Post Ike Attack
(Nature)
The good news is that we have running water, gas to heat the running water, a working gas stove and a generater lent by a kind friend from the other side of Richmond where they didn’t lose power.
The day after Hurricane Ike blew through, challenge No. 1 involves getting a roofer over to remove the big pecan branch that punctured the top of our roof, and patching the puncture wound. True, we have pecan trees around the property that tower 70 feet in the air, but none of their tops are within 30 yards of the top of the roof. Which means a wind gust snapped this several-hundred-pound branch off, lifted it at least 30 yards in the air and slam-dunked the sharp end into the roof. That’s a pretty good trick of nature.
My wife and me and our two youngest children spent the night in the downstairs guest bedroom, as close to a safe room as our 93-year-old bungalow has. The wind began to pick up around 10:30 p.m. Friday, and luckily by the time the power went out at 11:30, the little ones were sound asleep.
It’s amazing to me how they slept through the storm, because it literally howled through the trees. You could hear big wind gusts coming a mile away as they burst through big trees around the corner to the northeast. Then the gust would slam into the trees here and in our neighbors’ yards. Sometimes I could almost image a freight train, running about 40 feet up in the air. Sometimes the gust would be punctuated by a jarring thud as something hit the ground.
At about 3:30 a.m. Saturday, one of the thuds, unbeknownst to us for a while, hit the roof. Then, during a lull in the storm, I could hear a steady dripping sound. A flashlight revealed that water was coming in through the drywall above the staircase. I got up in the attic, which was pretty noisy from the wind by then, and could see where the impact from something had managed to snap one of the hardwood planks running horizontally on the roof beams, to which tarpaper and shingles were attached. The branch had sliced through the shingles and broken at least two boards, as it turned out. Handily enough, the break was over a small portion in the attic on the far side of one of two furnace units up there, with no floor planking. To get to the break, I had to climb over the furnace and almost smiultaneously squeeze under an air duct, then balance on a beam for three steps while holding flashlight in one hand and grabbing overhead beams with the other. My wife held another flashlight steady so I could see, and handed tools and nails over, as I found a couple of loose boards on the ground and pounded them in place for a makeshift patch that closed the opening but didn’t seal it off from dripping water.
Since then, it’s been raining hard on and off and I’ve been making regular trips up there to empty strategically placed Tupperware into a bucket. Still, the tear in the roof seems to be growing, and water has dripped down and probably ruined at least two sheets of wallboard, of course located in the ceiling above the stairwell where I won’t be able to get to them.
At daylight Saturday I could see the branch sticking near the top of the roof, which is sufficiently steep that, while I’m confident I could get up there and remove the branch, I’m not confident I could get back down and onto the ladder without mishap.
Someone has us in the roof repair que, and I sincerely hope he gets here really soon.
Meanwhile, another huge branch from a neighbor’s pecan whomped down over the line carrying our electricity from street pole to a little pole on utility company right-of-way near the house. The line didn’t break but is being held about 4 feet from the ground by a branch that probably weighs more than 1,000 pounds. The force from that falling branch pulled apart an “octopus” of bracing wires holding my house electric wire and that of two neighbors up near the top of the street pole. One of the neighbor’s lines snapped, and the other is swinging just off the ground.
So when/if they power comes back on, those lines will be alive and dangerous. I tried to inform the power company early Saturday, and I’m sure they wrote it down somewhere in the pile of messages from an apparent 2.5 million people in this part of Texas who lost power that night.
But that’s the only damage we suffered from about six hours of sustained high winds and much higher gusts (although I have no way whatsoever of estimating how high). No structural damage or broken windows. As best I’m able to tell, Hurricane Ike’s center was 60 miles or so to our east. And as every news outlet in the country has made clear, it could’ve been much, much worse.
After the roof, our priority is to somehow will the electrcity back on. I’ve heard some areas will be out of power in Houston for 18 days. But crews have been working all around here, apparently making sure all my friends and area relatives have power first.
But the generater lets us run the refridgerator, a couple of lights and cell phone and laptop chargers. Therefore we have all the basic comforts: Food, cartoon movies and, thanks to a satellite card in one of the laptops, Internet access.
The third priority, and probably the one I can do the most about immediately, is to begin sawing up and removing what I estimate as literally about 8 tons of pecan branches. I’ve already cleared the driveway, which is how the rest of the family was able to escape to a relative’s air-conditioned home last night while I stayed put and changed Tupperware in the attic. I’m not complaining, but I will say that a very humid evening gave me a new appreciation of air conditioning.
I also removed a couple of giant branches that had fallen over a side fence gate and smashed into the ginger garden I’d just planted three weeks earlier.
The big work is out back, where an uncounted but large number of 8 to 10-inch diameter branches crashed down on the fenceline all around the yard. Amazingly, the fences seem to have survived pretty much unscathed, although there’s still time for surprises.
The back of the property going down to the Brazos, which includes large sycamores and cottonwood, lost almost no branches, and not even the willows appear to have been damaged. The river itself will not be a concern, as Ike moved along a path to the downriver side of us, so I don’t expect an flooding here at all. As long as it stops raining sometime before tomorrow.
Now it’s time to go back and check the Tupperware.
→ B.Dunn, Sep 14, 2008, 08 22 am
