Update from Hurricane Ike

For those of you who don't know, my house is right south of Sugarland, which is south of Houston, TX. And as we should all know, a storm the size of Arkansas just swept over the Houston area. So of course, my house got hit. Fortunately, my county didn't have to be evacuated, so my family stayed in the house.

That was the extent of what I knew before the storm hit- that, and the fact that my parents, who both pursued secondary engineering degrees, used ratcheting tie-downs (you know, the things they use to hold down loads on 18 wheelers) to strap down roof panels, as these are generally the first to go in a storm.

Once the storm hit, I couldn’t contact my parents at all, and was rather upset given the fact that all the coverage from the news media showed destroyed houses and destroyed areas I formerly went to for vacations… of course all the cell towers were down and the power was out for about 4 million people, so it was all but impossible to know what was going on. Fortunately I was able to get in touch with my family through text messages- always a good idea for disaster where cell towers may be affected. The messages go through as soon as the cell tower can connect.



There are two sections of my house- one is the original side, pictured here-



And there is the new section of the house, pictured here-



You’ll notice on the new section, there is a second story part, which has a bunch of windows. What you don’t see is the roof section, which is comprised of clear panels, which create a kind of sunroof for the sun room. This was apparently the only casualty on our property was one of the sunroof panels, which blew off in the storm despite the tie-downs. Fortunately, we have another section of paneling we can replace it with easily which otherwise would not have been used, so it’s just a matter of replacing it with what we already have. There was some water damage inside, but nothing too significant was damaged and it should be dried out shortly. I still haven’t actually spoken to my parents, but I’ve gotten to talk to my dad online and they all seem to be okay, besides not being able to call, they’re doing quite well.

Just keep the rest of the people in southern Texas in your prayers. There’s a lot of damage in a lot of areas, and a lot of families are hurting right now. We got really lucky, but a lot of people didn’t get off as easily. I would love to hear about anybody else’s story from the area, feel free to leave comments about how you fared. Also, feel free to share any Gustav stories you may have- I did experience some of the side effects of Hanna, but that really doesn’t count for much- it looked like a minor rainstorm in New Orleans.

Thanks for reading!

By the way, I included the pictures mostly because I wanted to show off the new section of our house, and I made panoramic pictures with Vista and wanted to use them somehow.