Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hurricane Ike Part II

We have power. Two little streets in our whole neighborhood. The trade-off is we have no water. At all. Not one drop. We are using water from our pool to flush our toilets. Bathing? Nope. Washing hands? Good thing I have lots of baby wipes. But we are lucky. We have power. For now. It flickers on and off. We will have power for three hours, and then none for five. Enough to keep the house cool, and make ice for the cooler.

We drove around yesterday. Emmi's school is missing a section of roof. The playground is in bad shape. Jill's school appears to have fared better, but not by much. It is hard to describe the feeling of it all. Street after street of damage. House after house. No one escaped without something. We knew before we came back home that the fence was down, the shop damaged. I didn't expect two streets away to see roofs caved in and trees on top of house. The house directly across the street lost windows. I didn't expect the magnitude of it all. The destruction. The feeling of not even knowing where to begin.
One neighborhood over from us. The whole front half of the house is destroyed.
Kenny's shop. (No, not his truck. This is about two down from him.)
Behind the shop. Property belonging to our friend's company, now covered with the roof to the neighboring property. And a kayak!

Our backyard. Looking into eight surrounding yards. I expected our fence to be gone. I guess I never thought that ALL the fences would be down. And, really, Fence, did you have to fall in on all of our landscaping. The fence is nothing. All of our landscaping is destroyed. But again, we are lucky, and I am not complaining.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are the kids freaking out? I'm glad you fared so well, though that is only relative in the scheme of things. Thanks for the post, it's been on my mind all weekend. It's times like this that living in Ohio doesn't feel quite so lame.

J said...

Holy crap!

I am sooo glad you got out of there when you did. Please let me know if you need anything that I can help out with, okay? I am just a few hours away!

Unknown said...

I'm glad you're okay!!

Tricia said...

The kids are with my parents in the Austin area. We didn't see any need to bring them back into this right now.

Our neighbor is a police officer and just came to tell us that looting has started and we need to be cautious. I have a feeling it might get worse here before it gets better.

Sheri said...

Did you read my response to your comment about FEMA issuing grants for landscaping?

I am really seeing how very, very lucky we are to have absolutely no damage, power or water issues.

My mom went and bought a generator for $700 this morning after waiting in line at Home Depot for 2hrs. UGH!

Catherine said...

oh my tricia... i am so glad your house is okay. its is so scary! which school is emmie at???

Zakary said...

Holy hell!

I'm glad you guys are okay. That sucks for your gorgeous backyard. Kenny will have it back to perfection in no time!

Tricia said...

Too bad we have been so busy getting trees off of houses that Kenny hasn't even looked at our fence yet! What's that saying about the shoemakers' kids???

Anonymous said...

i am so glad to hear that everyone is ok, glad no major damage was done.

Allie said...

Oh, your beautiful backyard, that is so sad, but I know, it's good that no one is hurt and since Kenny has a landscaping company, that is easily replacable. Glad to hear the house was fine though, well, you didn't say that but I'm assuming.

Tricia said...

Rach, we went by your house, too. A couple of branches down, but nothing major! I think Kenny talked to John about it.