Clean-up

The Sunday immediately following hurricane Ike we went around the ward and their neighbors to clean up fallen trees. I did the same the following weekend.

Useful items for tree cleanup
Gas powered chainsaw, with supplies (gas, oil, chain, fuel line)
Machete
Hatchet
Tow rope (for directing trees)
Good gloves
Good boots
Mosquito repellant
Sunscreen


One of my coworkers fiancee has a house down in Galveston, and one of the work crews was down there cleaning and helped them out, this is what he had to say in an email.

"God bless the Mormon people who have been coming down to Galveston to help people move out their sewage soaked belongings, and help with the demolition work. (As well as the red cross and salvation army, but they didn't bring any sledge hammers). I love your people Andrew!"

You can have wealth and fame, all I want is POWER!

Really, we had it very good. Our home held up through the storm (unlike the included picture). We had ample food and water. We had transportation. Our cell phones worked reasonably well. Compared to the pioneers, we had it great.

But it was really uncomfortable being without power. No AC, no lights at night, no electronic gadgets... as well as the uncertainty of when we might get power back with the possibility of being without power for 2-4 weeks.

As it turned out, we were extremely fortunate and were only out of power from Friday evening of the storm until about Monday afternoon.

Our Experience with Hurricane Ike

Thanks everyone for your prayers.

We fared quite well from the storm. We are physically well, and our house has no damage that I've found yet. Our fences did take a beating and we lost a section of the back fence.

I'm grateful for the camping and emergency preparedness items that we have. We have two hand crank radios, and it was nice to have some contact, albeit one-way, with the outside world. Headlamps are great for keeping your hands available. I'm also grateful for the storm shutters that came with our house. Having ample bottled water and a backup filter that we didn't need to use. A spray bottle and battery powered fan were also great in the heat.

Things that would have been helpful.

A more powerful power inverter to keep the fridge running (use your car as a generator).

A generator

Grill with lots of charcoal (we had gas still, but it heats up the house unnecessarily)

Adapter to charge our cell phone from our hand crank items, and to have the car charger available (I found it the day after we got power).

And a special thanks to the Cox's in our ward, who opened their lovely home (with power) to us for a couple of days.

Prepping for Hurricane Ike

Well, we've got our first real hurricane headed towards us. Gustav just didn't get us worked up all that much. But Ike had a chance to be the real deal. It did have the possibility to get to Category 4. That's about where we would have decided to evacuate. As it is it should be getting here in the middle of the night. We've boarded up and stocked up so that we could hunker down.

Here's my current favorite website for checking out hurricanes (thanks, Elena).

I feel like I've had some bad luck with hurricanes. Last time they cancelled work in August on a day I was getting off anyways. This time, most people got today off, but I had to work until about 11:30 because I was post-call. Yesterday, I did get to go home for the afternoon to start boarding up the house though.

I'm not looking forward to the power going out and losing water and internet... but I'll keep bravely posting as long as I'm able. ;)

(I stole this idea from Afton, to try to encourage come commentary and feedback...)
What do you like to do on a rainy day?
What's the worst catastrophe/natural disaster you've been through?