Ike......here we go again

[Dawg52]

I can't believe so many people stayed in Galvesto. On Fox news, they are interviewing some guy on the phone and his store already has 5-7 feet of water in it. In fact he says the whole island is already covered with water. God bless them all!

[mews]

I hope there are some solid brick multi-story buildings for people to try and shelter in.

mew

[lazygood4nothinbum]

that's one impressive cat 2. looks like the eye has emerged just in time for landfall. good luck to you harry and all others under that cross-section of a nautilus

[Zoocat]

This news story says many stayed behind. Not good.

"Officials were growing increasingly worried about the stalwarts, and many communities imposed curfews to discourage looters. Authorities in three counties alone said roughly 90,000 stayed behind, despite a warning from forecasters that many of those in one- or two-story homes on the coast faced 'certain death.'"


FOXNews.com - Ike Near Major Hurricane Status; Winds at 110 MPH - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Htown Harry What a day. From 9 to about 6, I worked non-stop to button down every possible thing I could. I've got my Rita boards on all of the lower floor windows. Every thing that weighs less than 50 pounds is tied down or in the garage. (With two cars! A miracle in its own right.).... Harry

We have used the back bumpers of our 2 cars to hold boards braced on the inside of the garage door, so that it cannot bulge inwards. Do you do anything like that?

We are the only ones on our street with boarded up windows. We made a few neighbors feel bad enough that they told us they feel bad about not boarding up.

I'm mostly worried about a fire starting because of a careless homeowner and burning down the whole neighborhood.

[Mike1968]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rustic23 KHOU TV -90,000 people in Galveston did not head warning to evacuate!

Galveston only has a pop of less than 60K. Surely, there aren't 30K media types there also...

Galveston had ordered evacuation of the island, but Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc said about 40 percent of the city's 57,523 residents chose to stay. "It's unfortunate that the warnings that we sent out were not heeded," he said.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mike1968 Galveston only has a pop of less than 60K. Surely, there aren't 30K media types there also...

We got to see Geraldo Rivera rolling around in the gusts, so we can only hope...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rustic23 DW said the officials should go around with a sharpie and require them to write their next of kin on their body.

This may be an urban legend, but rumor has it that the Galveston evacuation authorities were making the recalcitrants write their SSNs on their arms.

Hopefully a happy bunch of survivor Galvestonites will be back online soon to confirm.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

i see my above pic of ike is still linked to its source and so still updating. learned that one when i tried to copy/paste the cones of death. so this time i secured a snap shot just before landfall (the original of the updating pic above)...

[REWahoo]

I just spoke to friends who live under Ike's path, 140 miles north of where the hurricane made landfall. They lost power at 7AM. The neighbor directly across the street had a large oak tree fall across the driveway, crushing the neighbors truck. Six houses up the street, a 70' pine fell on the roof, almost splitting the house in two. The house had recently sold and the new owners moved in a week ago.

Harry, Rustic, 2B, LOL! and other SE TX posters, are you there?

[W2R]

2B has reported in and is OK. See post #110 in this thread:

http://www.early-retirement.org/foru...n-37939-6.html

[LOL!]

Quote:

Originally Posted by REWahoo I just spoke to friends who live under Ike's path, 140 miles north of where the hurricane made landfall. They lost power at 7AM. The neighbor directly across the street had a large oak tree fall across the driveway, crushing the neighbors truck. Six houses up the street, a 70' pine fell on the roof, almost splitting the house in two. The house had recently sold and the new owners moved in a week ago. Harry, Rustic, 2B, LOL! and other SE TX posters, are you there?

I probably saw that house. In our neighborhood just about everyone has one or more trees down. There is no wind damage to houses, but a few trees are on houses. However, the trees appear to be sitting on houses and should be removable without damaging the houses.

There is tons of car traffic in my area because it appears to be the only way to learn what's going on. There could be power and/or restaurants open within a 10 miles of your house, but you would never know unless you went out on a scouting mission. Without power, most folks are relying on the radio for news, but the news is mostly the "big picture" for folks outside the area. It's not news to us that we have no electricity. It's not news to us that there was a hurricane. It's not news to us that trees were blocking roads until we cut through them with chainsaws. It's not news useful to us that folks are being rescued from refusing to obey mandatory evacuation orders.

So to get useful news, you send out a scouting party. LOL! goes south 5 miles; Alan goes west 10 miles; 2B heads east. We then compare notes: no open gas stations; a grocery store is open, but no perishiable goods.

After of day of no internet, no phones, no cell phone coverage, no power, no A/C and useless news on the radio, we drove to stay with relatives near Dallas. If power comes on at our house, it would be hard to find out that news. We will try to call neighbors daily I guess to get the useful news. If we can't reach them, it means power is not restored.

[lazygood4nothinbum]

per other ike thread, after a hurricane, rental cars can become scarce for visitors because so many cars get damaged that locals grab rentals as they put their cars in for repair. my evacuation plan for myself involves grabbing pictures & papers, putting them in the trunk and putting me & the car into some nice off-coast hotel with an enclosed parking garage.

on the guy who bought the house with the tree through it, wind insurance will not be written while a named storm churns. so if that owner recently bought and moved in, hopefully he was able to secure insurance first. i recall in the 1990s, i was putting an offer on a house after andrew when insurance become such a pain. in the contract a placed a condition that i should be able to secure insurance from a private carrier but the owner decided not to bother and refused my offer. i've been with state insurance (citizen's) ever since.

if i ever do another house in hurricaneville, instead of trees i would work only with bamboos. they're messy but i love them. they offer some shade & give plenty of height, up to 40 or even over 60 feet tall, yet when one falls on your house, who cares, it's only bamboo.

regarding news, this is a huge, unaddressed problem which was of particular frustration for us after wilma in 2005. just as lol! says, all the news you get is for the outside world and the news you need as a survivor of the storm is no where to be found. where are gas stations with power & fuel? where are supermarkets that have power & food? how about where's a restaurant or a bar with a television set where you can take a break from cleaning up? does anyone have a hot shower available, a gym, the y? what is the progress on restoring power? water supply?

that was one of the reasons i didn't have a chance to even see my mom before i got out of the area. though i was sure she was ok (brother lived nearby and her facility had an industrial generator), i had to just head across the state without making a side trip to see her because i didn't know when i'd find a gas station and my scouts knew only of gas in naples, over 100 miles away.

so local information is very important for both the welfare & the morale of hurricane victims but it is just that which the idiot newscasts ignore. maybe being helpful doesn't sell enough product.

[W2R]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LOL! If power comes on at our house, it would be hard to find out that news. We will try to call neighbors daily I guess to get the useful news. If we can't reach them, it means power is not restored.

Glad you are OK!!

One way to find out whether or not you have power, is to call your own phone number. If your answering machine picks up, you have power.

For tips on stores and gas stations that may be open when you return, try local message boards if there are any. Keep turning that radio dial to try to find a station with more local information (In New Orleans, WWL radio went above and beyond what anyone could reasonably expect in providing specific local information after Katrina and Gustav and they had streaming audio online for evacuees to listen to).

[Htown Harry]

Harry checking in...

I'm writing from work because we don't have power at the house. We lost the lights about 3:00 am Saturday just as the TV weatherman said "as you can see here on the radar, the feeder bands with hurricane force winds are approaching downtown."

We had three of four trees in the backyard go down and sprung a small leak in the roof, but everyone is OK.

More later.

[W2R]

Glad you are OK, Harry! Sounds like you have a chainsaw in your future... be careful, as chainsaw accidents are very common in the aftermath of hurricanes.

I was lucky because my neighbor and Frank both offered to do the chainsaw work I needed after Gustav. Frank had his own to do, so I took the neighbor up on it. Otherwise, I'd probably be another chainsaw accident statistic since I am not good at that sort of thing.

I noticed that Harbor Freight (here) had a LOT of blue tarps, so maybe they have some there, too, if you don't want to wait for FEMA. Or maybe the leak is small enough that you don't need a tarp.

[Leonidas]

Electricity back on yesterday afternoon.

My fence is down, my neighbor lost part of his roof, a few trees on houses in the 'hood, but we really dodged the bullet here. If Ike had gone in at Freeport as once was predicted, we would have been hit hard here. And even if he had gone in on the west side of Galveston it would have been pretty bad, but he jogged to the east just a tad more at the last second and all of that made for a comfortable distance. It was still a strong storm here, we got 40-50 MPH winds starting at about dusk and it got stronger as the night went on. The wind didn't die down except when it changed directions as the eye passed, and the back side was even worse then the front. Most of the damage here was done after the eye passed. 10-12 hours of tropical force to hurricane winds.

Power company kicking butt, 260,000 back online by last night and another quarter million back on by this morning.

Most people had enough supplies to last for at least 72 hours - we did. Ice was going to be critical by last night, and if the power had not come on I would have been standing in line at the local Kroger where supplies were getting in.

There is a interesting battle brewing between FEMA and the government officials in Houston/Harris County. The grocery stores were bringing in ice, as were radio stations and other private entities. A reporter asked a FEMA rep for information on when their trucks would be coming and he dodged around the question. I don't expect FEMA to come deliver stuff to my door, nor do I expect them to be bringing in supplies right after the winds stop blowing. But, I wonder, as do many others, how is it that the state, grocery stores, radio stations, etc., all bring in stuff almost 24 hours while FEMA can't even give an estimate on when their presence will be felt. The Houston Mayor practically called him a lying SOB from the podium. For the next news conference Chertoff was there trying to get in front of the question. Chertoff tried to lay it off on local officials, but I don't think they will accept that. Nobody here expects too much early help from FEMA, but we don't appreciate lies and double talk.

Agree that the news spent a lot of time focusing on certain areas and not given at least some updates on what was going on in other areas. It was interesting to watch on my little battery powered TV, but without phones and internet, we were in the dark on what was going on in our area.

No phone service worked after the storm. Hard lines, cable telephone, cell phones, text messaging, etc. were all dead. I did get one or two cell phone calls out right after the storm, but soon after the system was out.

Neighbors were all great. We all got out early Saturday and cleaned up everything. Folks with chainsaws got bored and started clearing the streets until the city came out with front end loaders. Everybody helped each other out which is a great thing to see.

A cold front came in yesterday and the weather is gorgeous. Low humidity and daytime temps in the low 70's. I can't remember the last time I saw that in September.

Time to go back to work. Got to be careful though, seems like a lot of people die in the preparation and cleanup stages of these things. While we were covering windows the other day all we heard were sirens. Lots of folks falling off ladders and sawing off fingers I guess.

[Nords]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leonidas Neighbors were all great. We all got out early Saturday and cleaned up everything. Folks with chainsaws got bored and started clearing the streets until the city came out with front end loaders. Everybody helped each other out which is a great thing to see.

After Hurricane Iniki, Hawaii's Red Cross changed their shelter rules to allow evacuees to bring chainsaws and other power tools inside. They were considered essential to being able to get back home (e.g., leaving the shelter) after the storm passed.

Otherwise people would just stay home and try to ride things out with their pets.

[W2R]

Leonidas, glad you are OK.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Leonidas Nobody here expects too much early help from FEMA, but we don't appreciate lies and double talk.

Don't expect much later help from them, either. They are not well regarded here, at least.

[Sarah in SC]

FEMA has been a joke in South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo in 1989.
Expect nothing.
Glad to hear y'all are digging out.

[FinanceDude]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sarah in SC FEMA has been a joke in South Carolina since Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Expect nothing. Glad to hear y'all are digging out.

Forever
Encouraging
Massive
Apathy