I’m back. It’s been an interesting few days.
Power went off about 6AM Saturday. Oddly although I was sleeping peacefully through the height of the storm, the lights going dark woke me up. I put on the radio and watched the wind howl through the trees as daylight came up. It rained and rained and rained, and then it rained some more, and then a bit more after that. In case I’m not being clear, there was quite a lot of rain.
Here in the Woodlands, the main damage was (go figure) from falling trees, athough numerous properties in a development a few blcks away flooded out. There are numerous places where I could see power poles snapped off or wires torn down by falling trees, so I’m a bit surprised I have power again already. Overall I got off absurdly light, no physical damage at all, just lots of small branches covering my deck, and never lost water or gas. Only took an hour or so to clean up, so I spent some time helping drag vegetation off some of the neighbors’ property, and cleaning up the street.
Sunday, turned out we had about a dozen employees stranded at a hotel near IAH without power or water. I went over and the place was looking pretty squalid, so I managed to find some rooms in Dallas and led them up there in a little three-car convoy. There was no sign of electric power until Huntsville, and no chance to buy fuel until Buffalo, about a hundred miles north. Coming back the next morning, I took a cue from others I’d seen heading south and bought a few jerry cans, filled them with fuel and lashed them to the roof, imparting a rather jaunty ‘Mad Max’ aspect to my little Subaru. Got back here yesterday just before cerfew and have been hanging out ever since. Although power is still out at our offices, looks like we’ll have an auxiliary generator going by tomorrow so I guess I’ll have to go back to work, dammit.
Glad to see everyone made it through without too much hassle. See ya in the next gas line.
