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Sunday, September 28, 2008

Life after Ike







It's been a long two weeks. Hurricane Ike swept through here two weeks ago and wreaked havoc on our area. We fared alright – we have our electricity back on after 13 days and life is beginning to feel normal once again. Our home came through okay, however, the top 60 feet of a nearly 120 foot oak tree in our back yard took down part of our garage and back yard. Still, we are so very blessed as it is nothing that cannot be fixed and our insurance will cover.


That Friday night we set the girls up in the great room since we are prone to losing trees in serious storms and we didn't want them upstairs just in case. I don't think my wonderful hubby and I slept a wink all night long. The winds and rain began late Friday afternoon and by about midnight, it was getting pretty serious. We kept hearing large branches hit the roof and each and every time we would run upstairs to make sure there were no leaks or damage. At some points we could literally feel the roof lift a little and the pressure inside the house change. At 3:30 we heard an extremely loud "crack", but nothing else. A little before 4:00 am we heard a whistling sound and then the very foundation of our home shook and vibrated. We rushed to take a look out of the back windows, but all we could see was tree. One of our very tall and magnificent oak trees was now our back yard. It had come down on the garage wall and roof and had taken out our back fence.


The funny thing about that is that we had parked our one and only car inside the garage to keep it safe. LOL. We NEVER park in the garage; however, we figured that since we had just the one vehicle, we should move it indoors. God was watching for us, though, because the roof caved in, but didn't come quite close to the roof. We did have one casualty – our big chest freezer that was against that wall.


Even funnier is that the girls – who are normally afraid of regular thunderstorms – slept through the entire hurricane. They never heard any of the limbs hitting the roof an they never felt the tree hit the back yard.


In the light of day, our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Nothing compared to Galveston and other coastal communities, but still – it was pretty desolate. It took 13 days for us to get our electricity back on. During that time we lived outside during the day and ran the generator at night for the fan. Community meals became the norm and the pull of solidarity was strong.

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