On the heels of Hurricane Katrina, we had Hurricane Rita. Rita dominated the news all week, especially when on September 21, 2005, news was brought that Rita had strengthened from a category 2 hurricane to a category 5 in a period of 14 hours! Rita weakened somewhat after that. Winds were up to 175+ miles per hour, but eventually drifted down to the 125 mph range before making landfall.
Just as baffleing to forecasters was trying to track where Rita was going to make landfall. It seemed that Rita was going to land about halfway between Galveston and Corpus Cristi Texas, about 100 miles southwest from Houston. Indeed in midweek, I emailed some foreign coworkers telling them this. Then Rita changed course heading northward. Then it appeared that Rita would land somewhere near Beaumont Texas. Rita then looked to land somewhere between Beaumont, the nearest large city in Texas to the Louisana border and the border itself.
Part of this epistle has been a recording of the wild and whooly adventures I (and everyone else in harm's way) have had this week in the wake of this storm. I made the decision early Tuesday morning to hunker down and ride it out. I picked up the phone and ordered a generator from a nearby Bering's hardware store. On Wednesday, the company I work for, VLICA (the Very Large Industrial Corporation of America) said that offices would be closed Friday. Many people left very early Wednesday. I left at 3:00pm with the idea of looking for gasoline. I discovered that my Honda CRX had only two gallons of gas left and I was scheduled to shutdown the computers that my group is responsible for on Thursday. I looked at 8 different gas stations around my area of Houston, but found that six were out of gas and 2 only had diesel gasoline to sell.
So I headed over to a nearby Home Depot Wednesday night to pick up plywood for one window I was afraid of getting hit and some more in the event that my glass windows shatter. My condo is on the second floor of a courtyard complex, so of the 4 windows I have, 2 are places that are very awkward and difficult to work on. I bought some tools, concrete grabbing nails, some masonry and concrete drill bits, a ladder which turned out to be about 18 inches too short to reach my windows (my complex has a long ladder which works, so I will be returning the ladder I purchased. I also purchased an electrical saw, but found out that a neighbor has one so I might be turning this one back in also). One thing that I didn't buy which I should have was a power cord electric drill. My boss at VLICA gave me an electric drill which is chargeable. It turned out that it had enough charge in it to screw in four screws as I had to drill through both plywood and the masonry of the brick which my complex it made of. A comedy of errors, but I hope the joke doesn't turn on me!
Thursday was an absolutely exhausting day for me and one I will long remember. I had to get some gasoline from somewhere, go to work to shutdown over 1,000 computers, come home to get some clothes washed which had not in a week, get some more food and supplies, then try to get some work done putting up plywood and other barriers to winds and rain in the event of glass shattering. I was nearly sleepless on Wednesday night, sweating over whether I would get to a gas station which had refilled over night. I finally got out at 5:20am Thursday morning to get some gas.
My first thought was trying to guess which was the most likely gas station which would have refilled overnight. My inclination was to go with a Chevron station located at Hillcroft and Westheimer, a big station with something like 16 pumps. I went there and found that the entire gas station was filled with customers pumping their vehicles with gas. Not only that but there were two lines to get into the station with about 20 vehicles in each line! This is what you get when you don't allow sellers to "price gouge" - shortages, lines, and overconsumption. So I got to the back of the line and waited it out. I finally got to a pump and started pumping not the Honda, but the 20 gasoline tanks which I had purchased at a WalMart several days before in anticipation of getting the generator. Now how many people do you know have you seen do that! Then I pumped up the Honda. I pumped 32 gallons - 7 into the Honda and 25 into gas cannisters. My gasoline bill ran to $98. Pretty cheap under such duress! In the event of power failure, I believe I would have enough fuel to last perhaps 4 days, unless people start hitting me up for gas (I told some coworkers and friends I have a stockpile).
After I got home, I had to figure out where to store all of this gas. I laid the plastic gasoline containers out on my porch and kept them covered by the plywood so that the sun would not be right on them. My fears that the gas would perhaps explode turned out to be not worth worrying about. This afternoon, I cleared my porch and decided to put my gas containers in my car. After watching my downstairs neighbor start smoking cigarettes outside her front door, I put up signs inside my windows warning people not to smoke or light anything near my car.
So after I made my 5:20am Thursday morning $98 gasoline raid, I went over to Bering's hardware to pick up my shiny new Coleman portable generator. There is no return on this generator in the event that power does not go out. I bought it - I keep it, but that was my intention anyway. I got to Bering's, which normally has perhaps 20 - 40 customers inside at anytime, only to find that the front and back parking lots were filled to the rafters! I saw that there was a line of about 150 people waiting to get into the store! I panicked! How long would it take to get my generator? Would I have to wait at the back of that line?
My fears once again were groundless. Since I had ordered a generator on Tuesday, there was a pickup area for preorders. That task aside, I then faced the daunting task of getting a 130 lb. 2 ft. x 2ft generator up to the second floor with no help. None of my neighbors were about. I had had to do with a pair of 4x8 plywood boards the night before after driving home from Home Depot. So much for the joys of being a bachelor...
After a struggle, I got the generator up the stairwell and then took off for work (VLICA) to turn off all those computers. A coworker of mine was helping with this remotely, but it ended up taking about 3 hours to finish the procedure, as there were many systems that had to be turned off. I need to revisit some automation issues later on.
And so it was. After getting home from VLICA, I raced over to a nearby laundrymat with my piles of dirty clothes. There were 3 customers in the place, while normally there are at least 10 - 20. It seemed so surreal. It was very very warm out for late September. I think it was 99 degrees out today, completing what is sure to be the warmest September I have ever lived through in this hot swamp of a city.
After heading home with my newly washed clothes. I picked up some motor oil for the generator at a nearby gas station. The attendant was a nice man, a foreigner - perhaps Greek in origin, who talked with me a bit about what was happening. He had no gasoline to sell, as was now common throughout the city. He did show me his main preparation for Hurricane Rita - a loaded 38 caliber pistol with a box of shells. I told him good luck and went on over to Home Depot for one last trip. I picked up some 4x8 rain resistant drywall pieces (no more plywood of that size, again thanks to price gouging not being allowed), as well as some of their last 2x4 plywood. I figured that if I could not reach or effectively work on the windows from the outside, I could bar them from the inside of the condo. As for the drywall, I planned on simply putting them up against the frames of windows on the inside of the unit as mere barriers to wind and rain in the event that somehow the windows were broken. They would be backed up by weights from my weight set, some left over plywood, my heaviest furniture, and anything else I thought might do some good with dealing with what I felt would be anything from 40 - 100 mph winds. It would have been absolutely ridiculous to try putting these boards up as barriers, as they would not handle much of what a hurricane or storm would throw at them. Instead I thought I might get broken windows, but maybe the worst of the wind and rain would be kept out until things blew over. Work done, I went home and hauled up all of my acquired wood and drywall. I then folded my clothes and collapsed.
I awoke Friday morning about 9:00am. I decided to make one last stab at trying to see if I could cover the windows from the outside. I gave up after about 30 minutes, as it was too hard to try working on windows on the second floor. Quite frankly I hardly got anything accomplished. There also was the issue that it would be likely that the storm would start causing winds to pick up by late afternoon or early evening. I chatted with neighbors, most of whom had the opinion that the enclosed area of our compound would be enough to keep the worst of the wind contained. We were aware that trees inside the enclosed courtyard would probably blow about, but that it would not be enough to cause serious concern. One man said that the hurricane was going to hit Beaumont anyway and that we didn't need to worry too much. Nonetheless you never quite know when it comes to hurricanes.
I decided to try to calm down by the late morning and think things over one last time. I settled on a strategy of boarding up the windows to my study room from the inside since there was a small sycamore tree just 4 or so feet away from the window. This tree sometimes had tapped on my study window before, so I really wanted to do something with that window. I ended up boarding it up with three 2x4 plywood boards. I decided to leave a similar sized window in the living room unbuttressed, as it was some distance from the trees in the courtyard. That left trying to put up the drywall boards and stuff behind them. I had thought of the idea of trying to make a proper frame for my 78" x 96" glass window that looks out over my balcony and into the courtyard, but the framework is all brick. I briefly experimented with drilling holes in the masonry with a masonry drill bit, but it made for rough going. I then gave up and decided to simply put up the drywall and put heavy items behind the drywall boards.
And so I was set. I decided to take a walk down the street at 4:00-5:00pm in order to take pictures of the bizarre world that Houston had become in advance of the hurricane. Media images had already been seared into the public imagination involving the evacuation. Something like 2.5 million people were trying to get out by car, with stories of the interstates becoming on the fly toilets as people found themselves needing to go to the bathroom while stuck on the freeways. Traffic was supposed to be moving at something like 2 mph. Meanwhile the wind was already beginning to pick up although the storm was still something like 125 miles away and 10 hours away from landfall.
I crossed Westheimer to find sights I thought I would never see. I took photos of a nearly empty Westheimer at 4:00pm on a Friday afternoon. Businesses were solidly boarded up with 4x8 plywood. I went across the street and ran into a man who pointed towards another disheveled man who happened to be sitting against the wall of a boarded up convenience store. He said that the man was homeless. He had given him $5, but the money was temporarily useless since every food establishment on Westheimer was closed. He pleaded with me that he hadn't eaten in two days and that he had no idea where he would be riding the storm out at. I told the man that I would go back to my condo, get some food and bring it to him. I would not put this man up at my condo. I went back to my condo and grabbed six slices of bread (ice, bread, bottled water, and size D batteries were becoming well nigh impossible to find), some sandwich meat, cheese, half a jar of peaches, and a 2 gallon jug of water. I went back and gave the food to the man along with another $5. I also took his photo for posterity. I never found out what happened to him, but I imagined that he was probably going to stay under an open car port of a nearby auto repair shop garage.
I went back to the condo. One young man asked if I wanted some tape with which to use on my windows. I accepted. I taped my balcony windows, then stacked the mass of heavy items and drywall board back up against the frame of the balcony windows. With that done it was time to wait out the storm.
My neighbor below me, a Polish - German woman proably aged 60 or so, desperately wanted me to go out and find some medicine for her face. She has a huge black blotch across the left side of her face which she claims was from a spider bite. Not only is it a facial blemish, but she says it itches all the time. She moans and moans about her plight endlessly, recalling in my own mind the old saw that the main things that women want in this world are something to care about and that they would prefer that someone would care about them. She seems to regard me as some kind of angelic nice boy with whom she wants to play with - Yeech!
I went out and found only one convenience store open. HEB, Randalls, Home Depot, all had closed by 5:00pm Friday. The convenience store had no cortisone type medicines which would help her face, so I gave her the last of some of my own medicine and told her good luck.
I spent much of that Friday evening in my study. It felt safe with the window boarded up from the inside. I felt like I had created my own fortress. I heard the wind grow steadily in strength and that it would tap on the windows of my study. I wrote emails and items on my website. At 5:40pm Friday evening, I saw a small hornet or some wasp get into a tiny nest just outside the window of the study. Clearly non-human natural life had detected that something was coming.
Nightfall occurred around 7:45pm and that is when the excitement started. By 10:00pm, the wind was clearly gusting up to at least 50 - 60 mph. Strangely, there was little rain. It was mostly wind. I had been glued to the Houston Chronicle's webpage which had been tracking Rita since Tuesday. They had updates every two hours and it was by now clear that the Texas / Louisiana border was the final target. However, one last jolt of a movement occurred around 12:00am midnight Saturday morning where the storm suddenly moved straight westward. If it had continued that way, then it would have headed straight back towards Houston - Galveston! I nervously watched and waited until about 2:30am, when I decided it was time to hang it up. The storm was here. The winds had been uncomfortable to watch, but even though I was a nervous wreck I had a feeling that we were going to come out okay. I decided to lay down in a large closet in my main bedroom. The noise from the storm made it difficult to sleep and even if the chances of something happening were not great, I still had no desire to wake up to the sound of flying glass in my face.
At 3:40am, I awoke once again from my nervous slumber. It felt warm and still in the condo. I had taken my wallet, a flash light, and keys and had set them beside me. I grabbed the flash light and pointed it towards my alarm clock. It was pitch black - yep, we have lost power. I took a look around the rest of the condo. Nothing was shining, but the time on my battery powered LCD on the VCR showed 3:22am. I knew that was the time we had lost power. It was a good thing I had picked up that generator. I stayed up for a short time after that, but then drifted off to sleep again.
And so it was. I awoke at about 8:45am Saturday to a still somewhat dark and windy morning. I checked the status of the refrigerator. The fridge was holding up well and that boded well as I thought I would be laying back down again before firing up the generator. I saw one of my neighbors, an older guy named Eric, walking out towards the street. Curious to see about the damage, I went out also. When I got to the courtyard, I saw that some small branches had fallen, a few potted plants had been blown over, but nothing to suggest why we were without power. I went out to the front of the complex and the street. There I saw that Eric and some others had already been busy picking up tree branches and debris. I walked down the street to find that a group of people had gathered at the entrance of a complex about 100 yards away. When I got there, I found that there was a Houston Police Department auto parked at the spot where a large tree branch had fallen on a power line. Bingo - that is why we had no power.
I took my late morning nap, then started the process of firing up the generator. I got it up and running at 12:15pm and put my refrigerator, TV, VCR / DVD player, 2 computers, 3 fans, my small stereo, and two lamps on it. At times I took one or more of these appliances off of it. I ended up running the generator a total of 15 hours, consuming about 5 gallons of gasoline. The generator was a 6,250 watt Coleman model, but it proved to be noisy. Running it was much like running a lawnmower for hours on end. Nobody seemed to mind, indeed I was asked to run a neighbors' refrigerator for a few hours and another asked me to recharge her laptop since her family had no other entertainment other than watching videos on the computer. They offered me a plate of roast beef, rice and beans in return. I ran the generator out on my balcony and the noise echoed through the courtyard. I ran power connections through my second window in my living area, making sure to keep the open window area as small as possible to keep out the carbon monoxide. I put old newspaper in the window crack to help with this.
In the meantime, I wrote emails to coworkers and an old school friend of mine. In all, it felt good to be still up and running. The wind finally began to die down around 1:00pm in the afternoon. The day remained extremely warm, as the temperature for the entire month of September had remained well into the 90's, breaking records for heat. I spent the day trying to do minor cleaning up as I had broken a beautiful shelf in the living room that the old owner had put into place.
Evening came. A fair number of people had left the complex after it became clear that power was not going to be restored on Saturday. Three HPD officers sat parked by the downed power line collecting pensions. Two of my neighbors began to complain about the power being out. From watching CNN and other news outlets, I knew that hundreds of thousands of people in Houston were without power. It was obviously worse in Beaumont, Port Arthur, and in Cameron Parish, western Louisiana. I saw a home video on CNN shot by a man whose house was swamped by at least 5 feet of water. He filmed the water roaring into his house until it threatened to drown the family. He then took his shotgun and fired three shells into the ceiling and roof, then told his family to crawl through the hole and climb out onto the roof where they would later be rescued by helicopters. Glass shards from broken windows of the Chase Tower were reported in downtown Houston.
I had decided to shutdown the generator at 10:15pm - 10:30pm and put up with the humidity like everyone else. It was pitch dark that night. A neighbor knocked on my door circa 11:30pm wanting to chat. We talked about the day's events for about 1 - 2 hours before I retired. The humidity was tough to put up with and there were several times I had thought of turning on that dammed generator and saying to hell with everyone else in the complex, but I thought that it would just be for one or two nights. I would turn it back on in the morning and at least get relief from the daytime heat.
Sunday morning, September 25, 2005 I awoke around 9:00am. The day was sunny out as I fired up the generator again. I walked outside to find that a Reliant Energy crew had showed up early in the morning and was working on the downed power line. An elderly man said it would be up by 10:00am. 10:00am passed and still no power. Meanwhile I had filled up the gas tank on the generator to near its 5 gallon limit. Finally the power came back on around 12:35pm, but we still didn't have true air conditioning because we have a chilled water air conditioning system and that system was still down. I turned off the generator, a move which in hindsight I should not have done. I should have burned off all of the gas in the tank. The chillled water came back on circa 8:00pm.
There were emails sent out from VLICA management saying that it wasn't necessary to come in on Monday. That left Tuesday for when we would be faced with having to get our systems back up.
Part II tomorrrow...