The Hurricane Ike Exprerience

Posted by Joey Published in Uncategorized

I’m accustomed to Thunderstorms and Tornados in Arkansas, so I was curious what going through a Hurricane would be like. Overall, it is like a similar to the severe-thunderstorm or Tornado-like conditions I’ve experienced in Arkansas, only a Hurricane just goes on and on and on for hours! The house shook and the wind whipped the trees around violently. I can see how a house could easily be blown away in a hurricane. I don’t think the wind ever got strong enough to lift our house and carry us away, but I was sure that at any moment a huge tree was going to fall on us, or at the very least some sort of debris was going to fly through the window.

I kick myself for not taking pictures the day after! Our neighborhood got hammered and MANY houses suffered some pretty bad damage. One house had a tree fall not only into their living room, but it crushed their truck as it fell over. Ouch! There were also many streets that were impassible because trees were completely blocking the street.

The electricity went off Friday night as Ike was blowing into town. We could literally sit and watch the trasformers popping like fireworks all around us. Sure enough,… “POP”… and our electricity went out too. After the Hurricane, approximately 90% of Houston was without power! That’s close to 4 million people. And even now (10 days later) there are still MANY people without electricity. We got lucky and had our power on within 2 days. But Jane (my mother-in-law) is still without electricity.

After the Hurricane, Holly and I decided to give Charles Deitrick and call and see if we could come stay with them for a few days. At that time we didn’t know how long it would be before the electricity would come back on. The radio kept saying 2 weeks. So we decided to head to Dallas. It was really weird driving through Houston … and even far north of Houston for at least 1 hour … and not seeing any lights on anywhere. There were no open gas stations along the way and several cars were on the side of the road out of gas.

Fortunately, Holly filled up the car on Thursday and we made it to Dallas with no problems. Chuck and Tina were EXCELLENT hosts! Thanks guys for giving us shelter and making our post-hurricane expereience more comfortable. God bless you!

But by Tuesday, our power was back on and we headed back to Houston. Life is pretty much back to normal for us. It is slowly returning to normal for everyone around us.

Here are a few pictures Holly snapped after it stopped raining Saturday…