What an adventure! Early Saturday morning I watched Ike roll ashore at Galveston and then later barrel through Houston (on TV, of course). My brother and his family live in Houston and stayed to host the traditional Hurricane Party (those crazy kids!). They were actually told to shelter in place (stay at home) to try to prevent the gridlock on the roads that occurred with Katrina three years ago. They live far enough away from flood zones that they were not evacuated. Keri, my brother, has of course been waiting patiently for this kind of excitement since they moved to Houston several years ago. In fact, I even think he was a little jealous when the tornado hit our house.
On with the story..... Keri had been texting updates Friday night and Saturday morning letting us know that they had no damage but also had no power. When they heard that they could expect to be without power for about 3 weeks, he asked me to find a generator, a window A/C unit and gas. We live about 5 hours away, so you'd think a generator would be easy to find. Most of the generators in the area had been purchased earlier in the week by those on the Gulf Coast who were preparing.
Somehow we found the one generator that was left and the other supplies he requested. As far north as we are, we were expecting some serious impacts from it, too, so locals were buying up generators and supplies. So, Mike packs the truck up and heads out to meet Keri halfway. By this time, Ike has made its way northeast towards us, so Mike is driving through it the whole way. He met up with Keri and Madison and decided to follow them back into Houston. They had to drive on the wrong side of the road fequently because of the debris. There was flooding, so they had to take detours. Keri ran out of gas because there was none to be found along the way! Luckily, Mike had about 20 gallons in the back of the truck. Finally, they make it to Keri's about the same time power was restored!!!! Mike rested up a while and headed back home! It took him about 14 hours to complete this adventure! I think he had a lot of fun! By the time he made it home, Ike had passed through our area. We had one major loss - Evan's playhouse. It was torn apart, and we have one sad little girl (every once in a while when she remembers).
A week later, Houston still has gas shortages and there are over a million people still without power.
Pictures are courtesy of my niece Madison who had a blast looking at all the devastation. I guess we are a morbid family!
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