Hurricane Ike Aftermath

After 5 days and nights in Conroe, I am back in my apartments — both new and old. The new apartment came through the storm unscathed, which is nothing short of a miracle. Ike’s eye went more or less straight up through Galveston Bay, which spared the west side of the bay (which includes Clear Lake) from the worst of the storm surge. In Clear Lake the water rose 11 feet. Another few feet and the new apartment would have been underwater. You can see the waterline in this photo below that I took with my phone on Sunday.

Seven of us evacuated to Conroe — Gavin, Jen, and Carina along with Jason, Debbie, Jose and me. Gavin’s parents, Mike and Meg, were amazing. We will never be able to thank them enough for letting us crash in their house and for the way they treated us. They fed us great meals even when the power went out and made sure we were all comfortable. They are just awesome, awesome people.

After the storm passed, five of us piled into Debbie’s car and drove down here on Sunday to check things out. All of our homes made it through the storm with minimal damage. Jason, Debbie and Gavin and Jen all lost at least parts of their fences. Gavin and Jen lost a few shingles. But all windows were intact and no one had significant water damage. My old apartment has quite a few new water spots on the ceiling but oh well — I’m moving out.

The weather for the past two days has been unbelievably good. It’s gotten as low as the 50s at night and hovers around 75 during the day. This is late October/early November weather for Houston. It’s not natural for September, but it’s much appreciated since so much of the area is still without power and air conditioning. The hurricane came and went and there’s nothing we can do about it but pick up the pieces, so it’s nice to be able to do that without sweltering.

We came back today, after talking to Becca yesterday and finding out that our area of League City had power again. I walked in the door this morning to find power, cable, and internet. It’s unbelievable and a bit surreal. On Saturday I was preparing myself to return to a flooded apartment. But Ike took a slight jog to the east, just a few short miles, and suddenly I’m able to return to “everything as usual.” We found plenty of non-perishable food at HEB (which regained power as we roamed the aisles, to much clapping from the customers) and there were even some restaurants open, though we cooked at home. It’s almost as if Ike never happened, or as if the storm was just a bad dream.

But unfortunately many of our friends and coworkers were not so lucky. I’ve heard about and seen people who have trees on their roofs, water in their living rooms, and water damage on a large scale — enough to collapse ceilings and ruin interiors. It seems so senseless that they have so much damage to deal with while I’m sitting here typing a blog entry. Heck, Gavin’s parents don’t even have power back yet! After all they did for us, they certainly deserve power more than me.

When I return to work remains a bit uncertain. JSC is closed until Monday for sure. On top of that, the status of my building at work is still questionable. According to the emails I’ve seen, it sustained “considerable roof damage and leakage” and since my office was on the 3rd (top) floor, I don’t really know what that means for my group. Maybe we’ll be cleaning up our office, maybe we’ll be put in another building temporarily. I don’t know.

I haven’t run or biked or done anything like that in a week in a half, so I’m looking forward to a relaxing run tomorrow.

Thanks for all your emails and comments and phone calls.