Hurricane Ike

[pnggrad79]

Well, we made it through! Still no power, but it will come soon enough I hope. My wife, me and our kids escaped Friday night and went to Abilene, TX where her brother and his partner live. We have been here since, and from all the reports from back home, they are telling us not to even try to come back now. They said we would be facing very hot days with no AC, and long gas lines, long lines at whatever grocery stores are open, and no fast food. Up here in Abilene, we are wondering what we should do, but her brother and his partner have been nothing but gracious and wonderful to us.

My cousin who lives in Houston, braved a trip north for us to check out our house and she said we were the only ones on the street with no damage to our home. All of our windows remained intact, our cars are ok, no trees down, and nothing to speak of on the roof. The only thing that happened was the neighbor behind our house with whom we share a fence, a pine tree of his collapsed and fell on over the fence and so that will need repairing, but hell, if that is all, I can live with that. My cousin said that it looked like a war zone and that our yard was pretty much spotless, she said it looked like the hurricane just skipped over us, because the people across the street and on other side had a big tree that is laying across the roof, and several others had roof damage.

All I can say is thank you God that no more damage was done than that. At least we are all alive and we will make it through.

Pray that we get power back soon. Word has it that our power grid was significantly damaged and will have to be rebuilt. That could take up to 2 weeks. In Texas heat, that could be an eternity.

[u-dog]

PNG,

Clearly God's judgement on their perverse heterosexual lifestyle. Serves them right. He clearly intended to spare his virtuous gay children, right?

U-dog ;)

PS: glad you are all safe and out of harms way and that your property escaped serious destruction.

[Rick336]

pnggrad79,

It's good to hear y'all survived the storm okay. I hope the power is back on sooner than two weeks so life can get back to normal for you.

Rick

[pnggrad79]

Thanks U-dog and Rick for your well wishes. I don't even attempt to explain God's goodness and kindness to me, a lesbian, but I do love Him and don't know why the storm was allowed to spare us but not our neighbors. Surely, that wasn't God's intention, but who am I to question it.

We are going home tomorrow to survey the damage. I won't be back online until power is restored to either my house or school, which doesn't open again until Wed of this week. Again, they don't have power either.

[u-dog]

Hi PNG,

Good luck getting back into your life. Expect the kids at school will be totally wired after an experience like that so I wish you every blessing.

Of course, as Jesus says, Hurricanes descend upon straight people and gay people alike ... as does the love of God. but you know tthat there are people who, if it had been your house damaged when theirs was not, would have claimed that it was God's judgement.

[Gennee]

Very happy to hear that your property was spared. More important, you and your family are okay.

Gennee

:):pray:

[BruceChris]

And say so, online. I shared concern about the serial killer in Phoenix, with Zerbie, and she returned the favor when the big bridge fell down, just four blocks from where I live.

Congratulations on your fortunate outcomes. This sounds like a golden opportunity to do some community outreach, improve some friendships in the neighborhood, and even do some fencemending, in every sense of the word. :lol: :tup:

Peace and Love, Bruce Chris

[pnggrad79]

Thanks everyone for your concern and well wishes. School is closed for the remainder of the week, and power may not be restored for another 2-3 weeks. I got on the Entergy website, which is my provider, and the website said that they are transferring most of the workers from Lousiana who have been restoring Louisiana parishes after Gustav, to Texas to help with the restoration effort. It may not take 2 weeks, but they have to give us a worst case scenario, y'know? Since school isn't going to be in session, I might as well stay here in Abilene. We have air, electricity, food, water, ice, and I want to walk away from that why? No, I think we will stay, but who knows.

We had to order a generator online at the Sears store here, because NO ONE has any generators here in podunk Abilene, or in Fort Worth/Dallas. They sold out. So the guy here said that Sears was offering no shipping charges on their basic generator, and they would ship it to our house.

The bank here in Abilene was really sweet and offered to loan us $300 to help us out. We don't have an account there and so I thought that was really nice us being from Houston and all.

I don't know guys, this is just a little much for me. I grew up on the Gulf Coast of Texas, and I have dealt with more than my share of hurricanes, but this is getting a little ridiculous. Ike wasn't near as bad as Katrina, and it did this much damage? Destroyed entire power grids? Well, they need to come up with something else in this area. We are talking 6 million people in the Gulf Coast region and about 5 million without power of any kind, unless they have expensive generators that use a lot of gasoline, which we all know is outrageous and not to mention hard to get with the storm... So what do we do?

They buried the wires, instead of installing them overhead, but that doesn't seem to have made much of a difference. Why aren't these grids better protected or more durable? I am no electrical specialist, but it doesn't seem to be that durable if a Category 1 hurricane swept in and destroyed the whole thing... I don't know, I just know we are awfully dependent on this and it is just stupid, if you ask me. 4 million people sweating in the sauna that is Southeast Texas in the summer. Hmmm, I am just speechless when I think about it... I know I don't seem like it, but I really am just astounded.

[tymejumper]

We got the remenants of Ike up here in Michigan! It rained for 3 days and I set out a barrel to measure it. We got about 10 inches of rain here in those days. Only in MI can you go from drought to flood in under 24 hours!

We are so glad you are ok there, and I'm glad you posted and let us know.

Bekah and Ellie

[Rick336]

A lot of the news of the devastation and suffering in Galveston and Houston this week has been lost in all the panic about the stock market and the busy presidential campaigns.

Here's are 2 photos that compare a Texas beach town near Galveston shortly before Hurricane Ike hit, and a few days after the storm. Complete neighborhoods were washed away by the storm surge.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/images/080918-ike-after-photo_big.jpg


Rick

[pnggrad79]

Well, it is Friday and we finally got power back just this morning. It has been relatively cool since God sent a cool front to cool us down while we had no power. It was really nice during the day, and really cool at night, so I didn't lose much sleep. We had gas so we could cook. We kept our stuff cold by keeping it in a cooler and just going out for ice. Gas is in short supply. Everyone is using it to power generators. They still don't have power on the street behind us, so their generators are running all night. Hey, I don't fault them, they gotta do what they can to keep cool. We gotta cooperate to get through this and I am not going to complain.

Galveston will never be the same and it will take months to get it back to some semblance of the way it was. Bolivar Peninsula, Gilchrist Beach, and Crystal Beach were flattened. There was something like 200 houses on the beach, and after Ike, only 3 left standing. The rest a pile of rubble all around. Flood waters have invaded the island and still standing in house up to 4-5 feet.

Nature is not something to taunt or play with, y'know?

[Rick336]

Galveston will never be the same and it will take months to get it back to some semblance of the way it was. Bolivar Peninsula, Gilchrist Beach, and Crystal Beach were flattened. There was something like 200 houses on the beach, and after Ike, only 3 left standing. The rest a pile of rubble all around. Flood waters have invaded the island and still standing in house up to 4-5 feet.

Nature is not something to taunt or play with, y'know?

Here's a group of photos of the effects of Hurricane Ike from the Boston Globe. The devastation is incredible.

Click here: http://boston.com/bigpicture/2008/09/the_short_but_eventful_life_of.html

Rick