Hurricane Ike
I got back from Houston late last week. It was a huge mess down there. Some 750,000 folks are still without power and many are without water. Galveston is worse, of course, but, somehow, I almost think it is better to have your home totally destroyed that to try to keep living in a house with no services. It was very hot and humid but the air dried out a bit on Wednesday and that cooled things off. Many of the traffic signals are still out but people are generally driving very courteously, treating every intersection as a four-way stop sign.
My MILs house was not damaged but a neighbors large oak tree fell over onto her driveway and took the power, phone and cable lines with it as well as the pole they were attached to. Her power is not back on yet and neither is my SILs or my surviving BILs. My daughter was lucky in that she only lost power briefly. I spent most of my time down there getting some generators set up at my MILs house so they could at least have some light and run some fans. We set up two 5700 watt gennys that run for about 10 hours on 5 gallons of gas. One runs while the other rests. Wal-Mart has dropped their prices for all grades of gasoline in response to the storm, which really means a lot to those people down there. They are also keeping plenty of ice on hand at all of their stores.
They still do not know how many people died in the storm. They just let people back on Galveston Island last Wednesday. The people on the west end of the island are just allowed to look and leave as that end of the island was pretty well completely destroyed since the sea wall does not stretch down there. They know there are probably bodies in the rubble but no one has time to search for them right now. One rather poignant story concerned a 74 year old man who refused to evacuate the island as he was fearful that looters would steal everything he had. As the storm grew worse, he finally understood that his house was going to be destroyed and got in his pickup truck to try to escape. His last communication was a cell phone call to some friends on the mainland, saying that his truck was floating and he had lost control. They found his body behind the wheel after the storm. Sad but I am afraid that there will be many more.
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Where the fork in the road leads.
4 comments:
It truly is sad that there are people who take advantage of situations like this (aka looters). It is especially sad that the man lost his life trying to save his possesions.
Hurricane Ike really did a number on SO many, whether you lived near the coast or not. So many here are still recovering and it never rained a drop in Indiana.
That is so sad about the old man.
J.
So sad, but things are just things. I know we all work hard for what we have (however little that may be :P) but when it comes down to it, life is the most important. Then again, if it's your time to go ...
Yep, everybody has a time to check out of this cheap hotel. Most of us are just evicted, sometimes by accident. Some chose to check themselves out, tired of the room service. We found out from co-workers that Ray had been trying to turn himself around so it is too bad the left he left before he could get back withhis family.
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