Ike's leftovers slam into Cincinnati - my story

[therock1811]

This is my firsthand account of the last day and a half, during and after Hurricane Ike's remnants slammed us. Winds peaked here at 53, gusting to 75.

I woke up at 2pm to power already beginning to flicker. The winds were 30 miles per hour and quickly picking up. At this point, I got out of bed, which my bed is an air mattress that runs off the outlet near my bed, and got dressed. I went to the living room where power was still flickering (keeping my family from watching the Cincinnati Bengals game, but that's another story).

Now my best friend from my high school days had just had a baby late Saturday evening. I had promised to be at the hospital first thing after I woke up. By this time, winds had picked up to 35 gusting to 50. I still went ahead with my trip, knowing that there was as good a chance as not that I would not be home anytime soon once I got out there.

I proceeded east on State Highway 18. Winds were so strong as to push my wheelchair along down the street and keep me moving so that I reached the hospital in short order. I called my parents back home and thats when our power here went out. It would be out for the next 9 and a half hours.

After visiting with Krista and her baby, I decided to try and make the return trip. That was hell. I made it about halfway on my own, and at that point had to have someone drive me the rest of the way because I was getting nowhere walking into the wind.

When the car I was riding in pulled into my home street...it was almost unrecognizable.Tree limbs were still flying...power lines down at the end of the street, entire trees snapped above ground. I got home, then me and my parents went to Newport, KY for the evening. Well...when we got out of the comedy show we'd gone to see, we decided to try and get something to eat at LaRosa's in Newport. That didn't happen...Newport had been hit hard too, everything south of 10th street in that town was without power, nothing was open. Parts of Covington, Crestview Hills, and Erlanger, KY all had power but others did not. As I said, we had no power at my home from 3pm Sunday to 1:30pm this past day. 555,000+ people in our area still haven't got power. I'll post pictures later today.

[Dave]

Hello, I'm over in Milan Indiana, across the river from you and we are still cleaning up, getting electric restored, and trying to get our lives back to at least 50% normal again as of today. Peak wind gust here at my house was 84 mph which happened right before my tower fell taking down all my weather & antenna systems.

Anyway, here are some local links for help, welfare, and other information for the tri state area of OH, IN, & KY in case there are others from our area here on Storm2K who are looking for info. These are all current as of this morning, Wednesday, Sept 17 2008:

Survival Guide from WLWT

http://www.wlwt.com/weather/17480959/detail.html

Debris Removal

http://www.wlwt.com/weather/17481185/detail.html

Active Shelter List - Cincinnati OH Area

http://www.wlwt.com/weather/17481658/detail.html

Southeast Indiana:

Ripley County

http://www.wrbiradio.com/localnews.asp

Dearborn, Ohio & Switzerland Counties

http://www.eaglecountryonline.com/news.html

Duke Energy Power Outage Information

http://www.duke-energy.com/indiana/outages/current.asp

Southeastern Indiana REMC

http://www.seiremc.com/

And I'm sure there are many other links that I'm missing but at least the situtation is starting to look better around here this morning. We have power & phone again, tower is back in the air and communications are back in operation as of last night.

I personally want to wish everyone in the affected areas in the gulf states the best and hope for a full recovery for them also. You'all are the ones that took the worst damage and we are learning from you on how to handle the aftermath of what an inland tropical storm can do. I thank you all for it and I thank everyone here on S2K for the help as well.

Dave - ai9d