Belisarius
Obsessed with reality. Why?
Glad to hear you and your family are alright, Greg, as well as Sheriff and the others. Sorry about your office. Have you ever considered relocating to a bunker deep underground?
Post-Ike
- Thread starter GregBurch
- Start date
tblaxland
O-F Administrator
I'm glad to hear you are OK even if your office isn't. BTW, it looks like your secrets are out:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jG1m4XT341oCKXPMIZlKffdhP9vwD935VIJ80
"Documents, marked "highly confidential," were strewn across nearly empty streets."
Hah! You are finally catching up to the rest of the world!
Quick_Nick
Passed the Turing Test
My power is back on!!! (well, at my dad's house anyways)
Our tree lost a lot of branches but nothing hit the house, so we're perfectly alright. At my mom's apartments, a couple of trees fell over that blocked sidewalks and the road, but that's been cleared. Unfortunately, our carpet and possibly (hopfully not!) some furniture got a little water damage. (the carpet should be replaced) Maybe even worse though, my mom's office got destroyed. The roof of the building fell in and destroyed much of the 3rd floor, and made the other two floors uninhabitable. They're moving into a new office, but a lot of their records may have ben destroyed. The building was several of Pasadena's major departments, so the records are very important.
Just about everyone in East Texas lost power for some amount of time. Centerpoint had 2.1mil of it's 2.2mil customers lose power. The cold front that followed the storm was VERY helpful since no one had A/C. FEMA and The Red Cross have been giving out water, ice, and food. FEMA gave out some boxes of nonperishable food like you'd find in the store, as well as some MREs. Those MREs actually turned out to be really good... just a little difficult to setup for someone with no training.
The Red Cross sent in trucks from all over the country. They stationed at an old empty parking lot in town, and sent out trucks full of food to the neighborhoods. But their food was certainly not too great. In our little boxes of food, that WERE cooked in the truck so they weren't cold or anything, we got some pear slices, green beans, and a couple of little porkchops. And for some reason, one of those two porkchops was pretty much burned to leather.
A lot of people complained about FEMA's slow response, but through my mom's 'connections' (she works for the City of Pasadena), we found that the reason for the delay was because the EOC Texas 'representative' filled out a form incorrectly. :dry:
As you may have already seen on the news, Galvaston got it bad. Even here though, boats from the marinas got washed onto land and scattered all around. A lot of houses in Galvaston got absolutely destroyed. The other day they said there were still 3000 people who wanted off the island. However, there were probably even more who wanted back on the island. They started to allow people to come onto the island for a short time just to assess the damage to their homes, but too many people wanted to check on their homes so they had to stop allowing people on at some point. Last I've heard, Galvaston has no power, water, or anything. At least we've had running water and some food and supplies. (although the water lost pressure for a day or two) For a while, this area was still almost unrecognizable. A lot of buildings got major damage, there's shingles EVERYWHERE, tree branches are around too of course, and there's VERY few traffic lights that are still intact. A number of traffic light poles got turned around at weird angles too, and aren't at 90 degree angles, but sometimes 180 or 0. I don't know what the current estimate for Texas' expenses due to Ike are at the moment, but a few days ago they were estimating over $100 billion. Maybe if they're spending that much, they wouldn't mind sending a few billion NASA's way. NASA did recieve damage anyways. One of the buildings at JSC had a damaged roof, and two of NASA's hangars at Ellington Field got damaged.
Btw, these guys provided good information while we were stuck listening to portable radio: http://www.ktrh.com/cc-common/ondemand/player.html?world=st
They should still be giving out information about the status of the area.
Our tree lost a lot of branches but nothing hit the house, so we're perfectly alright. At my mom's apartments, a couple of trees fell over that blocked sidewalks and the road, but that's been cleared. Unfortunately, our carpet and possibly (hopfully not!) some furniture got a little water damage. (the carpet should be replaced) Maybe even worse though, my mom's office got destroyed. The roof of the building fell in and destroyed much of the 3rd floor, and made the other two floors uninhabitable. They're moving into a new office, but a lot of their records may have ben destroyed. The building was several of Pasadena's major departments, so the records are very important.
Just about everyone in East Texas lost power for some amount of time. Centerpoint had 2.1mil of it's 2.2mil customers lose power. The cold front that followed the storm was VERY helpful since no one had A/C. FEMA and The Red Cross have been giving out water, ice, and food. FEMA gave out some boxes of nonperishable food like you'd find in the store, as well as some MREs. Those MREs actually turned out to be really good... just a little difficult to setup for someone with no training.
The Red Cross sent in trucks from all over the country. They stationed at an old empty parking lot in town, and sent out trucks full of food to the neighborhoods. But their food was certainly not too great. In our little boxes of food, that WERE cooked in the truck so they weren't cold or anything, we got some pear slices, green beans, and a couple of little porkchops. And for some reason, one of those two porkchops was pretty much burned to leather. A lot of people complained about FEMA's slow response, but through my mom's 'connections' (she works for the City of Pasadena), we found that the reason for the delay was because the EOC Texas 'representative' filled out a form incorrectly. :dry:
As you may have already seen on the news, Galvaston got it bad. Even here though, boats from the marinas got washed onto land and scattered all around. A lot of houses in Galvaston got absolutely destroyed. The other day they said there were still 3000 people who wanted off the island. However, there were probably even more who wanted back on the island. They started to allow people to come onto the island for a short time just to assess the damage to their homes, but too many people wanted to check on their homes so they had to stop allowing people on at some point. Last I've heard, Galvaston has no power, water, or anything. At least we've had running water and some food and supplies. (although the water lost pressure for a day or two) For a while, this area was still almost unrecognizable. A lot of buildings got major damage, there's shingles EVERYWHERE, tree branches are around too of course, and there's VERY few traffic lights that are still intact. A number of traffic light poles got turned around at weird angles too, and aren't at 90 degree angles, but sometimes 180 or 0.
I don't know what the current estimate for Texas' expenses due to Ike are at the moment, but a few days ago they were estimating over $100 billion. Maybe if they're spending that much, they wouldn't mind sending a few billion NASA's way. NASA did recieve damage anyways. One of the buildings at JSC had a damaged roof, and two of NASA's hangars at Ellington Field got damaged.Btw, these guys provided good information while we were stuck listening to portable radio: http://www.ktrh.com/cc-common/ondemand/player.html?world=st
They should still be giving out information about the status of the area.
Glad to hear you are alright Greg. I was actually in Houston on Monday the 15th. Stayed at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, apparantly one of the few places with electricity. There were actualy police outside the entrance and they told all "legitimate" guests not to leave the hotel. It felt like a lockdown and I felt like disgusting rich folk in a third world country.
Most distasteful.
Most distasteful.
GregBurch
Addon Developer
Two things in response to that, and an update on my situation.
1. Downtown Houston was extremely unsafe in the first few days after the storm, things -- including sheets of glass -- were still falling from buildings.
2. The crime statistics for the 4 days following the storm were actually lower than the same period last year, at least according to a press conference I heard on my car radio.
So maybe those policeman were doing the right thing.
I lost power again. I had to get a generator, which is finally running, allowing me minimal function in the house.
The story of the generator is quite instructive about how things have been going here. They've been in short supply. A young man from our office emailed all personnel, letting us know his wife had found some generators for sale on the far north side. He offered to buy and deliver them in his pickup truck. He delivered the gen, four 5-gallon cans full of gas and two 100-foot heavy duty power distribution cords to my house. His truck was full of generators he was distributing. I asked him when he arrived whether he'd gotten his generator running and he told me that he and his wife had power, they were delivering these generators to people that didn't have power because they felt so lucky. I offered to pay him something for his time and trouble, and he refused, only giving me the receipts to be reimbursed for the actual cost.
Pilot7893
Epik spaec mishun!
That's what I said too! Does no one here care about the very founder of this community?
thomasantony
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Yea, WHERE ARE YOU TEX???
Pilot7893
Epik spaec mishun!
Should we start arranging a funeral?
Kyle
Armchair Astronaut
Tex's alright, he posted on here a bit ago.
GregBurch
Addon Developer
Grid power came back on about an hour ago. Given that we had about 8 hours of power last week, I'm a little gun shy about trusting the grid, but I have switched my computers on again, and shut the generator down. But I'm leaving everything in a mode so it will be easy to reactivate backup power if I have to ...
Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
You need a good set of RTG's, Greg! The atom is our friend!
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Hey folks, sorry for the delayed update...
As you may already know my home was flooded, so we have a long road ahead of us to clean up the damage. We just got power back today, however I am still staying with a friend through this weekend. We have all carpet out of the house and are in the process of pulling out the sheet rock walls and insulation, scrubbing the wall studs with bleach water, then comes new sheet rock, paint, and carpet. I should hopefully be back to some what of a normal capacity once we move back in this weekend as I should have my own internet connection and PC back. It wont be too comfortable with concrete floors and dust from pulling sheet rock, but it'll have to do thanks to Ike.
As you may already know my home was flooded, so we have a long road ahead of us to clean up the damage. We just got power back today, however I am still staying with a friend through this weekend. We have all carpet out of the house and are in the process of pulling out the sheet rock walls and insulation, scrubbing the wall studs with bleach water, then comes new sheet rock, paint, and carpet. I should hopefully be back to some what of a normal capacity once we move back in this weekend as I should have my own internet connection and PC back. It wont be too comfortable with concrete floors and dust from pulling sheet rock, but it'll have to do thanks to Ike.
Andy44
owner: Oil Creek Astronautix
Good to hear you're okay, Tex. That really sucks about your house. A friend of mine went through that a couple of years ago, found his flat-screen TV floating on its back like a boat on four feet of water in his rec room. He's back on his feet, now, so you hang in there, the bad stuff will pass soon enough.
GregBurch
Addon Developer
Tex, you definitely got whacked worse than me. Makes me feel bad for whining so much about not having power all this time. Are you square with your insurance? If you have any issues with it, PM me; maybe I can help (ten years working for Lloyds taught me a few tricks).
tblaxland
O-F Administrator
Sorry to hear about your house, Tex. Good luck with the repairs.
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Thanks guys. We should be ok, we have flood insurance, just a lot of work to do.
Here's some photos around the place we stayed during the storm, this was 60 miles inland from my house:
Here are images of my home after Ike:
Here's some photos around the place we stayed during the storm, this was 60 miles inland from my house:
Here are images of my home after Ike:
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