Hurrican Ike Report

Finally got this internet thingy hooked back up again and thought I'd drop everybody a line. The eye of the hurricane, as a category 1, passed about 25 miles west of Lufkin Saturday morning. Gusts of 85+ were measured around the area, and many, many trees are down and some houses are destroyed. I sat on my back porch with my father and watched trees bend like reeds. Heard some loud snapping, and I lost a lot of limbs, but nothing serious. Some neighbors lost entire trees. The pile of debris I collected from my yard is about the size of a car. Power went out of course as the storm hit, and we still don't have any (as of Tuesday, 4:45 P.M.), but I scored a generator today through mother-in-law (boo-yah!), and got some basics back, like cold beer and the laptops. The military is very visible in the area, delivering water, ice, fuel, and food. Chinooks pass over occasionally. Most of the town seems to have power, but most rural areas--read most of the county--is looking at a week-plus for power, three weeks in the backwoods areas. I went out on my bicycle yesterday and counted four huge trees on powerlines and two houses destroyed, just in about 12 miles of riding. Most people who weathered Rita are judging this one worse for power outages, but less for damage.

A cold front blew through the day after the hurricane, so the days have been pleasant, maybe 85, and the nights have been downright cold, as low as 58, so we're not suffering from that. We've been cooking pancakes and pasta on a propane stove, and we lost everything in the freezer. I figured it would stay cold for at least a couple days, but tis not so. Ice was hard to find for a while, but we took the advice of a neighbor and froze water in zip-locs before the storm hit. *Very good idea*. It kept our food cold for a couple days until supplies caught up.

Things I did right: propane stove and fuel, frozen zip-locs for ice, dry and canned food to cook or eat out of the can, bathtub and buckets full of water, eating cold stuff first, lotsa peanut butter and bread, snacks for kids, wind-up lights.

Things I wish I had done: chlorine for the pool, extra gasoline, big tarp, batteries, bigger stock of food, emptied the freezer first thing.