Surviving Ike

The following is an email received by my Dad from my Uncle and Aunt who live just outside of Houston. We were praying for two of our families who live in the area where the hurricane was to pass. My other Aunt and Uncle evacuated to Oklahoma and made it there safely. Praise the Lord that they are all safe!

Hi All,

The e-mail service just came alive again so I thought I'd send you all an update and says thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

We boarded up the windows yesterday, cleared away all the 'flyables" from the yard and patio, and brought Karen's folks over to ride through the storm.

We were lucky, being on the "clean" side of the storm that has lower winds. The winds in Sugar Land reportedly got up to the 75 mph range (I know, Fred, the winds in Hays get that high every month). Last night as we sat in the dark with the windows boarded up, we could hear the wind howling outside, but had no clue as to how fast it was blowing. We kept listening for noises of things crashing, like fences blowing over, but heard none. About 4 AM we could hear the winds starting to lessen, so we caught a few hours of sleep until daylight.

We had lost power about 11 PM, but it came back on about 9 AM today, just as I was getting ready to go to the garage to figure out how to hook up the portable generator. We kept our phone service, and this evening the Internet and e-mail came back to life.

The only damage we had was a lot of leaves stripped off the trees. Driving around the neighborhood this afternoon we saw a lot of uprooted and broken trees, but there was no flooding or other major wind damage. I spent today taking down plywood, putting the patio furniture back and dredging a whole bunch of leaves from the bottom of the pool.

And, around 4 PM today we phoned the Independent Living Center where Karen's folks live, and learned that their power had come back on. They wanted to go back right away, and now we're sitting down for a glass of wine to celebrate a happy ending to the Ike story.

One lesson we learned from this experience was to have everyone's phone number on paper, not on a computer. Also, we could cook on the gas stove, but we didn't have a teapot or a "manual" coffee pot. After the power came on, that first cup of coffee really tasted good.

Again, thanks for your thoughts and prayers.

Love,

Ray and Karen