TheBanyanTree: Ike's Moon - 2008/09/14

[Dale M. Parish]

20080914T1944 

Today was somewhat productive, but not exciting.  The
generator ran out of gas about 0700, an hour and a half after I got up
to let the dog out and check on it.  We got lazy and went back to bed
till 0700 when my cousin Stretch called.  I'd called him last night to
see how they fared and gotten his voice mail.  He works for Home
Depot, and he advised he was sitting in the parking lot fixing to go
in-- they were opening at 0800 today.  Home Depot's Orange store had
just opened before Hurricane Rita, and they enamored themselves with
the citizens of Orange who needed fixins after Rita.  I told Stretch
we'd probably see him there later, and we up and I made plans to go
change the oil in the generator.

We decided to leave it till later and go check on the shop and see
what was to see towards town.  Along the feeder road, there wdere pine
trees that had blown down across the road, but from which sections had
been cut to allow passage-- the tops remaining between the feeder road
and the eastbound lane and the trunks south of the fence.  Cindy
wanted to see of Waffle House was open-- I knew better, but she had
her heart set on breakfast there if it was.  Just in case, she brought
some breakfast bars.  Good thing.  

We'd heard on one of the local call-in status report stations that
there was gasoline at IH10 and SH62.  One of the two truck stops had
lines all the way under the interstate waiting in line-- probably
40-50 vehicles long on the highway.  The Flying J truck stop was
closed.  We went on in to town, but at Home Depot, there was a line of
20-30 people outside the main door waiting to get in and the store
appeared dark, even though Stretch had said that they had a 275KW
generator for the store.  Apparently they were only letting a limited
number of people into the dark store at a time--we decided that we
really didn't need anything from Home Depot yet, and went back to the
shop.

Our shop has two large overhead doors on the south side side by side
large enough to pull in backhoes, cherry pickers, etc.  Hurricane Rita
had pushed in the east door onto my tractor.  We'd replaced the whole
door frame, buck and put in a newer, but lighter duty overhead door
after Rita.  This time, the western door was pushed in as if it had
been hinged on the west-- the eastern frame, track and all had been
pushed loose and the whole overhead assembly was pushed in more than
halfway.  On the western side of the roof, a panel of skylight was
missing, but on the east side of the roof, the northern half-- the
same half as was blown off in Rita-- was missing.  Before Gustav, I
had taken a chain and hooked it on the bottom of one of the sliding
doors and then backed the dozer over the end of the chain to prevent
the doors from being blown out-- there's no track on the bottom to
prevent the heavy doors from moving out-- only a lip to prevent them
from being pushed in.  The chain was still on that door, but the hasp
holding the two doors closed was open-- it had been secured with a
piece of #9 wire-- the wind had apparently really ripped through the
shop when the roof came off and blown that door out.  Both of them
didn't want to slide-- I think the overhead tracks were pulled loose.

Cindy and I assessed the damage, took a few pictures, but there was
nothing I could do, and we left for home.  At Highway 62, we saw that
the Flying J truck stop's marquee sign, some 20 meters tall, had
crashed upside down into the grass under the poles that used to
support it.  Bet that made some noise when it hit.  

My oldest boy called to say that he and his girlfriend were going to
Arkansas to go quartz prospecting, and they'd be back after power was
restored.  Told him to enjoy themselves. 

Back at home, it was still raining, and we ate a belated brunch, and I
went out to change the oil in the generator.  Carolyn called to ask if
we had any roofing nails.  She came over for nails and coffee and she
and Cindy discussed the known states of damage to their respective
school districts.  While Vidor didn't sustain much damage to their
buildings, there's no power or water.  Beaumont had extensive damage
to many of their campuses-- it's likely that they will not be able to
start school for two or more weeks.  After Rita, the lost time was
forgiven by the state.  They expect that the same will happen again.

They discussed Dr. Westgate-- our JASON project faculty advisor and my
Environmental Geology instructor this semester at Lamar University.
We were taking bets on how long it will be before he's down on the
beach looking at the destruction.  As a geologist, he's known for
really getting out in the field, and our class has had a field trip
scheduled to Crystal Beach next Saturday.  From what we hear, Crystal
Beach was completely wiped out, and no one is being allowed onto
Bolivar Peninsula right now except rescue crews.  We figure that Dr.
Westgate will convince the authorities that he needs the whole class
to conduct forensic hurricanology investigatins as soon as possible
after the storm before the forensic evidence is weathered away.

After Rita, Dr. Koch, one of if not the most foremost Forensic
Hurricanologist, flew down and Dr. Westgate and Cindy spent a whole
day studying the evidence at Holly Beach in Louisiana.  That entire
community of 300 beach houses was wiped away-- only some foundations
remained after the storm. 

I changed the oil and fueled up the generator and took down the lumber
over the French doors.  It had almost stopped raining, and I rehung
the tarp over the generator and made a stiffner for it.  Mike, my
brother, called to say that he'd gotten my message about the shop and
that he'd try to get back tomorrow to work on securing the door.  I
will try to move the Kubota from the house back down to the shop so we
can use the frontend loader to push the door back into place and
secure it without having to errect scaffolding.  

I finally made contact with my boss-- the refinery, all three chemical
plants and the lubes packaging plant are all down and the leadership
team don't want anyone back on premises until they are called for.
Makes me happy-- I will be able to work with Mike to get the shop
secured to the extent that we can. 

We hear that Orange and Bridge City are still closed-- they've rescued
over a hundred live people, and will be starting to look for people
who may not be able to call for rescue any more.  We've seen a lot of
Huey's in the sky to the south-- don't think that they're heading to
the Port of Beaumont like usual for loading onto transport to Iraq.
This afternoon late, I saw a group of Chinooks to the north headed
in the general direction of Houston/Galveson from Ft. Polk.  

I can only hope that there were a lot more people who evacuated at the
last minutes and haven't checked in with family or friends yet.  I
imagine that it's worse in Galveston County, where there were more
houses that were wiped out and bodies will only be found in the debris
later.  One of our professors at Lamar lived alone on the beach side
of Bolivar Peninsula just west of Roll Over Pass.  We haven't head
from her since before Ike.  


Hugs,
Dale
--
Dale M. Parish
628 Parish Rd
Orange TX 77632
(409) 745-3899