The Ike Diaries, Part One
Herein lie my notes from the pen and paper journal I kept during the storm. I'll probably censor some of the family stuff, but you can all read my rants about everything else.
Friday, 9/12/08
5:30 pm power is out already WTF??
7:00 pm playing chickenfoot dominoes in the dark with Mom and Dad. We were up before 8am to get the patio cleaned. That took until about 2pm. Now we have all kinds of stuff in the living room, plants in the kitchen, and junk including patio furniture in the garage.
It's getting warmer in the house and we haven't lit any candles yet.
It was still light out and inside was dark. [boards on all the windows - ed.] Now it's actually dark out.
8:15 pm Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!
Dad plays out of turn -
Keri: Hey, it's my turn!
Dad: Well, hurry up. I don't have all night.
Keri: ... Yeah, actually, you do!
bwahahahahaha. ahem.
Weatherpeople are creepy and disturbing - and have no vocabulary to speak of.
Looks like Ike may make Cat3 before it gets here. It is 600 miles wide, almost half the Gulf. Crazy. I'm not going to sleep in my room tonight.
9:00 pm This woman on the radio/TV is making me nuts - she's so annoying AND she keeps calling people "not smart" for their decisions.
One man who recently lost his wife said he was going to face the storm on his porch in his rocking chair - and instead of respecting the tragedy they talked about how stupid that was. Somebody else said that people in evac zones who hadn't gotten out are being told to write their social security number on their forearm in permanent marker.
Creepy and disturbing - another whiskey tango foxtrot!
We can hear wind gusts outside - 51mph @ Hobby according to the TV news.
Saturday, 9/13/08
2:47 am The eye just crossed Galveston Island. The wind is in the 80s mph here. It is blowing across the chimney like it was a Coke bottle - sounds like a weird alarm all the time.
Fires have hit Brennan's and apparently done it lots of damage and injured two people.
This thing is scary huge - the eye barely got to Galveston but the winds are all the way up in Bear Creek and the top of the Beltway.
Conroe and Montgomery County will see the winds in an hour or so.
The winds on the southeast side of the storm look really bad on the radar, too, so even after the eye goes over it will be pretty bad.
6:54 am All the FM bands are out. [We had two radios and a battery-operated tiny TV.]
Bayous flooding. Hobby got gusts up to 92mph.
911 has stopped service.
Buffalo Bayou has overrun its bounds.
No search and rescue available yet - they can't get out to do anything, but once they do it'll be possibly the biggest search and rescue in Houston's history.
Dad can't sleep well without his CPAP so he's been getting the same intermittent rest as the rest of us.
The full strength of the storm won't pass until tonight, they say.
We went outside - branches down but no trees in the immediate area were down. The front part of the roof was still there; the water in the backyard is turbulent, the Hawaiian ginger blown almost flat.
7:48 am We're being told to conserve water.
The entire city except part s of downtown and the medical center is out of power.
There is a ship being held by tugs near the 610 Ship Channel bridge, and they are asking people to avoid driving there as well. Not that anyone should be driving yet.
911 is accepting calls for life-threatening emergencies - and the first responders can't get out for a while until the city says it's safe.
11:50 am The house is still pitch black - we haven't taken the wood out because there are still some bad winds to come.
We're under water warning - boiling and conserving. Use bottled water if you can.
4:45 pm I slept a little. Feeling better now. The boards are off the windows and daylight illuminates the house.
Mom and Dad have been cleaning so I will start helping them as soon as they finish their break.
Weatherguys say it will be hot until Tuesday. No idea when the power will be back on.
Two historic piers were destroyed in Galveston, and the Flagship hotel's driveways collapsed, trapping employees and guests on that pier.
Brennan's restaurant burned to the ground, as did several houses in various neighborhoods - they burned in the rain and flood water and the fire fighters couldn't get near them.
Sunday, 9/14/08
10:35 am Still no power. Got up @8am then dozed some more. Dad and Mom were on the patio. we've got a tiny TV and the radio.
I-10 west of downtown by Nundini's [where my brother works] is underwater. Part of 610 west is apparently also having a problem.
They've [Centerpoint Energy - ed.] sent teams to the west side - maybe they aren't being such elitists actually but gee the west side first? Really? [West Side is where the rich folks live. - ed.]
And apparently on the southeast side if people go out to get supplies the cops won't let them go back. What idiocy - this is Homeland Security in action, indeed. They could at least check licenses.
Once more the news is covering the easier recovery of the west side, nothing for the east.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!
Mom's planning to make pudding with the last of the milk. Everything in the fridge is defrosting and the news is useless. They say where to go for gas, ice, and non-perishables on the NW side, or out Westheimer, but nothing southeast. Argh.
Kids are considering driving out for the night in the Austin direction seeking a hotel room with power. I might end up wanting to do the same soon - it is really hard to be without the internet. Makes -
oh, dear Zephyr just got too eager to be outside and jumped at the screen door. It got knocked off its track and we were worried for a bit that it was broken, but Peter got it fixed. Dad said, "Ok, Zephyr can live another day." hahaha, like Dad has ever hurt an animal in his life. He's a huge pushover for the cat.
1:35 pm Peter and Hillary left - they're getting out toward Austin and possibly trying for Milwaukee where the Astros games were moved. [No, really. Pissants. -ed]
[Censored a bunch of griping about family stuff.]
Galveston situation is dire. Our governor is such an asshole. He says, "We will demand the same response for Houston as the federal government gave to New Orleans after Katrina, so we can get the region back on its feet, etc" and Dad and I were in the car charging the cell phones and just looked at each other. I said, "Oh, yeah, like New Orleans is doing so well now!"
And now a caller to KUHF asks about helicopters and the announcers says that "oh, a helicopter couldn't carry much" and that they would have a while to go to get to the area. Of course the military copters and cargo planes can carry 60 ton tanks but they National Guard ones are all abroad in the war.
The cops are only occasionally helpful and seem to cause more traffic snarls than they ease. They were just ignoring some problem spots. One woman had two lanes blocked by fallen power lines and was just standing there watching us drivers stare at each other, trying to take turns driving on the gravel shoulder next to the ditch one at a time to get around it.
There was a strip center with a Korean restaurant, the old Shipley's donuts, and the building had been crushed because a billboard fell on it, just right on the roof and collapsed the corner.
The HEB down by Beltway 8 and Black Hawk Rd had lost a big chunk of its facade, but it was open and had a line of people outside.
Rick Perry annoys me so much. With apologies to Mark Twain: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were governor of Texas. But I repeat myself."
2:05 pm Peter and Hillary are actually trying to fly to Milwaukee - [More censored family crap]
I need to figure out what to do about my trip [to NY -ed.] got to get in touch with Donna about flying. Hope that they are doing okay.
We've seen some helicopter activity and I spotted a Life Flight over the HEB at Gulfgate when Dad and I made our trip.
My camera battery has died so hopefully nothing else horrible will need documenting.
Rice is closed on Monday so I probably won't have to work or worry about it until Tuesday. Hopefully by then the streets won't look like a war zone.
3:10 pm We're working on the kitchen - washing dishes - we have a bowl of clean boiled water for the final rinse. Mom's getting out some meat to cook - we have to cook it or throw it out.
Mom is treating this book like my blog - she keeps looking over to say "Don't blog this." as if it were live. LOL.
We've got a big big stew pot on the stove to boil, we're still on boil 2 minutes for anything you'll consume.
We've run out of dish soap. No expectation of power for another day or two at least. There's supposed to be a cold front coming through soon. Hopefully that will pull down the temp, at night especially. I was hoping to do some sketching but between the blog and the work there hasn't been time.
The Salvation Army was supposed to be out on the SE side with FEMA; FEMA has stuff to send to distribution centers - BUT nobody is distributing yet. It's ridiculous that FEMA can't get a copter up to let those relief forces know where to go and how to get there.
It really is the same FEMA performance we all saw in New Orleans.
5:20 pm Been washing up - no real breeze in the kitchen, recently boiled water for final rinse. It was hot work. The bathroom is like a sauna.
Of course we're listening to the press conference about FEMA fuck up - they didn't have anybody moving supplies.
They had distribution centers set up last night but no supplies for the guard to distribute. They could've brought a truck on a plane or copter from San Antonio or Austin. Chertoff is here to fix the fuck-up and do damage control - too late for so many people. One reporter actually asked - who screwed up? But we haven't heard her voice again.
Military equipment could have been relieving Galveston, Seabrook, League City, La Porte ALL THIS TIME.
They keep saying, "Here's a web site that lists shelters or helps this or that" and we're like, HELLO, WE HAVE NO POWER. and the poverty-stricken areas of town may not have home internet access anyway.
The Galleria apparently has the ice rink up and running; but our area has no power still and lots of the rest of the city.
The museums presumably have generators - the humidity would damage the works too much.
Heard on the radio -
"A sign said 'NO ICE, NO CASH BACK, NO PERISHABLES' and then we found out they don't have meat or dairy either."
also heard on the radio "HEB [a Texas company - ed.] made an effort - some of them opened last night." which is more than could be said for FEMA.
KRBE has been really good with updates, too.
KUHF is taking calls for info. Those two have been really good for info.
FEMA has been totally fucked. Political appointees and budget cuts and responsibility shifting.
6:05 pm We're all crafting. I'm sketching for [fan project]; Mom is doing applique; Dad is working on a model tank.
6:50 pm First FEMA trucks arrived to distribute supplies a bit after 6pm - we have a city-wide curfew at 9pm. Brilliant.
True, some folks did not prepare will, but it's easy to be blase if you don't have a fridge full of medicine that needs to be kept cold.
WHY do all the Barker-Cypress folks keep calling - where are the folks from our side of town? [Dad later posited - they're all calling in to the Spanish language radio. Duh. -ed.]
Text from Jaye confirms Rice is closed. Working on some sketches but without references they mostly suck. The light is fading fast now. Probably going to pack it in soon to the inside.
[blather about wildlife - ants, squirrels, hummingbirds, jays, spiders]
Trash collection is starting tomorrow (Monday) - city services w. our Democratic Mayor FTW!
We're lucky in that we have some food and don't need to go stand in line.
Friday, 9/12/08
5:30 pm power is out already WTF??
7:00 pm playing chickenfoot dominoes in the dark with Mom and Dad. We were up before 8am to get the patio cleaned. That took until about 2pm. Now we have all kinds of stuff in the living room, plants in the kitchen, and junk including patio furniture in the garage.
It's getting warmer in the house and we haven't lit any candles yet.
It was still light out and inside was dark. [boards on all the windows - ed.] Now it's actually dark out.
8:15 pm Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!
Dad plays out of turn -
Keri: Hey, it's my turn!
Dad: Well, hurry up. I don't have all night.
Keri: ... Yeah, actually, you do!
bwahahahahaha. ahem.
Weatherpeople are creepy and disturbing - and have no vocabulary to speak of.
Looks like Ike may make Cat3 before it gets here. It is 600 miles wide, almost half the Gulf. Crazy. I'm not going to sleep in my room tonight.
9:00 pm This woman on the radio/TV is making me nuts - she's so annoying AND she keeps calling people "not smart" for their decisions.
One man who recently lost his wife said he was going to face the storm on his porch in his rocking chair - and instead of respecting the tragedy they talked about how stupid that was. Somebody else said that people in evac zones who hadn't gotten out are being told to write their social security number on their forearm in permanent marker.
Creepy and disturbing - another whiskey tango foxtrot!
We can hear wind gusts outside - 51mph @ Hobby according to the TV news.
Saturday, 9/13/08
2:47 am The eye just crossed Galveston Island. The wind is in the 80s mph here. It is blowing across the chimney like it was a Coke bottle - sounds like a weird alarm all the time.
Fires have hit Brennan's and apparently done it lots of damage and injured two people.
This thing is scary huge - the eye barely got to Galveston but the winds are all the way up in Bear Creek and the top of the Beltway.
Conroe and Montgomery County will see the winds in an hour or so.
The winds on the southeast side of the storm look really bad on the radar, too, so even after the eye goes over it will be pretty bad.
6:54 am All the FM bands are out. [We had two radios and a battery-operated tiny TV.]
Bayous flooding. Hobby got gusts up to 92mph.
911 has stopped service.
Buffalo Bayou has overrun its bounds.
No search and rescue available yet - they can't get out to do anything, but once they do it'll be possibly the biggest search and rescue in Houston's history.
Dad can't sleep well without his CPAP so he's been getting the same intermittent rest as the rest of us.
The full strength of the storm won't pass until tonight, they say.
We went outside - branches down but no trees in the immediate area were down. The front part of the roof was still there; the water in the backyard is turbulent, the Hawaiian ginger blown almost flat.
7:48 am We're being told to conserve water.
The entire city except part s of downtown and the medical center is out of power.
There is a ship being held by tugs near the 610 Ship Channel bridge, and they are asking people to avoid driving there as well. Not that anyone should be driving yet.
911 is accepting calls for life-threatening emergencies - and the first responders can't get out for a while until the city says it's safe.
11:50 am The house is still pitch black - we haven't taken the wood out because there are still some bad winds to come.
We're under water warning - boiling and conserving. Use bottled water if you can.
4:45 pm I slept a little. Feeling better now. The boards are off the windows and daylight illuminates the house.
Mom and Dad have been cleaning so I will start helping them as soon as they finish their break.
Weatherguys say it will be hot until Tuesday. No idea when the power will be back on.
Two historic piers were destroyed in Galveston, and the Flagship hotel's driveways collapsed, trapping employees and guests on that pier.
Brennan's restaurant burned to the ground, as did several houses in various neighborhoods - they burned in the rain and flood water and the fire fighters couldn't get near them.
Sunday, 9/14/08
10:35 am Still no power. Got up @8am then dozed some more. Dad and Mom were on the patio. we've got a tiny TV and the radio.
I-10 west of downtown by Nundini's [where my brother works] is underwater. Part of 610 west is apparently also having a problem.
They've [Centerpoint Energy - ed.] sent teams to the west side - maybe they aren't being such elitists actually but gee the west side first? Really? [West Side is where the rich folks live. - ed.]
And apparently on the southeast side if people go out to get supplies the cops won't let them go back. What idiocy - this is Homeland Security in action, indeed. They could at least check licenses.
Once more the news is covering the easier recovery of the west side, nothing for the east.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!!!
Mom's planning to make pudding with the last of the milk. Everything in the fridge is defrosting and the news is useless. They say where to go for gas, ice, and non-perishables on the NW side, or out Westheimer, but nothing southeast. Argh.
Kids are considering driving out for the night in the Austin direction seeking a hotel room with power. I might end up wanting to do the same soon - it is really hard to be without the internet. Makes -
oh, dear Zephyr just got too eager to be outside and jumped at the screen door. It got knocked off its track and we were worried for a bit that it was broken, but Peter got it fixed. Dad said, "Ok, Zephyr can live another day." hahaha, like Dad has ever hurt an animal in his life. He's a huge pushover for the cat.
1:35 pm Peter and Hillary left - they're getting out toward Austin and possibly trying for Milwaukee where the Astros games were moved. [No, really. Pissants. -ed]
[Censored a bunch of griping about family stuff.]
Galveston situation is dire. Our governor is such an asshole. He says, "We will demand the same response for Houston as the federal government gave to New Orleans after Katrina, so we can get the region back on its feet, etc" and Dad and I were in the car charging the cell phones and just looked at each other. I said, "Oh, yeah, like New Orleans is doing so well now!"
And now a caller to KUHF asks about helicopters and the announcers says that "oh, a helicopter couldn't carry much" and that they would have a while to go to get to the area. Of course the military copters and cargo planes can carry 60 ton tanks but they National Guard ones are all abroad in the war.
The cops are only occasionally helpful and seem to cause more traffic snarls than they ease. They were just ignoring some problem spots. One woman had two lanes blocked by fallen power lines and was just standing there watching us drivers stare at each other, trying to take turns driving on the gravel shoulder next to the ditch one at a time to get around it.
There was a strip center with a Korean restaurant, the old Shipley's donuts, and the building had been crushed because a billboard fell on it, just right on the roof and collapsed the corner.
The HEB down by Beltway 8 and Black Hawk Rd had lost a big chunk of its facade, but it was open and had a line of people outside.
Rick Perry annoys me so much. With apologies to Mark Twain: "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were governor of Texas. But I repeat myself."
2:05 pm Peter and Hillary are actually trying to fly to Milwaukee - [More censored family crap]
I need to figure out what to do about my trip [to NY -ed.] got to get in touch with Donna about flying. Hope that they are doing okay.
We've seen some helicopter activity and I spotted a Life Flight over the HEB at Gulfgate when Dad and I made our trip.
My camera battery has died so hopefully nothing else horrible will need documenting.
Rice is closed on Monday so I probably won't have to work or worry about it until Tuesday. Hopefully by then the streets won't look like a war zone.
3:10 pm We're working on the kitchen - washing dishes - we have a bowl of clean boiled water for the final rinse. Mom's getting out some meat to cook - we have to cook it or throw it out.
Mom is treating this book like my blog - she keeps looking over to say "Don't blog this." as if it were live. LOL.
We've got a big big stew pot on the stove to boil, we're still on boil 2 minutes for anything you'll consume.
We've run out of dish soap. No expectation of power for another day or two at least. There's supposed to be a cold front coming through soon. Hopefully that will pull down the temp, at night especially. I was hoping to do some sketching but between the blog and the work there hasn't been time.
The Salvation Army was supposed to be out on the SE side with FEMA; FEMA has stuff to send to distribution centers - BUT nobody is distributing yet. It's ridiculous that FEMA can't get a copter up to let those relief forces know where to go and how to get there.
It really is the same FEMA performance we all saw in New Orleans.
5:20 pm Been washing up - no real breeze in the kitchen, recently boiled water for final rinse. It was hot work. The bathroom is like a sauna.
Of course we're listening to the press conference about FEMA fuck up - they didn't have anybody moving supplies.
They had distribution centers set up last night but no supplies for the guard to distribute. They could've brought a truck on a plane or copter from San Antonio or Austin. Chertoff is here to fix the fuck-up and do damage control - too late for so many people. One reporter actually asked - who screwed up? But we haven't heard her voice again.
Military equipment could have been relieving Galveston, Seabrook, League City, La Porte ALL THIS TIME.
They keep saying, "Here's a web site that lists shelters or helps this or that" and we're like, HELLO, WE HAVE NO POWER. and the poverty-stricken areas of town may not have home internet access anyway.
The Galleria apparently has the ice rink up and running; but our area has no power still and lots of the rest of the city.
The museums presumably have generators - the humidity would damage the works too much.
Heard on the radio -
"A sign said 'NO ICE, NO CASH BACK, NO PERISHABLES' and then we found out they don't have meat or dairy either."
also heard on the radio "HEB [a Texas company - ed.] made an effort - some of them opened last night." which is more than could be said for FEMA.
KRBE has been really good with updates, too.
KUHF is taking calls for info. Those two have been really good for info.
FEMA has been totally fucked. Political appointees and budget cuts and responsibility shifting.
6:05 pm We're all crafting. I'm sketching for [fan project]; Mom is doing applique; Dad is working on a model tank.
6:50 pm First FEMA trucks arrived to distribute supplies a bit after 6pm - we have a city-wide curfew at 9pm. Brilliant.
True, some folks did not prepare will, but it's easy to be blase if you don't have a fridge full of medicine that needs to be kept cold.
WHY do all the Barker-Cypress folks keep calling - where are the folks from our side of town? [Dad later posited - they're all calling in to the Spanish language radio. Duh. -ed.]
Text from Jaye confirms Rice is closed. Working on some sketches but without references they mostly suck. The light is fading fast now. Probably going to pack it in soon to the inside.
[blather about wildlife - ants, squirrels, hummingbirds, jays, spiders]
Trash collection is starting tomorrow (Monday) - city services w. our Democratic Mayor FTW!
We're lucky in that we have some food and don't need to go stand in line.