Christmas at the "Last House Standing"

Christmas at the last house standing

(CNN) -- The streets are dark and the town is deserted, but Pam and Warren Adams still put up Christmas lights outside their Gilchrist, Texas, home. It is one of the few remaining after Hurricane Ike devastated the area in September.

When Ike hit Gilchrist on September 13, it destroyed nearly everything in its path. Most of the 200 or so houses there were flattened by the storm surge, and the Adams home was the only one left standing on the Gulf Coast side of the town.

Now, the couple has returned to repair their battered home. Warren Adams is living in an RV trailer on their beachfront property. Pam Adams, 53, who spends the week at an apartment in Baytown, Texas, drives more than an hour to visit their home each weekend.

Life goes on, even when it seems like doesn't go on all around them. Everything inside the house is waterlogged, mud-coated, and it is a mess. It looks like it is going to be a very long time before it is completely livable. The couple plans on building elsewhere and using this home as a weekend house.

"I'm so proud my house survived," Adams said. "I didn't realize how much I loved the house until I moved into this apartment."

Adams said she and her husband would sit on their balcony and watch the ocean and sunset in the evenings. "I want everything back the way it was," she said. "I want my neighbors back."

That has to be hard. I can not imagine every house in my neighborhood being GONE. My house still standing. I was not surprised to hear that they haven't seen a dime of insurance money yet. This year there will be no present opening in Gilchrist, but 2009 should be much better.

There will be no presents or visits with friends and family. It didn't seem appropriate, Adams said. "Everything's so depressing. We didn't feel like we should be celebrating when everyone's suffering so badly."
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But the couple has big hopes for next year. "It'll be a big Christmas with the neighbors," Adams exclaimed. "We'll fry turkeys, and there will be a lot to celebrate."

Adams said she's looking forward to 2009. "I just want to get back home and watch all the structures go up in Gilchrist. We want to be the welcoming committee. We just want everyone to return."

Amazing. I am ready for 2009 as well.

Amazing Video - Hurricane Ike

WE HAVE POWER

Finally... we are "seeing the light!"

After 10 days... electricity has been restored! So excited. We are dancing, yelling and running around the house.

Happy Days are Here Again!

Hurricane Ike

We are now in San Antonio and I am having my first computer time in over a week. Strange, but I didn't really struggle or miss it as much as I thought I would. I guess we were too busy taking care of Aidan, worrying about getting a good meal and considering that we needed to have fun despite the power outage.

I have finally started to see some of the footage out here on the Internet about the storm. I started with some stuff from our community. I found this youtube video pretty haunting, but it was exactly how it looked at our house too, just before the storm:


This one really got to me... it's of a lone house in Gilcrest. The video is amazing.





I found these pictures on the Houston Chronicle website. They just made me shake my head. Amazing how things happen sometimes...






Today I'll be watching my Houston Texans battle the Titans and hoping a win might cheer everyone up a bit. A friend of mine that lives in the next neighborhood over from us emailed me last night and said he has power. So maybe there is hope for when we go back on Monday. I know that will give me hope that things will be back to normal soon when we have power.

We are ready

We have everything ready to go. The only thing I need to do is move our HDTV away from the bay windows in the front of the house. We have some very big pine trees out there and if they happen to snap - I don't want to lose my TV! :)

I guess you know where my love is. ;-)

We took a walk up the street and our street basically goes from northwest to southeast. The clouds were crossing over us from east to west. It was eerie. You could almost sense when the wind would gust because the clouds would pick up above us. We let Aidan run around for a couple of minutes and then came in and gave him a bath.

Norma and I are both going to get a good shower and shave and relax a bit. We probably have 2 or 3 more hours of electricity. But, I already know parts of Kingwood that is without electricity. Crazy. But, our grid in our neighborhood is usually pretty robust. We were built in the 1990s.

The hard rain is really just about to start. It's deceiving. The pinwheel effect of the hurricane just plays games with you. It looks like you are about to get it on the radar and then it spins around and misses you. But that buzzsaw is coming soon.

I'm going to run down and shower, have a nice cup of coffee :) and then get Aidan ready for bed. We are getting ready to CAMP OUT... while inside. :) He is having a good day. He just told me that in the bath. The wisdom of a 3 year-old.

Be safe everyone in Houston!

These People Are Stupid

Here is the first stupid person:


After being reminded that the National Weather Service says they face certain death, "I pray we don't." Stupid, Stupid People. I hope they somehow make it... but, I'm almost not sure why.



Then I consider... why is FoxNews even showing these "stupid people?" Then I realize... they are stupid, too.

(do I seem a little bitter at this point?)

Getting Prepared.

Much happier days on Galveston Island.
We took a nap. In fact, Aidan and Norma are still fast asleep. We are not getting much wind here now. But, I am watching CNN. They are showing live pictures of the water crashing over the seawall in Galveston. Tears came to my eyes. We were just there a few weeks ago.

I am going to start preparing our "fort." Aidan was pretty upset before we went to sleep. Sure we have been shielding him from the coverage on tv. But, he can tell we are tense. He was told at preschool that they were going to get a storm and that's why they weren't coming in on Friday - so he was sad. I asked him if he was afraid of the storm and he said, "Yes" and frowned with tears in his eyes.

To help him, I said... "We are going to make this fun. We will build a fort!" Truth is, we need to have one ready. Just for protection from tornadoes. There will be some of them tonight. My plan is that we will try to lay in bed - which is a few feet from the middle room in the house. And we will go in there if we feel like we need to. I'll have a matress on the floor (his crib mattress - which I'm glad we kept) and we'll have a matress blocking the door into that room. This should provide us plenty of protection if windows don't hold... or if we get projectiles smashing into the house.

It is very similar to trying to build a shelter from a tornado. We'll have water in there, radios, some snacks toys for Aidan, lots of flashlights. We'll have the cats in their carrier so that they can't get out - for their own protection.

I am already looking forward to tomorrow... the calm after the storm. When I know we won't have any power... but when I know we'll be checking on our neighbors, assessing the damage and being thankful that everyone is ok!

Here Comes Ike!

I was not happy to wake up to the news that Ike hasn't moved to the east and is going to hit our home. We love Houston. We love all of Houston and Galveston. This has been our home since 1994. We have lived in all the areas that are going to flood tomorrow - North Shore, Clear Lake - NASA Road One, Webster, & Seabrook. It is just so sad to realize that things are going to be very different for people in our great city just 24 hours from now.

Saturday morning we are going to wake up to damage. There is no doubt. We could have up to 100 mph winds and there will be trees that go down. That kind of wind is going to blow from dark tonight until close to noon tomorrow. So it'll be a long haul. Of course any regular thunderstorm seems scary sometimes. This is something that Norma and I have never experienced. Our closet call with Rita was scary enough. So we'll be a little tense.

BUT, we have a great plan. We are going to protect our belongings today as best we can. I'll be moving our awesome HD tv to the dining room table and put them in the center of our home near a doorway to the garage. Any other valuable pieces will go there as well. Our place to go (in case of a very nasty tornado or serious home damage) is in our downstairs guest bath. It's a 1/2 bath in the center of our home on the ground floor. We will close the door and place a crib mattress at the door. Those are precautions that may seem crazy to some, but we are going to do the best we can. All of our 'stuff' is replaceable.

To be sure that we have a record of everything we are going outside and taking pictures of the trees, house and backyard. One worry for me is our fence. It was put in with the house in 1992. So it is going to take severe damage. I could probably push it over in places in our back yard - it's that old. So I know there is going to be some serious damage there. So I'll take a few pictures. Maybe they will come in handy.

We will not have power for a while. Our energy companies are preparing people for the worst - 2 weeks. If that happens we may try to go to San Antonio (when the roads are passable) to stay with Norma's brother's family. But, for now it's best for us to ride it out here. Even if we left now... we would risk car trouble and being stranded when this storm begins. And that would be a terrible idea!

Please keep a good thought in your mind today for us and for all of the people of Houston who will ride this thing out. What a wonderful place this is... I just hope IKE realizes it as he gives us his best shot.

I Don't Like IKE

School is canceled tomorrow. So is the all day AVID Tutor training that I was going to attend on Saturday. So my weekend is now free. Oh yeah, a hurricane is coming. So it might not be fun. :(

1 Million Evacuate in Texas

Kids were pretty nervous today at school. Understandably. We have been lucky since we have come to Texas in 1994. There hasn't been a hurricane hit us directly. The closest call was Rita in 2005 (yep, same year as Katrina). Tropical storm Allison actually did much more damage than anything we've seen before.

During Rita we tried to evacuate. That was a nightmare. Our thinking was that we had Aidan and he was just under a year old and we wanted to get to San Antonio and be safe. The scary part of Rita was that it was the biggest storm ever recorded in the gulf - at cat 5. We were really scared. Well, so was EVERYONE in Houston. After trying to drive to San Antonio, we finally pulled over and turned around just outside of Katy, TX... which is about 45 minutes from our house. It had taken us 6 hours to get there! And we were running low on gas and there was NO GAS to be found anywhere. So we were actually quite relieved to make it home. People died out there on the freeway trying to evacuate. It was a nitemare.

From Wikipedia: On Wednesday, Houston mayor Bill White urged residents to evacuate the city, telling residents, "Don't wait; the time for waiting is over," reminding residents of the disaster in New Orleans. After heavy traffic snarled roads leading out of town and gas shortages left numerous vehicles stranded, he backed off his earlier statement with, "If you're not in the evacuation zone, follow the news," advising people to use common sense. However by 3:00 p.m. that afternoon, the freeway system in Houston was at a stand-still. [19]

I am not as panicked as I was during Hurricane Rita. Rita took an unexpected jog to the east just before landfall. You can see that here

We are hoping tonight that Ike will head in the same direction. But, that probably isn't likely. Over the past 24 hours the storm tracking has started to move to the east. It went from landfall very far south of us in Matagorda Bay to now a direct hit on Galveston Island (directly south of us about 45 minutes). That means the current track puts the eye path of the storm, ohhh, right over our neighborhood. Again, that is actually good news at this point. Because the storm has been trending to the east, it will probably continue to do that. But, NO ONE knows. It's all guess work.

Hopefully tomorrow afternoon (before the power goes out) we'll know that the storm will go far enough east that we'll be on the weak side of the storm. These hurricanes have strong sides (or dirty sides) to the north east. The weakest part of the storm is to the south east. So for us, if it keeps going to the east... that's great news.

We have taken a few precautions...
Both cars (including the rental) are in the garage. I have also disabled the electronic opener (which will be useless without electricity to run it).

I have cleared the entire yard of anything that could be debris. At this point the winds will be from 80 to 120 mph. That could make just about anything a projectile.

We also got out $$$ from the bank. That was a minor miracle. The back money machine was all out of $$$ and the front was probably running out when we got there. The line was 5-10 people deep.

We stopped and got some groceries. Nothing that needs refrigerated. So stuff like pop tarts, chips, water, dry cereal, peanut butter & jelly.

Tonight we had some frozen pizzas... and tomorrow I'll raid the freezer again and try to empty some more out of it. If we are hit at all by the storm we will lose electricity. If it is a direct hit and real bad... the potential is a few days without any juice. We'd lose everything in the freezer in that case.

Tomorrow morning it will already be raining, so I had to take care of things tonight outside. Tomorrow we'll be doing lots of laundry, washing all our dishes, cleaning the house. And watching the track of the storm. Hopefully we'll have some very good news.