Wrath of Hurricane Ike

What a whirlwind week it has been!   Last week as Hurricane Ike entered the Gulf Coast, Scott and I watched the news closely to determine whether the storm was strong enough to warrant our leaving the city or if we should just take shelter here and ride it out.  We did the Rita thing and being stuck in traffic for 10 hours with a baby is something we didn’t want to have to do.  The Houston newscasters recommended everyone stay put unless in mandatory evacuation areas.  We made the decision at that point that we would stay and leave after the storm if our power was out for an extended period. 

In preparation for the storm, I went to the grocery store to stock up on pantry goods and that was an experience in itself.  I had to park in several parking lots away from the grocery store because it was so packed.  All the canned goods were heavily picked through and it was unbelievably crowded.  The day was absolutely beautiful and everyone was out.  This was the Thursday before Ike hit.

On Friday, we spent the day glued to the TV watching the hurricane role in and by now, the storm surge had brought water all the way into the Houston bayous, yet there was no sign of the hurricane in the sky so it was very eery.  About 7pm, we had a power surge and then regained power until 9pm when we lost power for good.  I still can’t figure out why we lost power so early because it wasn’t very windy here yet.  Scott and I went to sleep not too worried about the storm and hopeful  that our power would be back on by morning after the storm passed. 

At around 1am, I was startled by a huge gust of wind that made a very loud pop noise and rocked our home.  I woke Scott up and told him our house was rocking.   From that point on, our experience got much scarier.  I couldn’t sleep at all.  With over 50 windows in our home and being on the third floor, it not only sounded like a freight chain was inside our bedroom due to the 100+ mph winds swirling around our house, but our house was also literally rocking like a boat.  About 2am, I went to try to go back to sleep in Avery’s nursery to make sure she was okay because there was no way I would have been able to hear her cry and her room is literally right next to ours.  It was THAT loud!   She slept through the entire thing, not waking up once that night.   I definitely wasn’t going to go to sleep at this point because I was so nervous so I just laid there running all the scenarios of this unbelievable storm in my head and what it could do to our home.  Shortly after, I heard lots of dripping.  I grabbed my flashlight and tried to search for the leakage in the dark.  I was able to get a whole bunch of towels down and about thirty minutes later, I went to go back to check on it and found that water was running in our closet and many places of our bathroom.  Then around 6am, we heard a huge bang and thought surely something had broken one of our windows.  Luckily, nothing was broken but we discovered we had quite a few more issues with water coming in. 

On Saturday morning after the storm had finally passed, I went to sleep!  When I woke up a few hours later, our power had not come back on so we decided to go riding around to see what the storm had done.  We didn’t have any TV or internet so we had no idea of what the damage was.  I can tell you that as soon as we entered the street of our neighborhood, it was a disaster.  There were trees laying on people’s houses, in the streets, debris from who knows what was all over the place, roads were impassable and people were already out cleaning up there yards!  Downtown was even worse.  At that point, we knew it would be a very long time before we got power so we left town and headed to Shiner. 

We were very fortunate for many reasons, most importantly our safety and to have little damage in the large scheme of things.  We were one of the first ones to get power back so we were able to return on Wednesday.  Right now, all of our neighbors and our friends are still without power!  I hope I never have to experience anything like this hurricane again, ever!

Images Courtesy of Boston.com