This is an ongoing report of the aftermath of Hurricane Ike. As there's only one diary per day, I'm combining a number of days into one entry here (it's long). But it gives a sense of the progress of the recovery progress from this one person's perspective out here in Houston's Wild, Wild West(side).
Day Two
Thankfully my baby sister, Holly, lives further out in Katy. They had damage, but it's thankfully much less (thus, they have electricity!) And running water! Until you don't have them, you don't realize how much you take the essentials for granted.
Ike was a pretty tough little hurricane. Having lost power around 2:15 in the morning, I have no idea how strong it ended up being -- 110 mph sustained was the last I heard. Since then, it's been life in the dark -- literally and figuratively. Only today did I decide to drive a bit.
Not having power meant I had lots of thawing meat and fish in the freezer that I had to do something with. Normally it would be barbecue time. But this morning brought some really heavy rain, and intermittent showers throughout this early afternoon. That's not good barbecue weather, so it was time to truck my meats over to my sister's house in Katy.
The drive out was an eye opener. But damage was heavier in some of the areas just north of me. Most all of the stoplights were dangling from the lines or poles they were attached to previously -- some precariously about the height of an S.U.V's rooftop. Others were completely gone, nothing but dangling wires. Many businesses lost signs, a few lost front windows. Fence, tree and other types of debris are still in some of the busy streets even 36 hrs. after the storm -- and may be there for a while. Electricity was mostly gone, but oddly there were little pockets that still had power!
Businesses were mostly closed. What few stores were open had massive lines, and yet still didn't have the most desired items in stock: water, ice or ice chests, bread, batteries, flashlights.... There were gas stations that were open a little further out from me, and they had gas last night, but again the lines were astronomical and the crowds waiting in line were more than restive. Most gas stations that were open were only selling soft drinks and beer (and still doing a brisk business!)
The damage in my area was mostly trees, power poles and line, fences down everywhere, and some lost shingles and leaks (which I had). As it was hot and still in the house, I walked the area around my neighbohood last night -- in the dark -- and noticed it was pretty consistent all around. I ended up with another longtime trans friend, Karen, and her wife in the next neighborhood over. We sat around, along with two other refugees from town, one a trans student at Univ. of Houston dorms. We chatted into the early morning hours.
Earlier in the day, once everyone had finally ridden out the worst of the storm (around daybreak in my neighborhood), I took a nap until 2:30PM. Once I was up and stirring, all the neighbors and I simultaneously got out and began raking our gutter and yards, dragging limbs and branches out to the street. We had two neighbors on my street who'd been out of town for the last week, so we all pitched in on clearing out their front yards as well. It helps make it look like somebody's there (so looters don't get any ideas that the house is empty).
I love my neighborhood, our little United Nations! We've got folks from Ethiopia, Iran, Phillipines, Spain and Vietnam on my street. Black, white, brown, yellow; we're taxicab drivers, used car lot owners, Dept. of Defense, Sherriff's deputy, security guard -- and even a transgender activist! But we're a close-knit street -- family (even if not of the GLB variety).
After spending the afternoon cleaning up the street en masse, satisfied, we all retreated back into our hot, still homes -- with all the afternoon's worth of sweat, unfortunately. It'd be so nice just to have a cold shower even, but that's the downside to losing power: water treatment plants can't filter and pump out the water. The conditions bite, but we're all in this together (and have been through it all before).
At some point, once I get electricity back, I'll try to upload more video to the blog. Until whenever that happens, I'll be offline for a bit (unless I make the drive out to Katy between then).
Day Three
Kinko’s is not my favorite place to have to go to use a computer. But in a desperate pinch, it works.
It’s Monday, I should be back at work. But the Shell Westhollow campus that I work at is apparently on the same electricity grid as I am. No power, no work. We got a major break this morning – a norther! That’s unusually rare after a hurricane as we usually get the opposite: high heat and humidity with zero breeze. Couple that with no electricity, nothing cold to drink and worse – no running water adequate enough to take a shower! – and you have a recipe for extreme frustration.
So in that sense, I’m doing well.
However, electricity (as I noticed coming back from my sister’s place way out in Katy) is a fickle thing. Driving back last night, it’s an inexplicable, piecemeal quilt of little squares of electricity amongst a larger dark mass. Even the area right at the tollway, apartments that were likely mostly evacuated before the storm, has power along with the collected storefronts and convenience stores. But crossing the Upper South Brays Bayou, you slip into a sea of darkness with nothing but the occasional candle flicker in a window, or a rare house or two with generator-powered lights.
Even some of the sights are otherworldly. Riding along the Westpark Tollway, a section of it was lit up, but the lights flickered on and off individually on each side and in random patterns – seemingly in time to the music I had on the radio! At one point I spotted a high tension electric pole with two of its connectors spitting fire and sparks like a crazy sparkler, while folks drove by it like it was mundane. It was almost like I’d landed in some crazy country for Carnaval.
While in Katy, I got my first glimpse of news last night. It seems strange, but I really had no idea what was going on in the outside world. Think of wilderness camping with no contact to the outside world. So my first glimpses of the devastation were a bit of an eye-opener. I know we got hit here with well over hurricane-force winds, but it doesn’t compare to the coastal areas.
Miya Shay with our local ABC affiliate was very good in peppering both Michael Chertoff and later County Commissioner Ed Emmett, with hard questions on FEMA’s response and seeming confusion. On Friday, I was struck with some of the things that should’ve been pre-strategized and foreseen that weren’t.
Now we heard the post-storm distribution of supplies such as ice, water, and emergency food were not coordinated. FEMA had pre-determined the state would deliver supplies, but the state declined or said it could not do so, passing it back to FEMA. Great storm planning once again from our vacuous closet queen, GOPers’ boy, Gov. Rick Perry. Chertoff, meanwhile, didn’t have time to do so either and instead tossed it on local authorities – County’s Ed Emmett, and Houston’s Mayor Bill White – to conduct it and get materiel and food distributed to Points Of Distribution (PODs).
It seems to me that with FEMA being part of Homeland Security, who’s head Michael Chertoff answers directly to no one but the President, who according to Dick Cheney has "unitary executive powers" (meaning he can do whatever he damn well pleases), it would seem the President – who’s family is still here in Houston – and Cherty could have gotten this done. Instead its dumped on the locals – where a bunch of it was to begin with – to get it done. Cherty, yer doing a heckuva job – you too, Bush-baby!
I’m sure somewhere Bush is probably now trying to "cover his ass" and make promises about working to get assistance down to those in need in a timely basis. In other words, YOYO – You’re On Your Own!
Meanwhile for the rest of us, even though we’re lucky, it doesn’t help our moods. Traveling anywhere is a bit testy as all stoplights are four-way stops – but some folks don’t care about good traffic etiquette. I saw one fender bender, and the damn fool who should’ve waited was the one out of his car acting like the enraged baboon. Stores aren’t much better. You don’t know which ones are open, and most of them have lines outside of them. Even Home Depot had me waiting in line just to get in. Once you’re in, you often times don’t find what you went there for – requiring a trip to somewhere else that’s open. One large grocery near this Kinko’s is open, has full power and is doing a brisk business. But there’s no ice, no water, no bread, no chips, precious few crackers, tuna and potted meats are gone (thankfully I’d stocked up on most all of those before). At least they had some pumpernickel and onion pretzels that turned out to be pretty good. Hey, it’s something besides tuna and crackers!
They did bring in a couple pallets of ice while I was there, but the pushy-grabby clambering to grab their allotted two bag limit just gave me a headache. Screw ice. I don’t need that.
Gasoline is also an iffy adventure. Some gas stations appear to be open – but only by generator. That means no gas that can be pumped – something that could be frustrating for someone thinking they’ve found gas, only to find it’s a mirage. The few stations with legitimate gas end up with lines up the block – they’re pretty conspicuous. They can also be hotbeds of temper flares (as I saw on the news at my sister’s).
One of the reasons I don’t make the trip to my sister’s more frequently, even though they have electricity, is the 30 mile roundtrip will whittle down my ¾ tank of gas much quicker. If I stick close to the house, I can last until next week when (hopefully) the electricity will be more widely restored and gas will be more widely available. When it comes to getting those precious supplies like gas or water or ice in the immediate days after the storm, it becomes too animalistic, not unlike what we see in third-world countries during post-disaster food distributions. As I saw close up when I was thirteen, frustration, heat or discomfort and desperation all create a maelstrom that breaks down civility rather quickly.
Three days without electricity gets tedious, even though it is better than 26 days without during August (Celia). The inertia, without even the benefit of vacation, is the maddening part.
For me personally, it’s another day down with no pay thanks to my job being closed, another day down while Human Rights Campaign and the other GLBT opportunists trash the trans community, exploit trans tragedies leaving us bereft of hope, and shoves us collectively even further down the food chain and into permanent poverty, another day while the RNC opportunists trash anyone who’s not devoutly neo-con, cleverly steals everything they can from the national tax base to "no-bid contract" out to themselves while they capitalize on any possible tragedy – esp. from Hurricane Ike – and portray themselves as heroic compatriots, down in the trenches in the same fight!
So all I can do is go cut down the mess in the back yard – and then get surprise attacks from yellow jackets! Twice! Yes this will be over soon enough. But in the meantime, it sure looks like a never-ending stretch of unforgiving rough road.
Damn I hate Kinko's keyboards!
Day Four
The tedium becomes overwhelming, so I'm really sinking myself into yardwork. After beginning the back yard yesterday, and getting the first two attacks from yellow jackets, I retreated. This afternoon, I got stung inside my own house! If the damn things are going to get me, then I'll take the war out to their turf -- not mine!
There isn't really much else I can do, and we're blessed with amazing cool weather -- low 80's! I can't emphasize how unusual it is to have decent weather after a hurricane! We really got fortunate.
With this weather, I shouldn't be short-tempered. But apparently frustration isn't only the product of the usual sticky heat and waiting in lines. Mine is clearly frustration borne of tedium and minor aggravations like those of the aggressive insect variety. Again today, I get two more stings -- one in my open eyeball! At least now I know the vitreous fluid doesn't come pouring out deflating your eye! Strangely, beyond the uncontrollable eye-watering, I actually caught a little buzz. It made the colors (once the white-out stopped) very intense in that eye. Nevertheless, it's not a trip I want to repeat: it's painful.
During the day, there's more activity in sound: frequent sirens from groups of either fire or paramedics vehicles (unsure which). One that was in my vicinity was clearly a fire, due to the black smoke, and brought both fire vehicles and even a chopper. It's noise! Maybe not the welcome kind, but it breaks the eerie silence that hovers in those immediate days after hurricanes.
Beyond that, the persistent uncertainty gnaws at you. I catch a little news on the car radio in spurts, but nothing personally useful. It would seem easy to drive to Katy, but a 30 mile roundtrip takes gas, and gas is still a long wait, to say nothing of people's temperament at the pumps. Staying in Katy is a different problem: leaving my home unattended and a looter's draw. So I stay home just to avoid that prospect. With 2/3 of a tank, I think I can wait it out. If I get down to 1/4 tank, I'll just drive out to Columbus an hour west. They'll have gas without the hassles.
This evening I drove to the Home Depot near my home to get wasp spray, and apparently they close early. Wasted trip, wasted gas, just another of those little cumulative frustrations of life in indefinite uncertainty.
Another is the frustration of intermittent cell phone signals. I've been very happy to have cell phone service (thankfully I had the presence to know I'd need a car charger at some point). That said, I've had a number or partial conversations with friends, unless it's under ten minutes or so. Trying to call back is usually fruitless – there's no available signal. Looking forward to another boring night in the dark, the only thing you can do to break the boredom besides walking around the darkened neighborhood is get on the phone with someone. But after a few minutes, getting cut off abruptly is no fun.
I'd noticed today the cell phone signal seemed to be more consistent, so I started making a couple calls. After the last one cut off, to my surprise I was able to get a signal about two minutes later -- a hopeful sign! During my last call, I nearly got heart palpitations as I saw a bright blue flash of light in back of me (I thought lightning!). Then a sound ... and TV! My electricity came on! Hallelujah! Four days was long enough!
Finally I started seeing some of the images of the devastation on Bolivar Peninsula (across the pass from Galveston Island). It's wiped out. A friend of mine, Jackie bought an older beach house in Crystal Beach back in 2000 (one that's only about 4 feet off of ground level) and had mentioned at the time that she was going to sell her condo in Houston and move out there permanently. I have no idea if she did so.
But knowing Crystal Beach was ground zero for Ike's storm surge, and now seeing the town -- save for the lighthouse and the water tower -- has been virtually wiped clean off the map, I worry that she may have stayed. She's obviously transgendered (not a good mix in a shelter), and has her poodle. It strikes me that with her tough military background, she may have decided to stick it out and fight it. I'd drop her an Email, but that doesn't work well when you have no electricity.
Galveston is devastated. Bolivar's little towns are utterly destroyed. So much more damage further inland than I thought I'd see. And the flared tempers show on TV. Even the mayor is angered at FEMA, and is taking over the POD distribution. They apparently sent a truck from one of the POD sites -- against the mayor's protestations, as there were assigned police to guard -- back to the staging area at Reliant Stadium. 7AM Tuesday, the POD opened and there were no supplies. FEMA just can't seem to get it together!
Really, the county and city are the only ones who seem to have a grasp on things! Thank God for Mayor Bill White! He was great post-Katrina, and he's shining again now that we have our own unique version of it. There's been other confusions as well – communication by the mayor’s office and media that PODs were supposed to all be open until 8PM, but a few locations shutting down at 6PM.
KTRK, Channel 13, has been really digging to get the information this whole storm (kudos go out to Miya Shay, Wayne Dolcefino and Art Rascon for not being easily brushed off with fluff or vague responses). Tonight they showed President Bush who apparently visited the area today (maybe explaining all the helicopter activity I’d heard). According to reports, he disallowed any media from riding along with him, and did another fly-over, surveying damage from a helicopter. According to Melanie Lawson, the President gave a press briefing before doing his flyover survey, and gave a fluff-filled, soundbite pat on the back to Houston:
"I have been president long enough to have seen tough situations, and have seen the resilience of the people to be able to deal with the tough situations.... I know with proper help from the federal government and the state government, there will be a better tomorrow." What a feeling guy! He couldn’t buy a clue if it was given to him for free!
The electricity return is making progress, and I truly feel fortunate! I’m part of 841,000 people who’ve had power restored. That’s out of 2.26 million who lost it originally. Only 37% of us have gotten it back.
With all this communication breakdown and miscommunication, keep this in mind: the agency overseeing this is FEMA. Since Hurricane Katrina and Rita in 2005, FEMA has been wrapped up under the direct purview of Homeland Security Dept. and Michael Chertoff. Homeland Security Dept. answers to no one else, and directly reports to President George W. Bush. And as Dick Cheney has asserted numerous times, both he and the President have "unitary executive powers" – unrestricted powers to do anything they want without explanation, oversight or accountability for any of it. Houston has been hometown to Bush-daddy and Bush-mama since his junior high school days.
If Bush-baby had wanted this effort to run smoothly, he would have made it so with unfettered command. Or maybe he did exercise his authority and order Homeland Security Dept. to do so, which communicates a very different and disturbing message.... YOYO!
Finally, the came real shock of being in "Hurricane mode" this past week. The stock market tanked, badly! Trust me, there was no way for anyone in the Houston region to know! For those not in hurricane areas, this may be something you never have to live through, and so cannot relate. Since last Thursday, what media and news we've had has been commercial-free, non-stop news of the hurricane's track, the expected landfall and damage, and even this evening on TV, nothing but damage reports, POD reports, communication of needed information and press-conferences. We have zero news from the outside world! Absolutely nothing. There is no regular programming.
It wasn't until I went through this that I remembered back to my days in Corpus Christi and the same occurring there after Hurricane Allen, and Fern and Celia years before it. You become inured to focusing on locally surviving. But you forget the rest of the world goes on. The campaign stuff is infuriating and I'm worried about what's happening financially. And yet, we may as well have all been planted in Indonesia with no contact to the outside world. Without internet access, we're all clueless -- and even that's an understatement! I literally feel like Rip Van Winkle!
This is testament to how dependent we’ve now become on internet news. It’s happened gradually, but it’s had a comprehensive change on our lives – especially if you have any sociopolitical interests or activities. Now I've got new worries -- what else have I missed? Even with newfound electricity, it's going to be an unsettling night.
Day Five
A good portion of the morning was spent catching up! Catching up on outside news, catching up with friends who worried over me surviving the storm. After so long on the internet, I got a headache. So I decided to try to make my way to Home Depot and the grocery stores again. As it's Wednesday now, apparently traffic had picked up considerably. I tried three times unsuccessfully to attempt a trip and never made it out of my neighborhood. The east-west streets (Richmond and Westheimer further north) are clogged with bumper-to-bumper traffic. Even my north-south artery (two-laned Synott Rd.) was clogged with traffic back ups, which is unusual.
Instead, I spent most of my day -- as before -- out in back, clearing vegetation debris to get to the downed fence debris. The angry yellow jackets are out in force. All their paper, honey-combed nests are down, and they're already hostile. My disruption of their new attempts at temporary homes is enraging them further. This takes up a good portion of the day.
After 8PM, I finally had a successful drive out of my neighborhood!
Unfortunately, stores are still closing early -- Home Depot at 7PM, Kroger at 8PM (I just missed it!). Again, more infuriating frustration over wasted trips! Waiting in long lines don't appeal to me, but making trips for nothing compounds the problem. But in my drive around, I noticed something good. Four gas stations are now open, with power and gasoline, and there was no waiting in multi-block lines! In fact, there was lots of business, but no lines at all -- a great sign. Noticing that the prices have gone up to $3.77/gal. -- a little over 10% rise from the $3.35 I paid two days before the storm -- was not so welcomed a sight.
But it is gasoline and I didn't have to drive 75 miles each way to get it. I topped off my tank, so it wasn't a totally wasted trip. The comfort level increases just a bit.
From what I see on TV, it seems FEMA is finally getting it together. Chertoff and the county and the mayor are all working in concert, and for the most part, everyone appears to be on the same page. It's about time.
Other things on hurricane news: there are over one hundred tankers parked in a line, anchored off of the Galveston coast. All of them are waiting to come into the Port of Houston to unload, maybe even some to load. Refineries are just in the beginning stages of bringing things online again, so it may be a while for some of those loading. This would be a horrible time for another storm to hit the western Gulf of Mexico -- thank God for the current weather patterns!
Only in Texas: after Ike devastated a lot of the coastal areas in Chambers County, across Galveston Bay from Houston / Galveston, many of the pastures lost fencing (and even some cattle). As there were numerous reports of wandering cattle, some of the ranchers have begun old-fashioned cattle drives of their herd to relocate their stock. TV news showed shots of the cattle drives heading up Hwy. 124.
There's actually a few hundred people still on Bolivar Peninsula, along with the thousands in Galveston. How these Bolivar folks survived, I don't know. But they stayed, and probably for good reason. Even in this difficult time and conditions, lootings are being reported. It makes it impossible for authorities or military to convince people to leave. They'll live with the hardships, they're staying with their homes and belongings.
Crazy Shirley, a Daily Kos contributor who has a beach home in Crystal Beach sent me a video response to my previous diary entry on Kos. It was well-done, with many photos of the old, casual Crystal Beach days. It reminded me of my days living on Corpus' North Beach, and days spent out at Port A or J. P. Luby Surf Park on Padre Island. Then showed the news shots and satellite photos of Ike bearing down. Finally a few shots of the devastation post-storm. It was all done to the tune of Green Day's "Good Riddance (I Hope You Had The Time Of Your Life)." I started worrying about Jackie again, remembering our GCTC beach parties on both West Beach and at Jackie's on Crystal Beach. I worried about whatever happened to the nursing home staff and residents from Baytown and where they ended up.
I also started remembering Corpus, in those first few months post-Celia.
That was too much -- I started crying uncontrollably. You can only stay numb for so long....
Day Six
Things are finally getting back to some semblance of normalcy. More stores are open now and stocking some of their shelves. Dairy is beginning to show up, some bread. There are still empty shelves of canned goods, crackers and cleaning products. But the usual day-to-day is an osmosis that's gradually filling in all those exposed gaps.
More gas stations are opening around the Houston area: no more reports of the lines and the tempers. The media only note the newly discovered price hikes.
It was just today that I began taking stock of what's damaged here. There's the obvious roof leaks between my dining room and living room, but other odd little leaks in the living room and inexplicably in my wash room (which is under my bedroom!)
My biggest fear after losing power was losing my computer. The power surge on that initial outage made my 24-inch flat screen monitor audibly pop and flash! I scrambled in the dark and unplugged both it and the computer, but truly feared I had likely lost both of those. I also did likewise with my refrigerator. Amazingly there appears to be no problems!
However, other things didn't fare as well. My overhead fluorescent kitchen lights (which I'd left on), are out permanently. One of the sets of bulbs are brand new, so I know it can't be the light tubes. Another thing I didn't think of, my gas oven. The temperature gauge and timer runs off of an electric computer display. The gas probably works, but the computer display is fried -- nothing. Even though my ceiling fan on the back patio survived the wind and the power surges, the master bedroom ceiling fan didn't! As best as I can tell, those are the only electrical things that fried.
I'm just glad I've still got my computer, and truly dodged a bullet there!
I've got fences on two sides gone, a front gate that's trashed. My back deck oddly lost a number of boards. At daybreak, I saw one of them peel up, get caught by the wind and immediately disappear down the block somewhere. There were branches needing pruning from my trees. There were other trees' branches that had broken off and lodged in my trees! Apparently I lost screens, a loose one in my bedroom and a couple small ones in front of the house, and a cracked window on the back corner of my house. Lots of nagging little problems, but nothing major!
As FEMA is busy themselves with other priority issues, Cong. Nick Lampson (D-TX) from Tom DeLay's old district opened up a location on his own to begin the process of getting residents with damage a chance to log in and receive disaster help from the agency.
It actually brings up another issue: political campaigns. We're in the midst of key national campaign season. In gridiron terms, this is the "red zone." Yet, in the midst of this, Texas politicos have had to put campaigns on back burners. Lampson should be out campaigning hard to keep his seat. Instead, he's put it on hold and is in process of helping the region recover.
Our State Senate candidate, and likely my next State Senator, Chris Bell, has also suspended all fundraisers and campaign work for the next few weeks due to the hurricane's devastation to his senate district -- which took the brunt of Ike's impact.
President Bush, likewise, suspended the fundraisers he was to attend for Republican Party fundraisers yesterday, sending his wife Laura in his stead.
Even U.S. Senate candidate, Rick Noriega (D-TX), has been indefinitely impacted. In the midst of a tight race, as Lt. Col. in the National Guard, our State Rep. Noriega has been called back to duty and is directing recovery operations. It's not surprising – he had to go to active duty in Afghanistan in 2003. It's the downside of being a member of the Guard – you are duty-bound to serve when the call goes out. Needless to say, Sen. John Cornyn, the GOP incumbent, has no such restrictions or responsibilities.
Doubtless, Hurricane Ike is blowing holes in a number of our local political campaigns. Especially in a situation such as Noriega's it's sad, and really unfortunate timing. But another way to look at it, Noriega faithfully fulfills his obligations to the country. You can't criticize that!
Indeed, our political schedules are officially FUBAR. It brings up other issues as well: what happens to displaced residents' ability to vote? We've already heard of the caging issue in Ohio again this year, and 300,000 New Jersey residents suddenly discovering they're not registered. What would prevent local GOP authorities from sending out similar "do not forward" notices to registered voters, receiving them back, and disallowing and suspending their registrations? Galveston, Bolivar and the Golden Triangle (Beaumont, Port Arthur, Orange area) are all heavily democratic areas with largely blue collar residents. That could effectively kill a lot of very close races right now.
It's no doubt Karl Rove and his McCain campaign acolytes have already noted this and are licking their lips in anticipation. It would not surprise me at all to see a serious spike in southeast Texas voters finding sudden problems and refusals from voting.
Hurricanes don't know politics, and the local folks lose it quickly. But the carpetbagging folks on the outside looking in aren't affected by Ike. They only see opportunity for victory.