ATL: IKE Discussion

[Annie Oakley]

I DID read an article here in Austin that HPD has requested help from APD......50 officers in 5 day deployments....any relevance? I mean-how heated is it with people neding help-and believe me-all of us here in Austin are wanting to help out so much.....whatever we can do to alleviate any suffering-FEMA has posted notices about hotel stay help for displaced-EVERYONE needs to register with FEMA-PLEASE spread the word. Earlier today we were notified that over 300,000 plus Texans had registered.Keep it up Texans! And pray for patience-help is on the way.....Austin State government is working extra time for you all-7 days a week and we will not stop til you are all okay

[alicia83]

Not good news at all. Do you have a link? I had actually heard that they had rescued the man and the tiger.

Haven't seen the "follow-up", but the original, which differs in some details, is at http://www.khou.com/topstories/stories/ ... 2aecc.html

Cheers

Rod

Rod, thanks that article clears a few things up. Conflicting stories had come out, and all put out by KHOU the only channel to which I've had access. I think even more confusion abounded when as it turns out, there was not only a lion, but a tiger to contend with. It's still not clear if the man in the church with the lion also owned the tiger. He collects exotic animals, and his place may have been designated a sanctuary for said animals. Just guessing the tiger is his as well.

[sittingduck]

Okay-need some help here and some good advice. Have been deployed to H-town-and it includes The Third Ward area-visiting a shelter there. Delicacy forbids me from posting other pertinant info-I guess my question is what can I expect?? I know this is too general a question....but any advice would be taken under advisement.....thanks in advance.

After Charley there was a shelter in Englewood and my company "adopted" it. We collected money from all the employees that wanted to help, the company matched it and my Canadian distributor sent us $2500. Every morning we sent a few people to the shelter to help and to find out what they needed and then we went shopping for them in Venice. I know we could have just donated the money to the Red Cross - but somehow this made it more personal and I believe it helped my employees in dealing with the stress of the situation.

What we found was that the people in the shelter were in shock. Most of them had never taken any help from someone before and they had difficulty accepting the help in the beginning. We gave lots of hugs - the seniors especially needed this. We made lots of phone calls to familes out of state. We came back with lists everyday of who to call. The thing that I believe helped the most was that the people in the shelter knew that people outside cared and were doing things to help. The number one thing that they all asked was what did their neighborhood look like (from the few who had been there from the start - mobile homes). You saw fear in their eyes. The ones that came after and knew what their home looked like had sadness in their eyes. I don't know if this helps you prepare or not - but it was what I and my employees experienced in one shelter.

[Rod Hagen]

Rod, thanks that article clears a few things up. Conflicting stories had come out, and all put out by KHOU the only channel to which I've had access. I think even more confusion abounded when as it turns out, there was not only a lion, but a tiger to contend with. It's still not clear if the man in the church with the lion also owned the tiger. He collects exotic animals, and his place may have been designated a sanctuary for said animals. Just guessing the tiger is his as well.

I must confess that when I saw the "Tiger" story I assumed that it must be the "Lion" story revisited. The cynic in me is now wondering whether the "Tiger on the loose" tail is simply an additional way of getting people to head out of / stay away from the area. But, what the heck, even if this is the case then it might not be a bad thing.

Cheers

Rod

[BocaGirl]

Okay-need some help here and some good advice. Have been deployed to H-town-and it includes The Third Ward area-visiting a shelter there. Delicacy forbids me from posting other pertinant info-I guess my question is what can I expect?? I know this is too general a question....but any advice would be taken under advisement.....thanks in advance.

Hi Annie, I've done some relief work and I volunteer as a first responder. I hope the advice I'm going to give you will help you in the following days...it's been gained from experience as both a caregiver and one in need of help.

1 .Listen, listen, listen. People who have been through a disaster need to talk it out. They don't need someone to tell them it's going to be all right, they don't need someone to tell them it wasn't so bad, they don't need someone to tell them someone else has it worse. They just need someone to listen.

2. Don't be judgemental. Now is not the time to tell a victim what you think. Or what you believe. This one sounds easy. It isn't always easy.

3. Don't promise what you can't deliver. That might mean not asking a broad question like What do you need? because if someone says a generator or $500, you might not be able to produce those items. Instead, work with what you've got.

4. If you're working in a shelter or in the field, recognize that conditions are lousy. Sometimes hot, smelly, messy. There might not be electriciy, running water, food. The people who are living there don't normally live like they are now...try not to react...see point number 2.

5. Take good care of yourself. Wash your hands often. A tiny cut can become a terrible, raging infection in unsanitary conditions. You don't want to become an Ike victim.

There's lots more that you can do, but these quick points should get you going. Also, make prayer and hugs a huge part of your volunteer kit. Use them as much as you use your soap and water.

Hope this gets you going.

Let us know you are doing.

BocaGirl
Barbara

[cancunkid]

Here is an article on the lion from Yahoo news today.

BOLIVAR PENINSULA, Texas - Many years from now, a small group of Hurricane Ike survivors will probably still be telling the story of how, on the night the storm flattened their island, they took sanctuary in a church — with a lion.


The full-grown lion was from a local zoo, and the owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.

He headed for the church and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside, where they locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged. The water crept up to their waists, and two-by-fours came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.

When daylight came, everyone was still alive.

"They worked pretty well together, actually," said the lion's owner, Michael Ray Kujawa. "When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."

Amid the destruction in places like Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston, where row upon row of houses were scoured from the landscape, seemingly impossible tales of survival have begun emerge. Whether through faith or fate, luck or resourcefulness, dozens of people who stayed behind made it out alive, and have harrowing stories to prove it.

As of Tuesday, the official death toll from Ike stood at 48. Only 17 were in Texas — and many of those were people killed by fires or generator fumes after the storm had passed. However, authorities held out the possibility that some victims were washed out to sea.

Among those who made it out alive was Kathi Norton, who put on a life jacket as the storm closed in on High Island, on the Bolivar Peninsula. She and her husband, Paul, knew the dangers of staying, and put their important documents, credit cards, money and cell phones into a plastic bag, and held on tight.

All too quickly, the floodwaters rose and the house started to break apart. Through the gaps, they saw refrigerators, lawn mowers and hot tubs floating past. The deck broke away next. Then the roof started to buckle.

"The whole floor was just opened out," he said. Norton grabbed his wife and headed for an outdoor staircase, escaping in time only because a flagpole kept the house from crashing down for a few precious seconds. "I look up, the house is coming on us," he said.

For hours, they sloshed around in 4-foot waves before finding themselves perched in a tree. They finally made their way onto someone's motor home, which then started to sink. They were able to cling to rafters of a nearby structure and hang on until daybreak.

"We had to grab that staircase and float wherever it took us," the 68-year-old retiree said.

Willis Turner decided to ride it out on his wooden boat next to his house on Crystal Beach, also on Bolivar Peninsula, but it nearly capsized and he was saved by a rope his wife tossed to him. The two held on inside a home that she said "vibrated like a guitar string."

"It was like an atomic bomb going off. Right after the eye passed, whole houses came by us at 30 miles an hour — WHOLE HOUSES! — just floating right past," Turner said. "It was unreal. Unreal."

Turner and his wife awoke the next day to an island they no longer recognized. The first four rows of houses on the beach were washed into the sea. There were no more restaurants, no more gas stations, no more grocery stores. The neighborhood was gone.

In Galveston, Charlene Warner, 52, weathered the storm with her landlord and a neighbor in the apartment above her own.

"It felt like an earthquake — the rumbling and the rocking of the building," she said, smoking outside a shelter in San Antonio. "Everyone was praying."

"It was so terrible. All I could say was, 'Lord, please don't kill me. Forgive me for what I done,'" Warner said, as a tear rolled down her cheek.

After the storm, she and neighbors waited for rescue, but no one came. The water receded, leaving a layer of muck filled with snakes. But with no water, no electricity and a shrinking supply of food, Warner decided to go for help, sliding her way across the goo a block and a half to the fire station.

Firefighters took her and neighbors to a spot where they could get on an evacuation bus. She arrived at a shelter in San Antonio with her purse stuffed full of personal documents and cigarettes, and one spare outfit that she washed and drip-dried on a railing Tuesday.

"I lost everything. What you see with me is all I have," she said. "I never seen anything like that in my life. I'll never ride out another storm."

Cheryl Stanley said she and her husband, Tom, wanted to evacuate their Galveston apartment before the hurricane hit but couldn't. Their son, Casey, has cerebral palsy, and the three live on the third floor. When they tried to leave, the elevators were turned off, and they couldn't carry Casey down the stairs.

"It was horrible," Cheryl said. "The building was shaking all night."

A few hours into the storm, Casey said he didn't feel safe in the bedroom, so they moved him to the living room. About three hours later, the ceiling in his bedroom collapsed.

"Thank God, we got Casey out of there," his mother said.

After the storm passed, paramedics carried Casey downstairs. And neighbors carried the wheelchair.

At the Baptist church on Bolivar Island where the lion spent the night, Richard Jones, a shrimper, said he wasn't afraid of the beast.

"That little old fella is just as tame as a kitten," Jones said.

After the storm passed, the lion's caretakers fed it pork roast to keep it happy.

National Guardsmen dropping off food and water lined up Tuesday in the choir loft to get a glimspe of the lion, and the soldiers jumped back when the lion looked up from it perch on the altar and snarled.

Jones said he hadn't stepped foot in a church in the 40 years he has lived on this spit of land. And he wasn't ready to call his survival divine intervention.

"I drink beer and chase women, gamble, cuss," Jones said. "You can't call that religion. I'm either too good, the devil won't have me, or I'm so bad the Good Lord won't take me. That's a good toss-up."

___

Associated Press writers Michelle Roberts in San Antonio, Tony Gutierrez on the Bolivar Peninsula, Peter Prengaman in Galveston, and Kelley Shannon in San Antonio contributed to this report.


AP

[Sanibel]

By now more people are getting portable toilets, bottled water and ice which go a LONG way in post hurricane conditions.

[Doc Seminole]

Has anyone heard if Blackwater Security is being used anywhere in Galveston or in Texas anywhere else?


Doc

[cycloneye]

The members can make comments about the Ikes aftermath at the Hurricane Recovery and Aftermath forum,where there are several threads about Ikes Aftermath.



viewforum.php?f=33

This Ike Main Thread will be moved to the Storm Archives Forum viewforum.php?f=54 later today (6:00 PM EDT) as it has been three days after the last advisory was issued.Normally,we lock the main threads of systems after the last advisory is released after 2 days and move them to the archives forum.

[Category 5]

Here is an article on the lion from Yahoo news today.

BOLIVAR PENINSULA, Texas - Many years from now, a small group of Hurricane Ike survivors will probably still be telling the story of how, on the night the storm flattened their island, they took sanctuary in a church — with a lion.


The full-grown lion was from a local zoo, and the owner was trying to drive to safety with the animal when he saw cars and trucks stranded in the rising floodwaters. He knew he and the lion were in trouble.

He headed for the church and was met by a group of residents who helped the lion wade inside, where they locked it in a sanctuary as the storm raged. The water crept up to their waists, and two-by-fours came floating through broken windows. But the lion was as calm as a kitten.

When daylight came, everyone was still alive.

"They worked pretty well together, actually," said the lion's owner, Michael Ray Kujawa. "When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."

Amid the destruction in places like Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston, where row upon row of houses were scoured from the landscape, seemingly impossible tales of survival have begun emerge. Whether through faith or fate, luck or resourcefulness, dozens of people who stayed behind made it out alive, and have harrowing stories to prove it.

As of Tuesday, the official death toll from Ike stood at 48. Only 17 were in Texas — and many of those were people killed by fires or generator fumes after the storm had passed. However, authorities held out the possibility that some victims were washed out to sea.

Among those who made it out alive was Kathi Norton, who put on a life jacket as the storm closed in on High Island, on the Bolivar Peninsula. She and her husband, Paul, knew the dangers of staying, and put their important documents, credit cards, money and cell phones into a plastic bag, and held on tight.

All too quickly, the floodwaters rose and the house started to break apart. Through the gaps, they saw refrigerators, lawn mowers and hot tubs floating past. The deck broke away next. Then the roof started to buckle.

"The whole floor was just opened out," he said. Norton grabbed his wife and headed for an outdoor staircase, escaping in time only because a flagpole kept the house from crashing down for a few precious seconds. "I look up, the house is coming on us," he said.

For hours, they sloshed around in 4-foot waves before finding themselves perched in a tree. They finally made their way onto someone's motor home, which then started to sink. They were able to cling to rafters of a nearby structure and hang on until daybreak.

"We had to grab that staircase and float wherever it took us," the 68-year-old retiree said.

Willis Turner decided to ride it out on his wooden boat next to his house on Crystal Beach, also on Bolivar Peninsula, but it nearly capsized and he was saved by a rope his wife tossed to him. The two held on inside a home that she said "vibrated like a guitar string."

"It was like an atomic bomb going off. Right after the eye passed, whole houses came by us at 30 miles an hour — WHOLE HOUSES! — just floating right past," Turner said. "It was unreal. Unreal."

Turner and his wife awoke the next day to an island they no longer recognized. The first four rows of houses on the beach were washed into the sea. There were no more restaurants, no more gas stations, no more grocery stores. The neighborhood was gone.

In Galveston, Charlene Warner, 52, weathered the storm with her landlord and a neighbor in the apartment above her own.

"It felt like an earthquake — the rumbling and the rocking of the building," she said, smoking outside a shelter in San Antonio. "Everyone was praying."

"It was so terrible. All I could say was, 'Lord, please don't kill me. Forgive me for what I done,'" Warner said, as a tear rolled down her cheek.

After the storm, she and neighbors waited for rescue, but no one came. The water receded, leaving a layer of muck filled with snakes. But with no water, no electricity and a shrinking supply of food, Warner decided to go for help, sliding her way across the goo a block and a half to the fire station.

Firefighters took her and neighbors to a spot where they could get on an evacuation bus. She arrived at a shelter in San Antonio with her purse stuffed full of personal documents and cigarettes, and one spare outfit that she washed and drip-dried on a railing Tuesday.

"I lost everything. What you see with me is all I have," she said. "I never seen anything like that in my life. I'll never ride out another storm."

Cheryl Stanley said she and her husband, Tom, wanted to evacuate their Galveston apartment before the hurricane hit but couldn't. Their son, Casey, has cerebral palsy, and the three live on the third floor. When they tried to leave, the elevators were turned off, and they couldn't carry Casey down the stairs.

"It was horrible," Cheryl said. "The building was shaking all night."

A few hours into the storm, Casey said he didn't feel safe in the bedroom, so they moved him to the living room. About three hours later, the ceiling in his bedroom collapsed.

"Thank God, we got Casey out of there," his mother said.

After the storm passed, paramedics carried Casey downstairs. And neighbors carried the wheelchair.

At the Baptist church on Bolivar Island where the lion spent the night, Richard Jones, a shrimper, said he wasn't afraid of the beast.

"That little old fella is just as tame as a kitten," Jones said.

After the storm passed, the lion's caretakers fed it pork roast to keep it happy.

National Guardsmen dropping off food and water lined up Tuesday in the choir loft to get a glimspe of the lion, and the soldiers jumped back when the lion looked up from it perch on the altar and snarled.

Jones said he hadn't stepped foot in a church in the 40 years he has lived on this spit of land. And he wasn't ready to call his survival divine intervention.

"I drink beer and chase women, gamble, cuss," Jones said. "You can't call that religion. I'm either too good, the devil won't have me, or I'm so bad the Good Lord won't take me. That's a good toss-up."

___

Associated Press writers Michelle Roberts in San Antonio, Tony Gutierrez on the Bolivar Peninsula, Peter Prengaman in Galveston, and Kelley Shannon in San Antonio contributed to this report.


AP

That is an absolutely amazing story.

[Eyewall]

Power back out in Pearland. Here are a few photos to share.

http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v338/ ... 160273.jpg

Looks like my dad's shop - The Music Factory. The inside looks like a bomb went off. He says there's no sign of the roof anywhere. It might be in someone's backyard on Melody Ln.

[pablolopez26]

All is much better here on the NW side of Houston im happy to report that electricity and my internet and cable are back online!

Comcast and Centerpoint deserve loads of credit for getting people back online so quickly!!!

[O Town]

That is an absolutely amazing story.

Yes it is. That first story said the gentleman was 68 years old!!!!!! Wow.
Glad he and his wife made it out.
I love hearing those survival stories.

[Category 5]

That is an absolutely amazing story.

Yes it is. That first story said the gentleman was 68 years old!!!!!! Wow.
Glad he and his wife made it out.
I love hearing those survival stories.

Yeah, taking cover in a church with a live lion and everyone survived.

Someone, somewhere was watching over that church that night.

[abajan]

Yeah, taking cover in a church with a live lion and everyone survived.

Someone, somewhere was watching over that church that night.

Today in our local press I saw a photo of that lioness in the church and it sure looked angry.

[Txdivermom]

But all isn't well everywhere on the NW side. I live just barely north of pablo and my electricity isn't on. We got water yesterday because our neighborhood rented a generator for its pump. YAY!!! I've almost adjusted to not having power. We have a generator for refrig, etc. and get TV and satellite. I don't even try to turn on the bathroom light anymore. Our backyard neighbors took a BIG tree to the middle of their house. Basically took off the whole entire back of the house. Our neighborhood has lots of mature trees and they didn't fare very well. Pines did better than oaks. Pines lost branches, but oaks just seemed to fall over completely. We have 2 good sized trees and a really big branch down in our yard.

All is much better here on the NW side of Houston im happy to report that electricity and my internet and cable are back online!

Comcast and Centerpoint deserve loads of credit for getting people back online so quickly!!!

[weatherrabbit_tx]

made thru the storm ok, winds est. at around 100 mph on lake conroe, power is out probably for at least 3 week, power grid took a very hard hit in montgomery county...

[Ed Mahmoud]

made thru the storm ok, winds est. at around 100 mph on lake conroe, power is out probably for at least 3 week, power grid took a very hard hit in montgomery county...

Still dark in my neighborhood, last I checked, but traffic signals at end of my subdivision have power, so I have hope. If I go two weekends w/o sports, I'll just plotz. Plus, I sent the family away to stay with relatives in Austin, and it is a little lonely. And my food in the coolers and my fridge, even with ice and blue freezer things, has gone bad. No more BBQs for me. Canned food, or restaurants.

As with Rita, where a very small part of Harris County, the part serviced by Entergy, took over a week to get power on, I suspect Conroe and the other Entergy areas will take longer. The Entergy areas are East and North of HOU proper, where the worst of Ike hit, and I'm not sure they had finished with the repairs for Gustav in Louisiana.

I have Centerpoint, so I don't think I'll be in the dark at home too much longer.

[pablolopez26]

But all isn't well everywhere on the NW side. I live just barely north of pablo and my electricity isn't on. We got water yesterday because our neighborhood rented a generator for its pump. YAY!!! I've almost adjusted to not having power. We have a generator for refrig, etc. and get TV and satellite. I don't even try to turn on the bathroom light anymore. Our backyard neighbors took a BIG tree to the middle of their house. Basically took off the whole entire back of the house. Our neighborhood has lots of mature trees and they didn't fare very well. Pines did better than oaks. Pines lost branches, but oaks just seemed to fall over completely. We have 2 good sized trees and a really big branch down in our yard.

Yeah, its weird that we have everything back online in my apartment complex and the subdivision right next door to us is powerless. I know my girlfriend who lives off of Bingle and I-10 has no power either.

[jinftl]

Update from Entergy on power restoration dates:
http://www.entergy-louisiana.com/your_home/storm_center/


These are current restoration estimates for customers who can take power. These will be updated as more is known.

Area
Date for
100 Percent Restoration

Orange, Vidor
9/21/2008

Navasota
9/22/2008

Port Arthur, Port Neches, Nederland, Groves
9/23/2008

Winnie, Anahuac
9/25/2008

Dayton, Ames, Daisetta, Batson, Saratoga
9/25/2008

The Woodlands
9/25/2008

Woodville
9/29/2008

Silsbee, Lumberton, Kountze
9/29/2008

Conroe
9/29/2008

Huntsville, Madisonville
9/29/2008

New Caney
10/5/2008

Cleveland
10/5/2008

Beaumont, Bevil Oaks, Sour Lake
10/6/2008

Taylor Landing
Flooded – no date determined

Bolivar Peninsula
Flooded – no date determined

Sabine Pass
Flooded – no date determined