Hurricane Ike Aftermath

On The Road To Overcoming A Disaster

Hurricane Ike blew into Houston early last saturday morning. I knew this was no joke and had been "hunkering down" for some time, prepared for the worst. By prepared for the worst I mean drinking heavily and anxiously awaiting the storm. I had been busy doing "hurricane algebra" all night to determine how soon after landfall I would feel the effects in my area.
Finally after an already dramatic evening, which included a trip to the ER, the storm finally started to affect the museum district in a bad way about 1 am. The main part was wind, lots of wind, powerful wind, intense wind with a large side of rain. The power flicked off and on several times before finally calling it quits at about 1:15. Green and Blue fire balls exploded into the sky as transformers blew up one after the other. Block after block the city of Houston was plunged into a terrible windy darkness. 100 mph winds bent trees over and snapped branches like toothpicks. No part of the city was sparred. It went on like this for about twelve hours.
The next day when I woke up to massive destruction and property damage. I had to quickly asses the situation and take control. The report on the radio said that power might be out for weeks. Food was already starting to go bad in the fridge. Huge trees had been toppled on almost every street. My brother later remarked that it looked like a "green blizzard" with all of the branches and leaves that covered everything.
I decided that it would be my best bet to leave town for a couple of days. Get my "hurri-cation" started right by evacuating to another city. San Antonio was the place that my girlfriend and her friend were going so I caught a ride with them. There is no better place to seek sanctuary from a natural disaster when you are a penniless evacuee. Thank You to the people of San Antonio for welcoming me with open arms and forgiving my drunken antics.
When I returned to Houston several days later I was nervous to find out if I had power restored to my apartment. I had electricity but over half of the city did not. It was in a random way. One street had it another didn't. Half of an apartment complex did the other half nothing. Some thought that it was the government fucking with people to get them freaked out so they could come in and take control of our minds. I don't know about all that but some crazy shit was going down. Brennan's burned down, a tiger was loose on Crystal Beach, there was a tornado of broken glass downtown, the Balinese Room was completly detroyed.
Death and Destruction rained down on every part of the area. The clean up is going to take forever. There are piles of leaves and branches on just about every curb. The whole city smells like sawdust and pine needles. Broken glass liters every part of downtown. Almost a week later and alot of people still don't have any power at all.
Galveston will take months if not years to recover. It will be a long road to recovering the area.

Thankfully me and my family made it throught the storm without injury.
God Bless Texas.
T