You can run but you can't hide.We live in one of the mandatory evac zones in Harris county, just about 8 miles from the Galveston bay and 2 miles from Armand Bayou. So with barely 5 hours notice we packed up and headed north to Conroe, Texas. Thought being 90 miles inland would be enough.
Nope.
We set up shop in a Holiday Inn Express (I now view those commercials with a great deal of irony). We got past the bulk of the storm okay, even slept through most of it during the wee hours of Saturday.
Then the power failed at 6:30 am.
After 24 hours with no light, no phone, no motorcar, not a single lux... oh wait, that's another story. Anyway, Holiday Inn Express (es) are little boxes with no opening windows, and the emergency lights in the hallway failed after 2 hours. When the cell phones went out at 4:00 pm, we were cut off from the world completely. We managed to get through to some dear friends in Colorado who went on a search mission for us and found a room for one night at the Hyatt Regency Houston. Yep, HOUSTON. We drove 4 hours for a Holiday Inn and we could have stayed in downtown Houston and not risked death by hyperthermia.
Since we couldn't stay more than one night (Hyatt was a command post for Centerpoint Energy and Houston Police), we were still in a pickle. Then, around 4:00 pm Sunday, we got through to our house and got the answering machine (we left one circuit active to run the burglar alarm). Hooray!
We're back home now, with just a bit of roof damage. Spent 30 minutes cleaning the fridge and then settled down. Even had cable! (Uverse from ATT runs TVIP over the phone lines). We are thankful for all the prayers of everybody, and hopeful that the rest of Galveston and parts north will recover soon. We lived and worked in Galveston county for many years, and know many of the places that are now just debris and sand.
When we got home, the flag in front of our house was still standing. Pretty beat up, but still there. Pic at the top of the blog says it all.
Kelvin
P.S. Soon after taking the pic, I could hear Marine One flying overhead on the way to Galveston.
