First of all, thanks to everyone who offered updates from their own neighborhoods. I will include some of those here in this update. Find the original diary here. Thanks to Arken and everyone else who kept up the live blog for so long. I don’t think many people, including myself, were prepared for depth and breadth of destruction Hurricane Ike has wreaked across Texas and Louisiana. The list of towns that have sustained catastrophic damage seems to grow longer each day: Galveston, the Bolivar Peninsula, Gilchrest, Bridge City. Beaumont and Orange were hard hit. We are in the midst of the largest power outage in U.S. history.The chronically ill, the elderly and the disabled are struggling to stay alive. The area of North Houston and Harris County, where I teach, is still without electricity or even water in many places. Manvel, to the South, is no better off. The outlying counties remain without power or water, and the only relief apparent is that provided by faith communities. Their need is acute.
Yet, life continues as usual in many places, including the oasis of good fortune where I live. The main electrical transmission lines have been repaired, and now the crews are focusing on individual problems causing pockets of darkness across a vast swath of territory. As usual, those in rural communities will come last, and this hardship will lay atop a thousand others that distress small towns across the nation.
Many of the schools that expected to open Monday will not do so. The best source for official information of that sort continues to be the Houston Chronicle. There you can also find a map of electrical outages and the expected dates of restoration.
About those FEMA PODS during the critical first day after landfall. Saturday night the radio reported 500 trucks loaded with ice, water and MREs ready to deploy Sunday. Mayor Bill White publicly admonished FEMA to follow through on their commitments. The next day, however, only one POD was deployed that I know of. Judge Ed Emmett, barely containing his anger, said that he had 12,000 trained volunteers at ready. Governor Perry, however, had committed to man the PODS with state resources, referring mainly, I understand, to National Guard troops. I have not been able to find Harris County’s official disaster plan but I was told by a reporter that the plan calls for the state to move the supplies from FEMA’s forward positions to the PODS. Three developments prevented this plan from being carried out: 1) Texas’s National Guard is at half strength, at best, the other half being committed to foreign occupations; 2) the devastation brought to Galveston, Brazoria and Chambers Counties required the immediate attention of vast state resources to try to prevent loss of life; 3) Rick Perry is a country-club Republican of the worst sort, frequently given to Bush-level incompetence and stupidity. Perry determined that the state would not participate in the PODs. Making matters worse, Perry told FEMA that the state would not participate in the PODS but neglected to tell any local leaders, including County Judge Ed Emmett, a fellow Republican who is in charge of Harris County’s Office of Emergency Management. As soon as Mayor White and Judge Emmett got the news, they swung into action and got volunteers from the Harris County Citizens’ Corps to man the PODS. Later, Judge Emmett took over the entire logistical operation of the PODS for Harris County, and they seem to be working as well as can be expected under the circumstances.
Now for some neighborhood updates
Rice University
I talked to friends in Houston today and also talked to someone at the Rice University. They (Rice) have no electricity but are running on emergency generators. I left a message for my friend who teaches there, but the nice lady told us that the area around Rice does have safe water, but still no electricity, and might not for 2-3 weeks.
Later I received a message from my other friend who said her husband is working and teaching at Rice, which is completely open for their students, and she is volunterring at the nearby zoo which also have standby generators, but still much needs to be done by hand, not to mention all the cleanup. Their house had some braches down, but no damage to the house. But the refrigerator contents are ruined and gone, and they are having trouble getting ice, but she said clean water and full pantry is keeping them fine.
Now that is not too far from downtown, and I was surprised that they do not have electricity yet.
Just thought I share what I learned today.
Kingwood
I received a call from a local commissioner who is also a fema liason. His news is as follows:
Harris County (Houston is there) did have a conflict with fema, causing supplies to be held up and undistributed. Some news people are now allowed to do their job, including interviewing our San Jacinto county judge.
25% of SJC has power. Water is still unavailable in 2 of the 4 precincts.
Shepherd and Cleveland are not expected to have power until Oct. 5th.
3,000 crew members are working on power lines here.
Our water/food/ice supplies were originally diverted to Galveston, and local officials called Congressman Brady, St. Rep McReynolds, and got us the supplies we eventually saw. We came close to having NOTHING. Heavily populated areas (with heavy voter concentration) trumped the sparsely populated and needier counties.
SJC sent some ice to Montgomery County, who had none at the time..yesterday, I think.
Entergy supplies Liberty County from Baytown. The station in Baytown flooded, and they must go thru TXU to get approval to buy and transmit from another source.
This re-route also affects Livinston, which is out of power. Re-routing delays power for approx. a week.
Liberty (the city) flooded on the south end. Tarkington and Dayton flooded.
A nursing home in Shepherd is in need of a generator.An estimated 40% of San Jac county should be powered by tomorrow.
A friend living on Spring-Steubner reports she has power, but it is sectional. Woodlands is the same. Her office is operational, but parts of The Woodlands is dark.
South Houston Area
I live just south of the massive Shadow Creek Ranch development on the west side of Pearland, and just west of the Silverlake section of Pearland, all of which is just south of the Houston city limits on Highway 288.
We don't have gas in our area. We have had it since the storm, allegedly, although when we saw the H-E-B station open, it was only selling diesel, not gasoline.
The grocery store is manageable first thing in the morning, but lines form in the afternoon and evening. This tells me that people are going in to work (the area is home to a lot of people employed by the Medical Center - at least two in my cul-de-sac alone).
My neighborhood sustained moderate damage. There was no flooding (our drainage "lakes" did their job admirably), but there was quite a bit of roof failure on these 3 year old homes. Our builder is the recently-bankrupt (and possibly morally bankrupt) Royce Homes. Most of my roof held, but we ended up with a yard full of shingles from a house one block over. Glancing at the shingles, you can see why they failed: they were power-nailed through the middle of the shingle, instead of through the reinforced band at the top. The nails just tore through the shingle material - it's a miracle they hadn't blown off before! I think there's a lawsuit (possibly class action) here... although with Royce bankrupt, I'm not sure what recourse there is; perhaps we could go after the roofing subcontracter?
Regardless, most homes did just OK. A small number will need to be totally gutted, as rain soaked the entire interior. Others took on some rain, but the main result is ruined carpet and furniture. Mine did better: some water got in the attic, which shorted out some electricity (two walls downstairs and one room upstairs still have no power - the breakers appear fine, though) and caused a tiny bit of buckling up near one ceiling.
My back fence failed totally. Not the end of the world, since Royce owns the empty lots behind my house... and they're not building anything anytime soon.
So, we'll need electrical, drywall, roofing and fence contractors to give us quotes. Meanwhile, I can't reach anything but the answering service at my insurance company. They say I can go ahead and start work, just take pictures and keep receipts. I honestly have no idea if I'll need to spend more than my $3500 hurricane deductible, frankly.
Still, I have no real complaints - my house is comfortable and secure, I have plenty of food and enough gas to get through next week. I hope to be able to volunteer in my county over the weekend. I have it a million times better than a lot of other people.
So - that's my update...
My Democratic Precinct coordinator
I am on Holt, one block east of Newcastle. I am the Precinct Coord. that called you today! I am so glad you mentioned that. We worked hard today to reach out to our precinct. What a nice reward to get good feedback on my "home" on the web.
We'll start making organizing calls next week to set up meetings to really GOTV for Prct 182!
The fighting 182nd -- Bellaire Dems got Ellen Cohen elected, and we're gonna get a whole new Harris County government of Dems elected, too!
My street is absolutely jammed with tree debris. Huge piles line the street, and it's almost unrecognizable without it's big trees. My big oak survived, but only because it was born leaning west, into the storm's counterclockwise winds.
Manville
I know that 2 pastors from my church loaded up 2 trucks & U-hauls with food & water & drove down to Manvel. Got a message from church yesterday:
While volunteering at the State Operations Center on Tuesday, a UUMC member talked to Rev. Don Brown of Grace United Methodist Church in Manvel, Texas. Manvel is south of Houston in Brazoria County.
She described Rev. Brown as "at his wit’s end." He had an urgent need for volunteers, food and water to serve the 3,000 to 5,000 evacuees/people in need who are showing up daily at his church. She mentioned his situation at the UUMC church council Tuesday night, and our pastor subsequently contacted Rev. Brown.
This morning, 2 pastors filled their pick-up trucks and two trailers with $5,000 worth of food and water for the evacuees. At this moment, they are driving to Manvel (four hours one way) and plan to return this evening.
information about donating to cover the costs of this - deleted because this is an update diary, not a donation-seeking one They will give us a report and an update on the situation in Manvel.
So it sounds like there are places where the situation is still pretty damned dire.
Tomball
My info may be too old, from Tuesday but here goes - my aunt in Tomball got power back Tuesday evening. She's on well water, so when she got power, she got water. (She'd been prepared for being without water and still had some in reserve when the power came back.)
I have a friend in a nursing home in Kingwood. Tuesday evening the head of nursing told me they had been on emergency generators for 3 days, which only powered the emergency medical equipment including refrigerators, but Tuesday morning they got bigger generators that allowed them to turn on the A/C again - still weren't able to run anything not "necessary" like TVs or even lights for the residents. I'll be checking back with the nursing home again tonight.
Bridge City
Here's A Report From Bridge City TX
I saw a report about Bridge City on the PBS News Hour a few days ago. It appears to be mostly middle-income and working class Caucasian. The town was utterly obliterated when Ike made an unforeseen turn.
This is from a comment left on the Austin-American Statesman reader's page:
Bridge City, Texas 100% uninhabitable. My 15-yr. old son and I lived with my 78-yr. old Dad. Our home had 2 ft. of water, most I know had much more. I hear the fatalities are mounting. Where are the fema, red cross resources in this area to help evacuees? I need to relocate here and get my son in school. We have 3 sets of clothes and $60 cash. The hotel here has taken my FEMA number, but FEMA has not "approved" me yet. What a joke .....
Northwest Harris County
My in-laws live in Northwest Harris county in the Lakewood Forest subdivision. They are still without power and, as of yesterday, no water. They aren't expected to have power back until after Monday. For those of you unfamiliar with the area, Northwest Harris county is in itself a city. It's unincorporated but is completely built up with subdivisions and commercial centers.
Also, I have a friend in the Meyerland area. They, too, are still without power (as of yesterday when I spoke with her). And my husband has a co-worker who lives just on the other side of the beltway from us (at Westheimer and Gessner) still without power. I'm in west Houston just outside the beltway and have had power since Saturday night/Monday morning. Progress is being made, but there are still many people without power. The cool front that came through here Sunday helped. Unfortunately, though, temperatures are rising again.
Until next time, fare thee well.