Post Hurricane Ike

It has been almost a week since I last posted anything because all we could do was watch and wait. The eye of the storm made landfall on Galveston Island just north of us. We were on the clean side and suffered very little damage. Beachfront houses had the most damage, but even then many were spared. The winds were relatively low, less than 100 MPH, we didn't have much storm surge (i.e., water pushed onshore by the wind), and very little rainfall. Galveston didn't fare as well, as did areas up the coast from us into Louisiana. Lots of coastal flooding. Houston was hit with some flooding and high winds in the area. Electrical service is out for around two million customers, including us. It's possible we won't have power for a week or two. In Lake Jackson, the water is safe to drink, but the sewer lift stations are not all working yet, so we are urged not to return. Our family is still in College Station, TX with Sean and Tara.

Sean and I went back yesterday to get my pickup and do some work. We had a bizarre break in our incoming water line due to storm debris. While I fixed this, Sean picked up the big chunks of tree limbs in our yard. Here's some pictures from our house.

This is the front yard, complete with boarded up windows, the only ones I did.

Our neighbors across the street had three large trees knocked down with no damage to their home.

This is a panorama of our back yard. If you look at our neighbor's house across the fence, you can see the tree laying on their roof. It pierced the roof, and an hour or so later, during their attempt to remove it, it made another hole when it shifted.

Finally, this is the pile of debris that Sean generated when he picked up the limbs in our yard. I'm in the picture to infer that I actually helped. I'm very grateful for his help. There's still a lot to pick up, but it's small stuff.

Our house really had no damage at all, which was pretty much the norm for the area. Lots of trees and tree limbs are down, making it look worse than it is. It will take a while to get everything cleaned up. We are very thankful.

One thing about hurricanes that seems so surreal to me is that they come ashore with the all the fury one can image, taking hours to pass through and wreaking havoc everywhere. Then, soon after, the weather can be pleasant, a glorious day, with the sun shining down on absolute devastation of a massive scale.