Photo a day from Texas: September 2008

Hurricane Ike came over south east Texas friday night.... it went straight over our house. We were in the eye of the hurricane. It was a scary experience, but we are the lucky onces.... compared to Galveston, Surfside, Kemah, Beaumont and other coastal areas, League city was lucky. Let me tell you our story........

We did not have a mandatory evacuation, which made it harder for us to decide if we wanted to leave or stay. After changing our mind about a hundred times, we decided to stay. We had prepared for both choices, so we had all the supplies... water and nonperishable foods for at least 3 days, flashlights, batteries, a weather radio and medications and petfood for the next two weeks. We also had packed our bags, just in case we did wanted to evacuate.

After we made the choice to stay we made a confortable bed in the closet and prepared ourselves and our three cats for a long night.

Our room with no windows to get us through the storm.

In the early evening the light turned out really creepy... kind of yellow and purple. In our area it was not so clearly noticable as it was on Galveston (we saw that on television).

League city, 6:30 pm

Our appartment is on the southeast side of the building and this turned out to be a blessing. We didn't experience the really bad hurricane winds but only had the winds coming straight at us after the eye went over us. The worst of the eyewall hit us around 2 o'clock friday night after we already had lost power since 12:25. Luckily they simultanously broadcasted the information on radio and television, so we could keep listening to our little battery operated weather radio and preparing when the worst of the storm would hit us.

Early in the evening (10:45 pm), watching tv from the closet.

At one of these times my husband went inside our bedroom and laid down on the bed for a minute and could feel the bed shaking.... the winds were blowing that badly. After three o'clock the eye went over us and it went really quiet, we stayed inside because of all the warnings and waited for the rest of the storm to get over us. It took about 5 hours until most of the storm had moved north... we stayed in the closet (with our three cats, which was really warm!!) for the rest of the night. The next morning we went out to look at the damage.... and compared to what we heard on the radio, we were doing okay! Later that morning we got some bad rain showers which caused a little bit of flooding. This because of all the debris (branches and leaves) that were clogging up the sewage system... ones we got those out the water resided really quickly.

Damage after hurricane Ike in League City

I'm really feeling for friends, coworkers and all those other people who have a lot more damage... most of them have evacuated but some could not since they had to work as emergency personell in the hospitals. I hope they will be safe and are able to build up their lifes and homes.

When I look back at all the pictures that I have been taking since the beginning of this year... I'm getting sad that most of these landmarks are no longer there.... Galveston: Balinese Room, the pier 61, Kemah: the entertainment area with the wooden roller coaster. I'm just happy I did the POTD for so many days that I indeed have those pictures to remember these beautiful historical and entertaining places. But I think one thing I have learned from living in Texas for almost 4 years... people will get up even after this terrible disaster and will work to get this area back up in no time. I have seen personally how Texas has taken care of the Katrina evacuees and I know that this is a community that will get their lifes back because: nobody messes with Texas, not even Ike!!