Fallen VS the Hurricane Apocalypse
Well... now that things are looking a little more on the normal side round here... well as normal as you can call a disaster area, at any rate I survived the hurricane pretty much unscathed, and with pictures. Friday afternoon it started to really look like something was closing in. The girlfriend and me went out to get our last meal at someplace before resorting to survival food. We hit up this one place that I kind of find overrated and overpriced but they were open so we ate there. The drive over there had some wicked cross winds and we decided not to take the freeways back. The drive back we saw the coops out in force. Looks like they were definitely looking to seeing people getting somewhere besides on the streets. We got home and started to get ready.
We took a walk over to the bayou and snapped off one hell of a sunset pick.
While we were walking back we saw that a tree had already snapped off and was almost blocking the entranceway in.
From there it was pretty much a waiting game. We sat around watching some movies and kicking back some drinks. Things started to get going about 11:30 or so with the first of the rain. The power kept flickering but never really dropped until about 2:00 A.M. With the lights out we decided to take a last walk out and take a look around before things got really bad. The wind and rain were up but it really did not seem like all that much. Yeah… we were wrong.
3:00
AM or so… the wind really started to get up there./ The trellises on our balcony started to come apart because the apartment people had only secured them with cable ties. Not wanting one of those coming through one of out patio doors we got out there at 3:45 in the middle of a hurricane and were reattaching them with more cable ties. The wind was fierce. The rain was cold, and the area was pitch black. I really think that was the first time I have ever seen the area with no lights anywhere. It was kind of surreal.
About 6:15 I heard a dripping noise… feth. I wake up and light a candle and take a look around to find that my ceiling is sweating and dripping brownish water.
So I wake the girlfriend up and we start moving the stuff that was still in boxes from when we just moved in there at the beginning of July. Woohoo… laziness in unpacking paid off by making things easier to move. As we were moving those we noticed other spots forming. Seems like as soon as one area had its’ stuff moved another out form. By the time we got it under control, most everything had been moved into the closet and the dresser and bed were pushed up against the closet door because that was the only place where water spots weren’t forming. After that we took a look around the rest of the place and found that the light fixtures in the kitchen and master bath both had water coming through them, along with the stove vent. After setting up pots to catch this and hoping nothing else was going to start leaking because we were running perilously low on pots, we packed up and went to sleep in the living room on couches for a few hours. Later on that morning with the rain mostly over, the power out and the temperature rising we ventured out to take a look around.
The scene from my front door…
The other side…
A tree in front of some really cute Indian girl’s apartment that fell the right way…
The bayou that I was standing over the night before when I got the sunset pic…
The flooding streets, which didn’t flood anywhere near as bad as they could have…
Someone’s car…
Our swimming pool…
While walking around we were talking with some of the other residents about what had happened and comparing damage. We found out that the leasing company was pretty much not going to come out until Monday to even look at anything. So… any damage that you had, you better find a way to work around it for the next 2 days. Also while we were walking around the girlfriend found a bird that was completely waterlogged and shivering. She brought it back and stuck it in a cage for a few hours along with some water and crackers to let the thing dry off. It was fine after about four hours and flew away. I wish I could say everything else was.
We get back and found the sweating and dripping ceiling in out bedroom was now starting to bow in a little. She starts freaking out wondering what to do as I am going for a knife. I poke a hole in it and a stream starts pouring out… for 20 minutes non-stop.
A few hours later the power comes back up. We were without power for less than 13 hours, and were lucky enough to lose nothing in our fridge. The rest of the day was pretty much uneventful and passed by.
Sunday morning we got some more rain while we were asleep. We were woken by a noise. I thought the cat had knocked over a book or something like that but oh no… nothing that simple. We now had a large hole in our ceiling.
Great… maybe is the leasing company had come out yesterday and maybe thrown a tarp or something over the roof this might not have happened but oh well… it’s theirs to fix.
Cabin Fever setting in We took a walk around the neighborhood. We found out that the small Jewish specialty grocery store was open and had most everything in stock. We went back, made a quick assessment of our supplies and went back to fill in some holes before the place was stripped clean like a plague of locusts. We then went around the neighborhood and looked at some of the damage. The Sub complexes behind us which are part of the same apartments as us but broken up for management purposes had not received power yet and as of Monday night still don’t have power. We looked around there and saw some splintered trees and fallen branches.
We also found the Mexican place next to us was open and doing take out only. Yay… a reprieve from canned meat. I don’t quite like the place but it is better than spam.
Monday came around and the hole got bigger.
Monday I had to go back to work. My office has had the carpet ripped up and the place smells from the sewers backing up on a few floors. They are working feverishly though to get the place usable because the wheels of justice must turn. The rest of the city is slowly crawling back out from its hole. Galveston, the island down below us is damned near destroyed. The place is a mess on a New Orleans scale. Houston is still on a curfew. The mass transit system, which I rely on, is all kinds of fethed right now. Power
Is still out for a lot of people and in some areas they are talking days and maybe weeks to get it back. Things are bad here but they could have been a lot worse. I am kind of bitching about my ceiling but I can at least be thankful that I have a ceiling and power right now.
On a related note... they canceled the Ard Boyz that was going to happen at
GW rice village since the store got water in it. They are looking at rescheduling it though more than likely now it will be on a day I wont be able to make it on sicne they seem to always schedule nearly everything that I might be interested on days I am at work.
