Hurricane Ike: A Firshand Perspective

Hurricane Ike threatens and the small town of Woodville, Texas prepares for impact. We left our house and evacuated to our church. About 7:00 p.m. on Saturday the wind started picking up. We called our family in La Porte, TX and made contact with them to find out their plans.They intended to stay there and ride out the storm. They put tin and boards over their windows and filled up their cars and gas cans. The La Porte police drove by and told them to mark their arms with their social security numbers to ease in identifying them later.

Around midnight the wind picked up and we saw the first of the rain. At first it was mild gusts but quickl picked up to 20 and 30 mile an hour gusts. When the rain started falling we went inside. Sometime around 1:00 am the eyewall crossed our family in La Porte. They checked their house and luckily their house had no major damage. They drove around town and the storm surge did not reach up to their house but it had consumed Sylvan beach and tossed both of La Porte's public pears onto the land. They returned to their house and prepared for the rest of the storm.

Around 4:00 am we checked outside and the wind was bad. The rain was coming in horizontally. And our family in La Porte was running low on cell phone power. We knew the worst of it was coming so we went to sleep for a few hours. Some time around 6:00 a.m. the winds reached their peak. I woke up with horrible stomach trouble and when I wasn't sick I was outside filming. The wind was blowing hard enough that tall pine trees were bending over to touch the ground. Oddly enough a seagull was seen being blown around; apparently a little lost due to the storm. This is around the time that a lot of trees went down around our town. We lost power and our building started flooding due to all the rain.

At 4:00 that afternoon the wind had died down enough to allow us to drive around. We each checked our houses and luckily all were unscathed. On my street two neighbors did not fair so well, they had trees in their houses. Some of the more obvious damage in Woodville included two of our gas stations that got hit pretty hard. In a town that only has 7 gas stations and an army of evacuees going back and forth, this could be a big blow. After the storm we have attempted to begin the rebuilding process. Within 2 days Fema has begun assistance, the national guard was here distributing ice and water. Various charity organisations have setup to help and are distributing hot meals, housing, comfort kits and various other means of assistance. Neighbors are banding together and life looks it might begin to to be normal. There where a few glitches during the initial recovery and my family in La Porte went dangerously close to running out of water and gas for their generators. At first we had only one gas station up and it ran out of fuel often due to long lines. We were under curfew for about 3 or 4 days and to ease in the the recovery our county officials prevented people from entering the county to scavenge supplies.

Luckily our utility providers were in place and we may had electricity on the 19th of September. Soon after, Colmesniel and many of the smaller towns in Tyler county had power restored. By the 22nd of September most of Tyler County has had power restored. All this good news is not without it's downsides. Things are going well in Tyler county but many southern Texas towns are not even here anymore. Gilchrist, crystal beach, and Bolivar peninsula were wiped clean of houses. Galveston, Orange, Bridge city and many other Texas towns were covered in several feet of water. Houston is a major supplier of fuel and electricity and it took a major hit from Ike. There isn't a part of Houston that wasn't damaged or affected by the storm. Most high rise buildings were missing their glass and some of the contents of their offices.

But all in all the storm could have been much worse. The storm surge was not as high as predicted, the storm itself was not as strong as the media was saying it would be. Refinery's are quickly returning to full capacity and we did not lose many oil platforms in the Gulf. (As an aside there was also NO leaks from any oil platforms in the Gulf.) And there's no reason except a lot of people were praying. God changed things so that they weren't as bad as they could have been. This storm did not kill the thousand it could have. A hurricane hit a major city and we aren't burying millions of people. I finish this in Jasper Tx, we sit in church on a Tuesday night, air conditioner running, lights on, and everyone accounted for, we have a lot to be thankfull for.