Well thank goodness for modern technology and generators. Half of our subdivision, of course the half we live in, is still without power and no idea when it will be restored. It seems this "camping trip" is never going to end...AHHHHHH! At least now I know that possibly, just possibly, I could have made it as a pioneer. When times got tough this past week, I kept asking myself, what would your pioneer grandmothers would have done? "Suck it up!"
Let see where to begin...
Hurricane Ike was only a category 2. I hate to see what a category 3, 4, or 5 would have been like. A Cat 2 was scary enough for me. Ron and I put the girls to bed in our closets. They are in the center of the house on the first floor. We stayed up until 2am watching the news coverage of the hurricane. We watched until our power went out. We then used out hand crank radio to listen. We were up most of the night. We just couldn't sleep with the wind roaring outside around the house and the rain pouring down the windows. I just can't explain the sound of the wind. It was loud and sounded like a train. A few pine cones were smacking our windows like rocks being thrown against the glass. At that point in time, we were wishing we had put plywood over our windows. The storm lasted many hours. Seasoned Texans in our area told us that it was the worst hurricane they had ever been through.
Remember my post about the neighbor who asked me to take down our trampoline? Well, I can't really make fun of him anymore. He was right. I saw two trampolines that were thrown several hundred feet over fences and they happened to land in a lake and one in a bayou. It was amazing to have known where they use to sit and then to see where the wind had taken them. We drove through our subdivision and saw many large pine trees on top of homes. Your heart just went our to these people who had so much damage. We feel so blessed to have had none. Galvestine and other low laying islands were heavily damaged or obliterated.
The worst part of the storm came to our area around 3-4:00am. It was dark outside, which made the storm sound that much worse. In the early morning hours around 6-7am, I did shoot some video of the storm. It was the tail end of Ike. It did rain for another 24 hours after the storm passed through our area and there was some loud thunder and lightening. Loud enough that the neighbors were all talking about it the next day.
There use to be a large pine tree across the street from our home. The wind pulled it down and it took our the power lines for our section of the subdivision. We are still without power today. Tonight will mark
a week with no power. The weather turned cool, the day after the hurricane, but today the humidity is crawling back in and it is warm. We get releif by going out and sitting in the van to cool off for a little while.
We have spent this week with friends. The Taylor family. They moved here recently from Mesa, so this hurricane stuff was totally new to them. He is our home teacher and she is one of the sisters I visit teach. We pretty much combined pantries and made meals for two families. It was so much fun to just hang out with good friends and try to survive this mess. We all ate food that would spoil first. So we cleaned out the refrigerators. Next we ate from the freezers, then the pantries, then food storage. I can honestly say I am grateful for a prophet and church leaders who encouraged us to have a food supply, water supply and to have cash on hand. There was a day Stacy and I decided to go to the store to try to find some comfort foods for the kids. The stores were only taking cash and the the shelves were BARE. It was shocking. I should have taken my camera. You all would have been surprised as I.
Some have asked if we would evacuate next hurricane. Most likely not. Next time, we will board up our windows and we will purchase a generator. I will stock up on more food, and I will stock up on gas for the generator.
My advice to all of you, get your food storage and water storage in place, have fuel on hand, and have a cash reserve on hand. You may never know when your "hurricane" may come through.
This is the pine tree that was across the street from us. It broke through the subdivision wall and landed in an apartment complex. The tree wiped out our power lines.
Power company delivering the new power poles. I hope they hurry and send a crew to put up the pole and string up the lines. As of tonight, power has been out a week.
Trees that feel on a home in my subdivision.
Lake Turner forming.
Have you ever seen a Wal-mart shut down? They barricaded the doors with crushed boxes on flats.
Our street flooded. (note brown water = sewage. Yes, it reeked!)
I have another video of the storm. But, it won't load. Tomorrow when I have more time, I will try to shrink the file and add it to the blog.
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