Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Quick Note Regarding Hurricane Ike and Aftermath

This is my first opportunity to use electricity since the early hours of Saturday morning and I'll need to make this quick.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their good wishes and thoughts and let you all know how much I appreciate them. We are into our fourth day without power, have cleaned out the refrigerators (tossing a couple of hundred dollars worth of food), have cleaned up around the house as much as possible while waiting for the contractors to show up, etc. Luckily a "cold front" came through about 24 hours ago and it got down to about 58 degrees this morning, so life without air conditioning, even in Houston is not too bad. It's supposed to warm up again by Saturday, though, so we are hoping that we get power back up before that.

There are bad gasoline shortages, with lines of several hours in some cases, and in the northern suburbs FEMA has very little presence so there is no ice to be had. Of course, it's too late for anyone to save any frozen food by now anyway, so ice is not as important as it was a couple of days ago. Overall, I'd have to say that FEMA is doing a pretty poor job of getting things to the people who need them the most - those a few miles south of me in Houston and those in Galveston. The whole process seems to have taken at least 24 hours longer than it should have and Houston authorities seem very frustrated by the approach FEMA has taken.

Some grocery stores and other stores like Target and WalMart are opening and doing their best to make groceries and supplies available to the public. Bottled water is still almost impossible to find up here but most of us have running water and the water is supposdedly drinkable.

That's it for now. Again, thanks to everyone who left good wishes. I sincerely appreciate that and I'm looking forward to something close to "normality" sometime fairly soon.

15 comments:

  1. Here's hoping you're back to normal quickly. And stay safe and dry.

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  2. So glad to hear an update, Sam. We're all thinking of you and glad you're safe, despite all the inconveniences.

    Michelle
    1morechapter.com

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  3. Glad to hear from you, Sam. Hope the cleaning up is as painless as possible.

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  4. Thanks for letting us know you are okay, Sam. I hope your electricity comes on SOON!

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  5. Glad to hear you're okay. Hope the power comes back on soon and normalcy is restored!

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  6. Thank you for this reassurance in the midst of adversity, Sam.
    We are all thinking of you... wishing you the restoration of normality...
    -- Cip

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  7. Hope you are back on power before too long. Like your other blogosphere pals I am glad to hear you are OK, thinking of you and yours, and wishing you well

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  8. It's good to have you back online, even for a short time. I hope the power outages don't last much longer, and that things will start to get back to normal quickly now! Thinking of you...

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  9. Sam, I'm glad to hear you made it through. The blogosphere misses you.

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  10. Good luck. I grew up in Taiwan, and we had frequent typhoons with long power outages, so I definitely sympathize!

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  11. Thanks for the post. I'd been waiting to hear you came through it as least reasonably well.
    Pictures we saw here look really scary.

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  12. I have been following the news of Ike (what little news there is to be had) and it looks devastating. Glad you are doing alright.

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  13. Glad to hear you and yours are okay. Best wishes going out to you from California.

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  14. Happy to hear you are ok. I hope something like near normal returns soon.

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