Local

Ike’s silver lining is watching Houston and Galveston start to put itself back together. That stubborn Texas attitude, the refusal to not let this degenerate into another New Orleans. The guy handing out free BBQ in the National Guard staging area. The fact that people are chomping at the bit to get back on to Galveston. Wise or not, Galveston will get put back together. And Houston, despite having 4 million people with no gas or electricity, hasn’t turned into a Lord of the Flies reenactment, and in fact more people seem concerned about when the football games are going to be rescheduled than about their personal predicament.

We can deal with this and we don’t need presidential helicopter flyovers to make us feel better (did the president ever even leave the airport? Way to get out there and comfort the people there George). Likewise get Anderson Cooper and the national media to quit talking about the destruction of ‘Bolivar Island’ (it’s a peninsula you ass-hats, look at a map). Go home and stop blocking the causeway so we can get to work.

(All Ike photo’s are blatantly lifted from the Housotn Chronicle)

Wildlife

As if the people on Bolivar needed something else to worry about.

Texas authorities busy trying to clean up after Hurricane Ike have a new problem on their hands: There’s a tiger loose.

A county official said today that the animal somehow left its enclosure at an exotic pets center in Crystal Beach. Animal experts are coming in to try and catch the tiger.

Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough put it this way: “Turns out there’s a tiger, and I understand he’s hungry … so we’re staying away from him.”

Houston Chronicle

FEMA

These guys just can’t pull their head out of their asses…

Still, the Federal Emergency Management Agency struggled today to move supplies to distribution centers throughout Houston as nearly 5 million people across the region continued to live without power and access to clean drinking water.

More

Wow. Gets even better. FEMA has listed a telephone number for people to call for assistance, but when the lines get overwhelmed, it automatically disconnects would-be callers, advising them to go to the FEMA webpage – keeping in mind here that most people in the area have no electricity.

The recorded message says FEMA personnel are busy helping others, which is, no doubt, true. After advising callers to contact the agency via the Internet, it says: “We apologize for this inconvenience. Your call will now be disconnected.”

Still Standing

For those looking for some actual information from this site, my parents and Rosie and Baxter (the dogs), made it back to Lake Jackson this evening to find the house is intact, all windows and trees accounted for (even the tree my dad was hoping would blow down because he doesn’t want to pay to have it cut down is still up). Looks like most of the town is ok, although still lacking electricity. Here’s hoping everyone else returns home to equally good fortune.

Holy Crap

Wow. more from the Houston Chronicle here, here and here.

Ike

So if you look at the storm track for Ike, the predicted track runs really close to my parent’s house. It should make landfall tonight and really at this point it’s a matter of whether it hits the west or east side of Galveston as a cat 2 or 3. The Saffir Simpson Scale is honestly a complete pile of crap, because while the wind are only going to be barely a Cat 3, the storm surge is looking pretty tremendous.

So, even though there are other things I should be concentrating on at work today, like planning and printing for self-aggrandizing-fluff events, I think I’m going to spend my day posting hurricane stuff and thinking-quasi-positive thoughts about the storm track veering into High Island.

Live Feeds
Looks like Houston station’s have switched to 24-hour coverage, although they’re hitting some bandwidth issues…

KRTK-Houston | KHOU- Houston | KPRC-Houston

(Yes I excluded the Fox station)

Surfside
Surfside is the island beach community near my parents house. Sometimes home to not the smartest of folks. From the Chronicle…

Two holdouts, Max and Diane Hall, and their 9-year-old dog Sissy, awoke to find the ocean in their yard. They walked out to higher ground, carrying supplies and belongings on a boogie board, seeking to be evacuated.

Diane Hall joked, “we are not the poster children for successful evacuation by any means.”

and a bit more morbid…

Smith said he did his best to convince residents to climb aboard his high-riding Mack truck, but authorities believe about six people are riding out the storm.

“We asked them to write their Social Security number on their arm for us,” Smith said.

Galveston
Looks like Galveston is already flooding, with 4′ of water over the main west side highway. The general consensus, from the evcauees is the Galveston mayor pulled a Ray Nagin and waited to long to evacuate the island. The only non-coastal route to the mainland is the I-45 causeway bridge. I’m sure the delay in the evacuation order had nothing to do with the Cruise ship in the harbor.

KPRC is showing video of a wanna-be Dan Rather standing on the edge of the sea wall while the waves are ripping chunks of asphault out of the road. I really want to see this dude go for an involuntary swim.

Saffir Simpson is Dumb
So now the meteorologist guys are calling for Category 2 winds but Category 4 storm surge. Houston area authorities call evacuation based on wind speed. This scale system is ludicrous. They’re calling for a 20′ surge in Galveston Bay, plus 15″ of rain.

Central Market
The fish guys at Central Market gave my parents a half-pound of boiled shrimp and romelade sauce for free at the evacuee discount. Pretty awesome.