dognduckhorn
500+ Posts
Just want to vent and share an experience somewhere.
I finally took off work and went down to check on my father's house in Nassau Bay (for those unfamiliar with the Houston Clear Lake area, this is a small city immediately south of the Johnson Space Center). My dad is in a nursing home, the result of a decline in health that started when he and my mother evacuated during Hurricane Rita. In his absence, both my brother and I have been tending to his affairs.
I found my Dad's house (two blocks off of Clear Lake) to be very intact. The storm surge had crossed the park to the east of his house, but stopped halfway up the street. This was better than Alicia.
T.
he real point of this post though was what I saw elsewhere. Ike had essentially nuked all the homes that faced on Clear Lake. Not brought them down, but flooded them, and at the south end of town, the wind had dismantled brick walls. In addition, in the parts of the town where old oaks had grown and stood, there was block after block of homes damaged by falling trees. I doubt that anyone living there has posted about it, because there still is no power, and frankly I don't see how they could connect the power without incurring some real fire/safety issues. I suspect that people down there have much, much more on their minds than posting on the internet.
For those familiar with the town, the worst hit were the homes around "Lake Nassau". They took it from both sides, both the lake and Clear Creek and the drainage from the north. These were nicer, upper middle class homes that will have to be demolished.
After working on his house, we took a drive around Clear Lake. Driving in Houston, once you leave the freeways, is an exercise in slow, patient progress. There is a patchwork quilt of nonfunctioning traffic lights, most hanging or blown out of the intersection, with functional lights sprinkled in between. Most of the streets have had the larger trees cut and removed and the debris pushed up on the curbs.
I can't even begin to imagine what Galveston must look like, but based on what I saw yesterday, it will be months before anyone goes for casual purposes to the Island, and years before it is built up to the proportions that existed before last week.
I finally took off work and went down to check on my father's house in Nassau Bay (for those unfamiliar with the Houston Clear Lake area, this is a small city immediately south of the Johnson Space Center). My dad is in a nursing home, the result of a decline in health that started when he and my mother evacuated during Hurricane Rita. In his absence, both my brother and I have been tending to his affairs.
I found my Dad's house (two blocks off of Clear Lake) to be very intact. The storm surge had crossed the park to the east of his house, but stopped halfway up the street. This was better than Alicia.
T.
he real point of this post though was what I saw elsewhere. Ike had essentially nuked all the homes that faced on Clear Lake. Not brought them down, but flooded them, and at the south end of town, the wind had dismantled brick walls. In addition, in the parts of the town where old oaks had grown and stood, there was block after block of homes damaged by falling trees. I doubt that anyone living there has posted about it, because there still is no power, and frankly I don't see how they could connect the power without incurring some real fire/safety issues. I suspect that people down there have much, much more on their minds than posting on the internet.
For those familiar with the town, the worst hit were the homes around "Lake Nassau". They took it from both sides, both the lake and Clear Creek and the drainage from the north. These were nicer, upper middle class homes that will have to be demolished.
After working on his house, we took a drive around Clear Lake. Driving in Houston, once you leave the freeways, is an exercise in slow, patient progress. There is a patchwork quilt of nonfunctioning traffic lights, most hanging or blown out of the intersection, with functional lights sprinkled in between. Most of the streets have had the larger trees cut and removed and the debris pushed up on the curbs.
I can't even begin to imagine what Galveston must look like, but based on what I saw yesterday, it will be months before anyone goes for casual purposes to the Island, and years before it is built up to the proportions that existed before last week.
