Aftermath of Rita

[Lucy]

Hi all,

I talked with our neighbor across the street this evening, mainly about storm related things. He knew one person who was killed aboard the bus from the nursing home as it entered Dallas during the evacuation from Houston. My sister also knew the sister of a man who was killed aboard that bus -- small world. We may know others who live there as it's only about 5 minutes from here, but we're not sure yet. The only people who came to mind had already died a year or more ago.

That wouldn't mean that anyone we know was even aboard that bus, but older friends move into those places around here all the time, and we know lots of them.

Guy across the street also said that Rita leveled totally lots of little towns in the Beaumont/Port Arthur, Tx. area near the La. border, but that they were not getting the help they need due to so much attention being paid to Katrina. One where he actually knows someone is called, Lumberton, Tx., and it is FLAT...EVERY building there.

We probably get a little more news of what's going on there here in Houston, but not as much as one might think in spite of being much closer to that site than New Orleans which is about 500 miles away.

However, I did see some footage of one of those little, leveled towns along the coast in which various town government offices and the like were using a card table out in the open for their offices. For example, one card table had a sign made out of a corragated box with roughly torn edges in front of it. The sign had scribbled on it, "City Hall." When I told my neighbor about it, he said that that's exactly what this person he knows has been telling him Lumberton is like. He said that they have no way to keep food, so they have no food until various groups just show up with food.
Can you imagine living like that?? Adds a little meaning to, "Give us THIS day our DAILY bread..." Opps, I just used the "b" word!

Oh, and he said that the people in these areas are being told that they might not have power til sometime in November, if you can imagine that! There are power companies from great distances coming into the Gulf Coast region, but I suppose that we're just running out of resources considering the extent of the damage to the power lines.

The local Fox channel here has organized an adopt a town program, and hopefully, all these little out-if-the-way places will get matched up with some helpful groups as they need sponsorship sooo badly. Anyway, if you work for or belong to any service oriented company or groups, or even if your whole community would want to sponsor a small town, I'm pretty sure they could do so through Fox26, Houston. I'm sure they have contact information on a webpage if you know how to search those things.

I heard about a small town just outside of Chicago, I think, that had the whole town bring requested items to the town square, and then four big trucks headed right down to a small town they'd somehow heard about called Pine (think Pine is in Lousiana.)

By the way, when we arrived at the hotel in Ft. Worth during our evacuation from Rita, there were all sorts of people there to help out. I saw a Salvation Army truck there, but not exactly sure whether they were the ones leaving food or not, but there was a church group doing that, and the lady from that church said that FEMA had been the organization organizing them, giving them direction as to where they were needed.

This hotel had folks from Katrina who were living there as well as new arrivals from Port Arthur who were awaiting news about their homes, and of course, those of us who'd thought we'd be hit by a Cat V down in Houston.

One thing that was interesting was the number of people traveling with either handicapped, particularly wheelchair-bound adults or children.

I really think that if we'd left even just a couple of hours later than our 10:30 AM departure on the Wed. before the storm (it came in about 3 AM on Sat. morning), that we'd have had a good chance of encountering heavy traffic plus the related problems of a larger than anticipated evacuation.

To be perfectly honest, before that early morning change of direction Rita took, when I thought that the storm would come on into this heavily populated area, I had several of those "near-tear" moments, but never broke down, not that I was trying not to. Maybe you've had those kind that kind of hit and run before the actual tears have a chance to get started?? That night (Friday night), I let the TV run quietly to keep track of it as I knew I'd not sleep anyway, and it didn't bother my mom. It was such a relief when those new coordinates were announced about maybe 3 AM. After that, I was so pooped from the tension of waiting and all that had preceded getting ready and driving on such short notice, that I just flipped the tv and lights off, and that's about all I remember until the sun came up next morning.

Now I just feel so bad for all those who are hurting. Right now, we have whole congregations and schools from La. that are transplanted and operational inside someone else's buildings here in Houston.
One school run by Kip Academy is a charter school, and the teachers and students are the same as they had in La. The teachers lost their homes as well. They are meeting in a no-longer-occupied school building.

Red Cross has acquired an empty J.C. Penney's building in a local shopping mall on the northwest side of loop 610 as they are finding it too hard to keep up the large no. of smaller shelters. It should be ready for occupancy soon. Being there should make some things a little easier on the residents as there's a food court, and other shops common to traditional shopping malls right there that they won't need anything but two feet to get to, and without exposure to the elements. There's also pretty good access to mass transit to most areas of the city from there, should they be seeking job placement or other city services.

Tonight, on the local PBS station, the attorney who has a weekly Q&A program was accompanied by a large group of attorneys from both this state and Louisiana to help field the questions from people the 2 storms had displaced here. Not only were questions being answered on tv, but also, this group of lawyers were manning the phone banks to respond to all the questions that were coming in. FEMA was even there to counsel.

One of the things that the lady from FEMA said was that if one has insurance, it's normal to be turned down until the insurance has had a chance to do what they're going to do. She said that people need to remember to file again as soon as insurance has done what they're going to do.
FEMA does what insurance hasn't covered, but that doesn't mean that they don't provide help to those with insurance.

I heard a minister of some kind who was interviewed, and he'd apparently been trained by some government agency, but it wasn't FEMA -- just missed the name when I caught his comments. This guy really knew his diaster management stuff well. For one thing, he said that they try to make sure that people in these long-term situations get healthy meals to eat instead of surviving on high carb snacks. He said that by avoiding the high sugar loads, they lessened the susceptibility of victims to succumb to infections, etc. This seems pretty obvious, but then sometimes in these types of situations, it seems the easiest types of foods to manage are the high carb snacks, right?

I think that this guy said that his group had come from Mobile, Ala. He was with others from that area who seemed to be with C.M.&A congregations, but I'm not sure that that was his group, he was just serving alongside of them in this little barren community. I'd like to hear the name of that government agency again. Most of the disaster training that I'm familiar with is Red Cross's.

Looks as though T.S., and maybe hurricane Stan is headed into the eastern coast of a fairly sparcely populated part of Mexico as a Cat. I. Then, there's that other one off of Baja on the Pacific side. Sigh!

Quickly putting myself to sleep, so will check out now.

Take care all.
Yours, Luce

[MaggieRedwings]

Morning Luce,

Thanks for keeping this in the "news" to us. Disasters sometimes just get swept away and off the headlines after a bit of time.

I think the gentleman you might have seen is with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief Organization - think that is the name. They are based out of Alabama and they are a wonderful organization and know exactly what needs to be done in an emergency. The were the first organization into New Orleans after the disaster - even before FEMA. Have seen him interviewed a couple of times.

Love, Maggie

[kate_ce1995]

Luce,

Good to hear from you! I assume this means you are back home and all is well there.

I know several engineering firms that are sending crews to the gulf coast to help with the assessing and rebuilding. I also noticed an electric crew out up here on Saturday that was a mix of folks from CVPS and Ludlow Electric. I suspect CVPS has sent crews south and was short staffed. We had some areas without power last Thursday after high winds went through, but nothing like what you folks have.

We've been thinking of you.
Katy

[tex]

Hi Luce,

Thanks for the update, and the behind-the-scenes information.

You are quite correct about the travel times on Wednesday. You were very wise to leave on Wednesday morning. Folks coming through here, who left during the afternoon on Wednesday, said it took approximately 10 to 12 hours to travel about 100 miles. Those who left late in the afternoon, (about sundown), reported driving 10 to 12 hours to move only around 50 miles.

Plus, by then, some of the service stations were out of gas, and the problem spread rapidly up the line. By Thursday evening, many service stations around here were out of gas, and we're located about 150 miles northwest of Houston.

Wayne

[Wendy]

Thanxs for the first hand reports. You always give such indepth descriptions, it really gives someone like me, having never been through anything like that, a good picture of what you went through.

When I would watch the news reports, seeing the exodus of all the vehicles, it looked just like every disaster movie ever made. It seemed surreal. But then you knew you were not watching a movie, this was not make believe. This was really happening. I can't imagine what you and everyone else were feeling during that time. And now, with the full extent of damage and loss of life.

Much love

and

Gentle hugs
Wendy

[JJ]

Thanks for sharing Luce...take care kiddo...Love, JJ

[Lucy]

Wayne, are you familiar with Hwy 36? It must run sort of north and south. As you may recall, my sis and bil were in Abilene staying with some of his family who live there. I think that Hwy 36 runs through Bellview, and that they went through there on their way back to Katy to take my bil's Mom and sister and their two kids, and then head on home from there. I know his sister's husband must've been worried as he was in NYC on business. I think they left pretty early to return home, and the west side of the city was ok'd by the mayor to return home the first day. Must've been Sunday, but we didn't leave until Tuesday morning, and still, it was fairly high volume traffic coming down Hwy 6 and 290 and the beltway, but then by the time we got to the beltway it was time for evening commute.

Nice that the toll gates weren't operational and we were waved on through to speed up things. Funny, but on the way out Wed. morning, all us Dudley Do Rights were stopping to throw coins in even though the gates were wide open. Finally, on the last one, a worker waved us through.

Heard an interesting estimate recently that may have come from FEMA. Said that the estimated cost (read to "insurance") of Rita to Harris Co. alone (not all the counties that make up Houston) was approx. 111 million bucks. Guess what 80 million bucks of it was for?

Well, your time is up. 80 of the 111 million is estimated for food in supermarkets that went to waste due to the power being out. Now that's really something considering that probably most of city wasn't even without power during what little the city apparently had.

By the way, since we were all going to be away, I had my bil turn off our power at the last minute before they left, and think we had a loss almost equal to the 80 million from our freezer alone! Ha!

Sis had thrown out lots of stuff and mopped up around the frig, but the floor took still another mopping til I could no longer notice the, er ah, scent.

Since it was so hot and sunny and we were on the dry side of the storm, we almost lost some of the new grass planted recently as well. Basically, all we had here was 5 HUGE trash cans of leaves and small twigs. Might've had bigger ones, but the tornado back in May had already removed the fragile ones, I guess.

Should be nice fallish weather by Friday morning, but Stan down in Mexico is sending us a few bands of clouds to mess things up MAYBE. Already he's going to flood the flood prone streets of Galveston from that far away. He's making 4 to 7 ft higher tides than normal even though he's gone in due west of the Yucatan. That's why the "dirty side" of these storms are such a pain!

Today I heard that we can expect two more hurricanes or at least named storms in October alone. At least we should be enjoying some nice cool weather. Next year I want to purchase a new A/C before it gets warm end of May. Anyone know which brands are best, efficiency, cooling, and price-wise?

Yours, Luce

[tex]

Hi Luce,

Hiway 36 runs through Temple, which is about 20 miles north of us. It runs sort of NW-SE. I'll bet it WAS full of traffic on Sunday.

$80,000,000.00 worth of wasted food, is a heck of a lot of wasted food, considering that was for Harris county, alone.

We didn't get a drop of rain out of Rita, either. We've got a pretty serious drough going on here, this fall.

Wayne

[annie oakley]

Hi Luce...My husband is still in the Baytown houston area hooking up generators and what ever they need. Thanks for sharing the information. I Think Rita survivors and Katrina survivors All need our prayers. Love Oma

[Lucy]

Thanks, Wayne.

Oma, I also have a first cousin who lives in Baytown, but one of my other cousins is in e-touch with him, and when he contacted me after Rita, he told me that he'd heard from him and he and his son were fine (he's a widower..sweet too, ladies!)

Since Baytown is only about an hour away or less with the big beltway we can use to get there nowadays, it's hard to imagine that their damage could be so great when we were spared (other than the freezer/fridges, that is.)

By the way, is it very difficult to hook up a typical home generator the correct way? Besides the basic stuff, we'd need one here that would run either the central air or else we'd have to purchase a window unit for the bedroom window that wouldn't show from the street (deed restrictions). We'd have to have it hooked up upon our return home from evacuating, so that probably would mean that we'd not be purchasing one until after the need was established. However, when and if we have rolling or other blackouts for other reasons, it sure would be nice to be able to save the frig contents as well as be able to keep Mom cool in at least one room of the house. If it were temporary, even a fan would help some.

By the way, just talked to a friend in Fla. the other day, and they have a fan that runs on batteries. Think she said it's really been a lifesaver while they were without power during a couple of 'canes last year. They live in the West Palm area -- a retirement community of homes. Not sure how long they went each time without a/c. Will have to ask next time.

Guess in order to run even a small window unit would take LOTS and LOTS of fuel, wouldn't it, even if it were a very small unit??

Wow, I know your hubby is staying plenty busy! There were lots of people who actually came into this area before the storm hit so that they would be immediately available to help with things like that. God bless 'em!

Speaking of that, I heard today on the news that the Houston Search and Rescue Team which went into N.O. before Katrina had rescued something like 7000 people. For one thing, they'd gone from house to house looking for folks. They have a very elite unit here, is what I've heard, so they travel alot when their services are needed elsewhere.
I'm not sure if they grew to such large no.s before or after the 2001 T.S. Allison flood, but it's nice to know they're here, just in case.

Welp, I've rambled on enough for one night.
Miss being on line enough to really get caught up lately. Hope all are well these days.

Thanks again.
Yours, Luce

[Lucy]

Oh yeah, Wayne, lots of that wasted food would come from restaurants, hospitals, etc. and this is a big dining out sort of a place.