Hurricane Ike - September 2008

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Hurricane Ike came through Houston Sept 13, 2008.  It did a huge amount of damage throughout Houston and devastated Galveston.  We helped gut a church in Galveston a week or two later that had had over three feet of standing water in it, and the mold and other toxic stuff basically destroyed everything that was below that level.  We stripped that church down to the studs.  We didn't take pictures of that, but here's what happened at our house.  We were really quite lucky -- we're out West in Katy and the eye, as you'll see below, passed to the East of Houston.  We had pretty strong winds, but since our trees are small only one blew down, and that was kind of trivial out in the back yard.  Some of our neighbors with big trees had big damage, but our damage was very light and pretty much ignorable.

 

Everything that can move is tied down.


The martin house is taken off the post, lawn furniture and loose fences put in the garage, the vents of the pool heater are sealed with duct tape.


The garage is chock full of everything that we can get in there.  Barbecue, martin house, lawn furniture, etc.  We don't want stuff flying around.


The hurricane blew through very late Friday night, or early Saturday morning if you like.  We lost power around 4 AM and I got a radar map on my cell phone about this time -- shown above. As you can see the eye passed to the East of us and we did not get the eye-wall, which is the most destructive place, at all.  The core of Houston did, and there was a lot of damage.  I think they said that it knocked down 10,000 trees -- but the city is going to plant 100,000 in their place.  It was a super mess, but we bounce back.  We only lost power for 16 hours, which means we didn't lose any food -- and we think that's because the power comes into our subdivision underground.  That means they only need to fix a single substation to get hundreds of homes on line, which since it's a lot of bang for the buck probably gets done pretty quickly.  Many or most people in Houston were without power for a week or more, which is not fun.

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