was so huge and heaby that the ground shook like an earthquake. I slept under out cast iron spira; starcase with the dog.

The next day over one hundred trees in the immediate neighborhood had fallen. I think about twenty houses were hit, one bisected, fortunately between bedrooms. missing a room full of kids by a couple of feet.

few miles from here a tree fell on a house trailer, smashing a man in his bed. He was in the hospital for a year and is now paralyzed from the chest down.

We had no power for fice days.

I would not sit out a hurricae. As matter of fact i don't want to sit out the next big windstorm.

I'm glad you are Ok Publius.

[Rebecca Allen]

Glad to hear you and yours are ok, Publius. My sister is in Houston, and has been emailing us via her Blackberry about the damage--it sounds bad, and of course poor Galveston is much worse. I rode out Hurricane Alicia in Houston in 1983--I was an intern there--and it was a pretty hair-raising experience (and I grew up in the Midwestern tornado belt). I remember hearing the freight train sounds and knowing there were tornadoes within the hurricane (estimates were over 50), and being pretty scared. I also remember the deathly quiet when the eye passed over, which was incredibly weird. Not an experience I care to repeat.

[jkdbrown]

I have to agree, publius. That was scary as heck. And where I was--in the Montrose district, inside the loop--we only got category one winds. I don't want to be anywhere near if we ever get category two or stronger.

Miraculously, my neighborhood seems mostly o.k. Most of the damage was caused by falling trees, signs, and awnings. We're on high ground, away from the bayous, so we didn't get any flooding. My block is still without power, though we have water back, and some of the other blocks already have electricity again.

This is my first foray back onto the internet (I've snuck back into work), so I've only just now been able to get good information about areas other than mine. Thankfully, the damage and death-toll don't seem to have been as high as was feared.

I'm glad to hear that you and your family came through unscathed. Best wishes to you, and to everybody else who went through the storm.

[Bill H]

Try riding out one of those at sea, for four days, in a 1800-ton ship which is 300' long with a 30' beam. Sounds like a big ship, right? Believe me, it's not.

[Randy OC]

I would just like to comment on the anger and frustration I have listening to the so called “victims” of Hurricane Ike. My heart goes out to those who have lost everything but the clothes on their back. I feel the pain of those who have had years of possessions and memories removed from them. I reserve these emotions for those who heeded the warnings and left or could not leave. I have lived through a category 4 hurricane in 1992 with recorded wind gusts up to 227 mph. During hurricane Iniki we had no where to go as we were on an island. Everyone took the warnings seriously. Anyone close to the coast evacuated to an inland shelter. There were instances of people who lived inland who lost roofs and possessions but due to the ability of the local residence to be intelligent enough to heed the weather service only 4 lives were lost, and 2 of them were at sea at the time.

I watch with anger and disgust the people telling their close brushes with death because they were smart enough to stay, even though the national weather services used the phase eminent death. How more plan can you be? I was watching the early stages of the storm as the coast guard had some 1400 calls for rescue after the waters started rising. These calls of able bodied people took precious time away from rescuers to find people who were NOT able to leave without assistance. I watched a reporter interviewing a man who was telling of how the water was filling up in his house and how his two boys sitting on the couch in life jackets got sharpies to write their names and social security on their arms so their bodies could be identified. I listened to another story of a family that were sleeping and the roof blew off and he grabbed his daughter by the arm just before she was blown from the house. Personally I believe these two families should have their children taken from them for child endangerment.

I listen and become sick when I think theses people who “CHOSE” to stay put their children and rescuers lives at risk. I do realize that not all of the people had a choice, but for those who did I feel rage. To think that people would not only have so little regard for their own lives but that of their families and officials responsible for their well being, I believe it should be criminal. I can only imagine how many elderly or sick people who could not evacuate that may be dead now because rescuers were saving people who thought it would be fun to try and ride it out. I live in Arizona now and we have a law on the books now called the “Stupid Motorist Law” It is for motorists that chose to ignore barricades and drive through flooded areas. If they are stranded they will be fined and have to pay for their own rescue. Perhaps the coastal states should pass some similar laws to protect the people who don’t have choices, like the rescuers and the children of the idiots.

[wonkie]

Or pets. There's a youtube of a IFAW rescue of a dog that was left tied to a porch. i wonxder how many dogs and cats died in this thing? people who leave thier pets behind should be charged with cruekty and never allowed to have a pet again.

[jkdbrown]

Randy OC,

FWIW, I agree with you. My fiancee and I stayed only because we weren't under a mandatory evacuation order; if we'd been told to get out, we would have. (And we've decided that in the future, unless we're told *not* to evacuate--as we were this time--we're out of here.) Those people who stayed on Galveston were fantastically lucky that the storm jogged northeast at the end.