Hurricane Ike

Please join us on a walk down memory lane by clicking on the picture above. It is so much fun!
Just looking at the maps of Hurricane Ike, that hit the Galveston Bay, Texas area in September 2008, literally makes me anxious all over again. My home is located near Beach City, TX. If you look at this map, where it says "Bolivar Peninsula", my house would be right there underneath the "E" in "Peninsula." We are right there across the street from the homes that are on the bay, so when you hear a Hurricane the size of Texas is headed straight for Galveston, it isn't too great of a feeling!
Here is a map of what it looked like when the Hurricane hit.
I was looking through my photos that I took of that time, and I came across this one. It doesn't look very interesting, but I was taking these photos of the rooms of our house because I really didn't know if they would be here when we got back. Even looking on the TV, the news is scrolling the "mandatory evacuation sites" at the bottom of the screen. That brings up so much emotion in me, because we were in a mandatory evacuation site. It's a horrible situation to be told that you have no choice but to leave your home. You don't know if it will survive and you must choose what to take with you. I'm not a materialistic person at all. Homes can be replaced, but it killed me to try to choose which sentimental items to take and which had to stay behind because of lack of room in our car. It was such a helpless feeling.

With Hurricanes, you never know where they're going to go until almost the last minute. At first, the news was telling everyone to stay put. Because of the evacuation disaster that occured in 2004 with Hurricane Rita (it literally took us 8 hours to get into Houston only to have to turn back around because there was no gas anywhere), they didn't want everyone evacuating for no reason. Then, about a day before, it became clear that anyone along the coastal area would be in grave danger if they stayed. We decided to pack up and go to Morgan's Uncle's house, which is a little north of Houston. The area would still be affected, but there wouldn't be as much danger of structural catastrophe.

We waited until the day the Hurricane was supposed to hit before we left to go to Uncle Gary's. There was barely anyone on the roads. That night, the power went out. A lot of our family met up there, so there was a huge group of people. We had generators, so we were able to keep the fridge cooled and had fans. Some of us tried to sleep, while the Hurricane made landfall in the middle of the night.

Lily didn't get too stressed about the situation. That is "Booger" asleep with her (Morgan's brother's dog). LOL!

We had boarded up all of our windows back home, as did almost 99% of our neighbors. Uncle Gary didn't board up anything. I was kind of worried about that because even up north, the winds were expected to gust up to 100 mph. The guys weren't worried though. When we woke up the next morning, the neighbor across the street had a huge tree through his roof. We were very lucky that didn't happen to Gary's house. You couldn't even leave the neighborhood for all the trees all over the roads. It poured all the next day, flooding most of the roadways in Houston. We couldn't leave to get back home to see if our house made it. I was able to get the internet to work (leave it to me to find a way! LOL) and I saw people talking about how devestating the damage was in our area. I was freaking out! I saw pictures of the cemetary my Mom is buried in and it was completely under water. I was heartbroken. I had no idea if our home was still standing. The phones didn't work, so we couldn't call Morgan's Mom back home (they were crazy and stayed home!....they got a tree through their roof too, but it didn't cause flooding, thank goodness).

The next day, we finally were able to leave. We had to turn around and take several routes to get home to avoid flooding. You know my anxiety about driving too. I almost had a panic attack. We finally made it back to the Baytown area. The damage was amazing. Almost all trees were snapped in half. Power lines were down everywhere. Flooding was everywhere.

Here's a shot outside the local mall of downed power lines. This is looking from the Interstate.

We finally made it back to our house, and it was standing!!! Praise God! The only thing that got destroyed was our fence. The wind snapped the boards literally in half! I was cracking up because the kids' jeep stayed right where we left it. We also got rain damage in our office, but that was the worst of it.

Morgan joked around and was like, "I just hope my satellite didn't blow away!" My husband loves his TV. LOL I was dying laughing when I saw the satellite hanging by a cord when we got back. And his beloved grill flipped over. Ha!

100% of the Houston-Galveston area was without power. Just think about that. Millions of people had no power and it was really bad because most of that was due to power lines literally blowing away and being destroyed. We are on a water well, so no power means no water. Luckily, Morgan's parents have City water, so we camped out with them for the 8 days we were without power. We had generators and I was able to keep up with things on my laptop.

I didn't know if my Aunt was okay and I actually got in contact with someone online who lived near her and knew for sure that she was okay. Praise the Lord for technology!!

So, what do you do for 8 days with three little girls and no power and no stores open and no school to go to? If you're me, you make them tutus with the tulle you had bought earlier in the month and let them dance and play and have a good time!

It was an adventure for them. We played card games and really took time to have fun with each other. We watched the hummingbirds every day at Grandma's feeders. Thank goodness Morgan's Mom is one of those people who stocks up on everything, because we had plenty of food to eat and she has a gas stove, so we were able to cook on the stovetop.

When we finally got power and water, I had never been so happy to be home again! You just don't realize what you take for granted until you don't have it any more. So many people lost their lives and their entire homes floated away. I can't even imagine that. We were so very fortunate and I don't ever want to forget that. We survived a direct hit on our area........I was so proud of my husband because he built our home and it withstood that!

I learned alot from that Hurricane experience. I saw people from all over the country come to help out their fellow man. I saw neighbors sharing their rations with other neighbors. I saw neighbors helping neighbors rebuild their fences (like our good neighbor helped us) and clean up their property. We all learned not to take for granted what we have, because there is no guarantee we will have it tomorrow. Most of all, I learned that sometimes it's okay for business as usual to come to a halt and for us to just enjoy our families and spend time with them. I learned that the world won't fall apart because we miss school or work for a week. I also learned that my in-laws and I can spend a whole week together and not kill each other! LOL :)

I'm sure there will be many more Hurricane stories for me to tell my Grandchildren one day, but I have a feeling that Hurricane Ike will be "the big one."