Hurricane Ike Update #5

I survived! The power went out shortly after my last update at 8PM. That was a bummer, made for a long night of waiting for the hurricane and then watching the hurricane. Here's a rundown of the events from that night. I was able to find a cd player that also had an FM tuner on it. That's where most of my information has been coming from for the past 4 days.

8:30 - Power went out
10:00 - CenterPoint reports 315,000 customers w/o power - I wasn't alone
10:45 - The rain started at my place, but there were no sustained winds
11:00 - 425,000 w/o power
- Christian's tailgate was still open, and said they'd be open until 12AM. Maybe this is the place Anderson Cooper was talking about
12AM - No sustained winds yet. Rain wasn't too bad.
12:30 - 725,000 customers without power. They said that the outage area was pretty much south of north beltway 8 and east of west beltway 8 toward the coast, if that makes any sense
- The Galveston police department is getting calls to rescue people, but isn't sending anyone out. They apparently quit at 8:30ish.
- It's getting warm, without the air conditioner, but I did manage to sleep from 11PM to 12AM
1AM - Sustained winds out of N, NE. Some rain. Reported gusts of 45 mph
1:15AM - Wind picked up, but rain still isn't bad
- Heard bang that sounded like a tin roof
- Not sure what the wind speed is, but its blowing pretty hard and sustained
- Area across 23rd still have power
1:30AM - 1 million customers w/o power - "transformers popping all over downtown"
- W. Heights reporting 45mph winds, steady
3AM - lots of wind, some water, basically what you'd expect a hurricane to be
- power out across the street. Can't see any working lights.
3:30AM - 1.3 mil. w/o power.
4:15AM - Hellacious wind. "Hurricane" wind. Rain is harder. Won't go outside. Our 3-story brick-front townhouse is shaking in the wind.
- Probably on west or south-west side of eyewall at this point
4:45AM - Winds died down a little. Not quite so ferocious. Still raining some
- Rain/wind very constant. Rain blows N to S. Not much rain hitting the ground.
- Reports that Clear Lake at Hwy 146 has an 11ft storm surge
5AM - Nearly everyone agrees that back end of the storm has been worse than the front.
- 2 mil w/o power. Downtown and Med Center all that's left (served by underground lines)
5:15AM - Kemah Boardwalk is under 6ft of water
- phone system and 911 down
- nearly all overhead power customers are w/o power
5:30AM - Driving rain, everything is wet. Pieces of leaves stuck to the sides of the houses. "Typical" tropical storm
5:30 - 8:30AM - Slept

Still no power. 50-some hours and counting. We maintained enough water pressure to flush the toilets, which was good. In terms of importance; Water/Sewer >> Power. I'd kept the bathtub full so I could flush if we did lose power, but Galveston lost both, and probably won't get those services back for a while. Sunday morning, the shower didn't work so well, but by Monday morning, it was back to normal (and even hot - must be a gas powered water heater).

Sunday afternoon I hooked my 19" TV up to my vehicle through an AC/DC converter. I was able to watch the Saints/Redskins game and root on both Drew Brees and Clinton Portis. That was a good way to spend my time, I was tired of trying to read a magazine.

Most stations aren't open because the pumps don't have power. I noticed very long gas lines around 3:30PM on Sunday. This has continued as of Tuesday afternoon. Gas stations maintain lines until they run out of gas. From what I have noticed, about 25-50 cars will be in line at a time and the stations run out of gas once a day. They should have heeded the interstate signs: "Storm forming in Gulf. Keep your gas tanks full."

The power has been coming back, more quickly than I would have anticipated. CenterPoint is going to throw a bunch of people at it, borrowing workers from all over the US and Canada. Most of the easy fixes have already been done.

Well, that's most of it. There's probably more to it but I'll leave it at that. Here's a sad picture.

Hurricane Ike Update #3

This is getting serious ... Anderson Cooper is here! Ahhhh!!! And I thought it was bad when Jim Cantore from the Weather Channel was in Galveston! Cooper keeps asking everyone where he should broadcast from tomorrow night. No one wants to tell him he should be right in the middle of it, but he's looking for the good stuff. Some tie-him-to-a-pole-type stuff. He's getting cavalier, he didn't get to New Orleans until after the actual storm. Having somebody out there in the middle of it gives some perspective, but I don't need every major news anchor out there in a slicker in the middle of the hurricane.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox. Back to the hurricane at hand. The "new" news: apparently, one of the weather services is telling people that if they stay on Galveston Island, it means "certain death." Hardcore! That sounds a little far-fetched for me. The storm of 1900 killed 8000 of roughly 100,000 people living on the island and that was in
View Larger Map'>wooden structures. I haven't taken the time to get any numbers on the 1900 storm, but I'd think that the storm surge in 1900 would have been worse then than after construction of the 16 foot storm wall. In any case, it appears that this hurricane will come "straight up the gut" as we have been saying.



I guess what this means, the winds and the storm surge could be worse. The storm surge isn't nearly as bad on the "left" side of the storm, so if it moved just east of Galveston Bay, Houston would get the wind, but not the surge. It sure looks like downtown Houston, of which I'll call myself a part, will be getting some serious winds. 80+ for sure. Sustained for hours. Should be intense.

Earlier in the day, I missed a couple things. There is a small community called Bayou Vista, TX that started taking on water as early as 4PM this afternoon. The local news showed video of cars driving through a foot or more of water. I didn't find a pictures of this on the internet, so I've included a map. As you can see, it's on the mainland side of the bay, right before the bridge to Galveston Island. Oh, this flooding occurred 36 hours before the eye of the storm was to hit landfall.



Another unsettling thing I saw while driving about, was the boarding up of houses and businesses. A couple homes were boarded up and the funeral home (I'll have to post a picture!) was boarded up all the way around. Hopefully they don't know something I don't. Like I said earlier, the worst we have is eastern exposure on the windows, which is probably bad news if the hurricane comes in directly south of us.

If anyone is wondering, our 2nd (what's it called if it's twice in one year?) official CPC Hurricane Party occurred at Onion Creek in the Heights neighborhood and was delightful and breezy. I had Red Stripes because they were an affordable $2 each! We didn't have any hurricane parties for two summers and now have had two in one summer, wonder when the next one will be?

I'm off to find Anderson Cooper!