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My sister advises there was damage in the neighborhood (roofs peeled, ceilings collapsed from water, etc.), she was just VERY lucky. They're rooming two couples (friends from work). Her partner's brother is in from points north, he runs a commercial roofing business.
 
Best wishes everyone.
So glad to see postings from our beloved Texas contingent.
Sending all of you light, love, peace and blessings.
Stay dry, stay cool, stay fed and hydrated.

Are the dogs that are behaving strangely in physical pain? Maybe the lowering of the atmospheric pressure hurts if the internal pressure in one's head doesn't go down as fast. (Think fast elevator or a plane trip).

Zinger of the day: FEH! to those hoarding charcoal. Don't tell THEM but charcoal can auto-combust when it's been wet.

We love you Texas!
....And since everything is bigger in Texas (subject to verificiation. LOL), we know your hearts are too!
 
Howdy All!

I am transmitting on my laptop from my neighbors across the street who have a whole house generator. We are still without power. The neighbors were going to sell us their old Honda generator, but when we put gas in it, it started pouring out of the carbeurator and it wouldn't start. The neighbor told us he'd get it fixed in "a couple of weeks" and then sell it to us. I told him that the deal is off, in a couple of weeks the power will be back on and it won't be needed anymore.

Thankfully it has been cool down here. Last night we had a low of 63. With windows open it was great sleeping weather.
The storm itself wasn't as bad as Alica was in 1983, at least from my prespective. It wasn't that noisy. But I think we had a tornado near us as there is one of those corragated aluminum livestock shed in the middle of the road about a block away. Normally, there aren't any in that area. So it must have dropped down from somewhere.

I went out this morning and took some photos of the damage. Lots of trees on houses, split trees, trees becoming unrooted, and lots and lots of fences falling down. I'll post these photos later.

Today we are going to clean out the refrigerator, it's starting to stink from the food inside. We saved quite a bit of it in a cooler chest and we can drive about 8 miles to get some ice to keep things cool. Since our subdivision has it's own well, we never ran out of water. So we'll empty out the fridge and wash the inside down today.

We are actually pretty comfortable. We have a Char-broil outside grill with a side burner. So for morning coffee I can heat up some water and pour it directly on the coffee in the Cuisinart coffemaker and have nice fresh coffee. Since the grill even had a thermometer on it we can even bake on it. Last night we had some barbarque ribs, very good. Our food supply is quite good. We can last at least another 6 days. But lots of people in our area are running out and there aren't any stores open in our immediate area.

During the storm all but one of the dogs took it in stride. But Gracie, our foster German Shepard/Golden Retriever, went under the coffee table and wouldn't come out. When I reached in there to pull her out she snapped at me along with a very threatening growl. The barometeric pressure was at its lowest at that time. Then our new Black Lab went under there to try to play with her and she snapped at him too. On Sunday she finally came out from under the table very cautiously. On Monday she was back to her old happy self.

Communications has been difficult with cell phones as quite a few cell phone towers are down. Lots of dropped calls and "Call Failed" messages when you try to call out. The land line came online last night, but we have a cordless phone which won't work without power.

As far as our house goes the only damage was to the fence between the neighbors house. And it's his fence. I reinforced it with deck screws and the fence itself actually held together. It snapped at the 4x4's at ground level. But the idiot neighbor on the other side who put up his fence using pickets that are about as thick as cardboard and also used a staple gun to attatch them is going around the neighborhood picking up what's left of his fence.

Lots of people are doing stupid things. They are running generators inside their homes, calling 911 to report that they don't have power or that their roof is leaking. One of our neighbors is a constable and he said that instead of helping people he is getting a lot of domestic disturbance calls. Usually it's a group of people who get together, and get drunk because there is nothing else to do, then somebody says something that someone else doesn't like and then a fight erupts. One case was a family that got together and the husband insulted his wife and she broke a beer bottle over his head and then her brother in law beat the crap out of her. Or people texting on their cell phones while driving and running off the road into trees and telephone poles. Lots and lots of DWI arrests.
Another case was of some neighbors who got pissed off because on one side of the street there was power and the other side didn't have power. So two neighbors from the opposite side of the street got into a gunfight over this. Of course they were drunk. Miraculously nobody got hurt except for bullet holes in their garage doors. And those two are now in jail.

The constables office in this area are urging liquor stores to remain closed until the power comes back on because of this.
There are big piles of storm debris in front of people homes, we don't know when it will be picked up.

So that's our report for now. I'll check back later today.

Allen
 
I have to laff at vvhilcoolz pozt

yup....folkz are juzt az bad on your zide az they are here.

i've got a ton of ztoriez to tell too...but zave it for a vvazhin...if that ever happenz.

got picz too....today a lady cut in front of me in my gaz line and I vvent into a gutter of a muddy curb. thank gozh it vvaz my little blue truck and not the nevv one. i had to be vvinched out.

ppl are ztupid here. i zhouldn't be amazed, but they do ztill amaze me. perzonally, i vvould like to do zomething elze to all theze idiotz....one of my neighborz for one. *left EVERYTHING in hiz yard to fly around, and guyz, I am talking a ton of zhit!* dumb azz illegal mezzican.

ztill no elect. here. have generator, cellz and landlinez are overloaded ztill.

dovvtovvn iz clozed another day. i go back to vvork on thurzday. *yay*

zevvage iz backing up novv in zome areaz....god it'z nazty ztinky....

keep all of uz in your prayerz....they are vvorking hard to get uz back to zome type of normality....i'm juzt hoping vve don't take another hit thiz year....

it vvould make the current *bad* zituation dovvn here.....zo much vvorze.

i'm pooped. im going to enjoy my lazt day off tommorrovv.

Everyone ztay zafe.

*for thoze :challenged: - replace the z'z vvith the letter betvveen R and T.....LMAO

Good night!
C

pz: zorry 4 the rant....i needed too.......
 
Yippee! We have power!
The power started going on and off about an hour ago. Then about 15 minutes ago it stayed on! We are SOOOO happy! It was an interesting experience to say the least. We didn't have any power for 92 hours.
Today we threw out 4 bags of food from the refrigerator that couldn't be saved. Karen washed it out with vinegar and baking soda followed by two fresh water rinses. It looks like new again and doesn't smell.
Our local Wal-Mart still has pretty empty shelves while the Kroger has stocked up almost to normal capacity. But 63% of the area still doesn't have power.
Finally things can get back to normal.
We have a friend who has one of those huge houses on Broadway in Galveston. He went back to see it today. The first floor (about 12 feet above street level) had water/mud up to the tops of the kitchen countertops. The second floor master bedroom ceiling failed and rain came in. He and his wife worked for the past 15 years converting it from a boarding house back to its 1880 glory. They finished it this spring.
He said it will take a few years to restore it back due to all the water damage. The main problem is that there is no electric, water or sewer on the island so he can't even begin to clean out all the mud inside the house. Of course this will lead to mold. He even had somebody elses sofa in his living room. It knocked down the front door and made itself at home, upside down of course.
 
Here is a message I received via e-mail from 58limited...

I'm OK

I'm staying in Lumberton, 50 miles north of my house. Power came on here last night so I'm just getting on the internet.

My area suffered major damage, there was a big storm surge. The seawall behind my house protected Port Arthur, but Bridge City and Orange (both a few miles away) got 8-10 feet of water. Bolivar Peninsula, High Island, Crystal Beach, and most areas east of, and including, Galveston (Winnie, La Belle, Fannett) are devastated. The waves washed over the seawall in my back yard and I had 12 inches of water in my garage. An inch of water got into my kitchen, but did not get into the rest of the house. I also have minor roof damage.

I had several friends who helped me to get my cars moved north before the storm. The wind damage is not as bad as hurricane Rita in 2005, but there is much more devastation here because of the water: flooding, up to 20,000 dead cows (so I've heard), other dead animals, and a huge amount of debris washed up from the marshes - I have a wall of salt grass and driftwood in my back yard that is 5 feet high, 20 feet in depth, and it runs the full 115 foot length of my back yard. I almost stepped on a cotton mouth on Saturday (I returned for a look-see soon after the storm - winds were still 40mph) and I shot one the other day.

There was enough water to short out my home standby generator, so I had to buy a 5000 watt unit to run my fridges. My 1949 Coldspot in the garage bit the dust, so I bought a Whirlpool convertible upright. The Servel gas fridge doesn't want to cool - probably got water in the fire box. I'll take it apart and clean it later. About 8 people decided to stay in Sabine Pass (10 miles south of me on the coast). Sabine Pass got a worse storm surge than with hurricane rita. I haven't heard if they are ok. I talked with a drainage district worker and he said that the surge on the Port Arthur seawall was 13 feet - the wall averages 16.5 feet. This wall really saved our bacon, unfortunately Orange and Bridge Citty do not have seawalls.

I'll post a few pics when I get my power back and can use my own computer - I have a pic of the surge behind my house: the water is about 3 feet below the top of the wall, and I took the pic at 1 pm Saturday after Ike had passed.

Please keep all of the devastated areas in your thoughts and prayers. Most of us in Port Arthur are ok, but so many others on the coast have lost everything.

David
 
David I am so greatly relieved. Have been worrie about you.

I know I shouldn't complain, and I spoze this isn't a really complaining comment, but I went to HEB today, since last Sunday. There was almost no milk at all. There were signs posted explaining the loss of mil and need to resupply the 67 HEB stores to the south of us as well as the loss of a milk processing plant due to the storm.
 
I learned a lesson about Center Point Energy through this whole ordeal: they really DO listen to the "squeaky wheel". I received several emails from different neighbors last sunday that power have had been restored in my area except for 57 houses, and that my house was one of them. They threw the breaker and the line fuse instantly tripped. Then they were ready to walk away from a community that was 57 houses short of being completely restored by an extremely simple repair that only involved one power cable which relayed a section of one grid to the next. They informed us to be prepared to wait up to 2 weeks. Well, all 57 of us said "heck no". The rest of that email message indicated that Center Point Energy's "unofficial policy" is to gain a concensus (so to speak) by keeping track of how many outage reports are localized and coming from multiple residents in a particular area. When some of the people start getting power, everyone talks and the pressure builds on Center Point. They're more sensitive than ever about community relations issues, and they should be. The whole "deregulation" phenomenon wasn't too many years ago. Needless to say, we all called Center Point on a daily basis. I even had several neighbors calling me to make sure that I had called. As it turns out, every time we all called, our collective outage reports got our community bumped up on the list. For all of you out there in Texas who are affected by this, JUST KEEP CALLING CENTER POINT ENERGY! Don't be willing to just "bend over" and wait two weeks or more, or they make sure that you do. They have over 7000 additional personnel from other service areas and out of state. These people are are earning Overtime/Doubletime/Disaster Service Wages or whatever their union contracts has outlined for them in writing. They're getting rich, they're getting fat, and they're not in too big of a hurry because they want it to last. My parents live in New Orleans and we saw this blatantly after Katrina. Seriously, I can't tell all of you enough: those who are affected by this, keep calling your your utility provider once a day. Don't let them turn you away.
 
Deregulation started out as a good thing.....

Then a few years ago, it all started going to hell.

If you went out of contract with your provider, they were charging you the max (mine was 26 cents KWH/ i.e: 700 kwh cost me $190 in electric) Outrageous!

I bitched and raised all sorts of hell with Cirro Energy and they adjusted it.

Reliant used to be the highest. Now they are in line with other companies. Alot of them have already gone under.

We will all be paying for this deregulation: (Post IKE)
The reason: Under deregulation, ratepayers are responsible for the expense of maintaining and expanding the power grid in Texas.

We got power back on at the house on Friday afternoon. I do not have power back at my house. And I already went ahead and paid a $150. bill for service I haven't even used!
I cut all elect. (except refrigerator during 2 wk vacation, was home 4 days and then Ike)

There had better be a BIG ass adjustment next month, or they will suffer the wrath of Hurricane Carol.

Rant over.
 
And if you are under contract with a provider that goes under you are put in the "default pool" and are charged the maximum rate for electricity until you can change to another provider.
As you spoke about the repairs, on channel 2 news they were interviewing a Centerpoint Energy spokesperson and he did say that we will end up paying for this. First they have to run it by the PUC, but eventually there will be a BIG rate hike to cover this.
What I'd like to know is if we are paying 16-21 cents per Kwh why do they need extra money to fix the lines? Tons of other communities are getting along charging just 35% of those rates!
 
Odd that in a state where you basically stick a pipe into the earth anywhere and you have oil and natural gas spewing out that rates would be so high..........
 
MaytagMom, I'm not trying to sound like a smartass here, but IMHO the worst part about deregulation is that it's deregulated. The parameters and definitions behind it were never made very clear. It sometimes appears as though the whole phenomenon came into being because some whiny little putz wanted to break in to the utility biz. I don't blame deregulation as much as I blame the little start up companies for getting greedy. It seems like everyone started playing that "if Reliant Energy can get X dollars per kilowat hour then so can we" game. That's totally opposite of what these little companies told us they were going to do.

Yeah, Toggle, regarding your aforementioned comment, it is odd. Also odd, is the fact that Texas still has so many coal powered electricity plants. AND the fat lady hasn't even sung yet regarding T. Boone Pickens and his "plan" for natural gas. I'm not too sure about anyone who goes out to West Texas and buys "futures" in the water supply. That's just diabolical. He's in his 80's and he's a greedy old fart. I don't think he'll live long enough to see the West Texas water shortage that he has predicted.

As for me, my livelihood is in natural gas. My partner and I are in a small operation that goes into abandoned well fields and drills horizontally for the gas that others just walked away from or thought that it was too much trouble to extract. we're "small potatoes" compared to the giants in this industry, but it's an honest living and the public just doesn't realize how much natural gas is out there. Toggle, I guess you could say it's a question of knowing how to stick that pipe in the ground. Natural gas looks so promising, as long as we can keep it in the hands of the people and minimize the greed factor. When my 03' Tundra Pickup is paid off in a few months, I'm converting it to CNG/ Compressed Natural Gas. I'm not expecting the economy on my truck to improve, but there's a principle here. I just want people to know how easy and practical this concept is to live with.
 
1950's, 1960's and 1970's

When I was a kid growing up in south central Kansas, all of our irrigation wells were powered by Propane. A good friend of the family ran a "route truck" with his taker truck and filled all of the farmer's engines once a week. In those days, a 500 gal tank filled with propane was quite cheap!

All of the irrigators in the area have now switched to electric or diesel.

Jeff
 
I know its needed........

I drove the 55 corridor from Memphis to New Orleans on wednesday and i passed approx 40, Pike engery trucks, bucket lifts, generators and service trucks. I figured they were headed to TX and W. Louisiana, The TV pictures coming out of southern Tx. are still unbelievable. I beleive the "Pike" trucks were from N. Carolina. Just a post of hope for you Tx folks... help is still on its way. It was a site to see though that many of them in one caravan... wishing you Tx folks some quick relief. alr2903
 
My parents in Spring are still without power. Mine came on Sunday at noon. Still no internet so I check e-mail when I can. The drainage district is going to clear the saltgrass debris from my yard. The Corps of Engineers wants them to reclaim the 20-30' right of way. This will mean no fence all the way to the seawall and no deck (which I already have permit to build). Basically I'll loose rights to 1/2 of my backyard.
 

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