email from dad about hurricane ike

Got this email from Dad today. Utah winters are looking better and better (comparatively).

Dear Kids,

I learned last night and again this morning that the National Weather Service Warning for Hurricane Ike and the mandatory evacuation notice for Galveston Island and around Galveston Bay said, “If you do not evacuate you face certain death”. Wow, I think that is an unprecedented warning and so far Ike is still only a Category 2 hurricane. As you have probably heard, it is a monster storm, over 500 miles across, and still headed directly towards Galveston and Houston. Winds are exceeding 100 mph as far as 275 miles away from the eye of the storm. Since the storm is moving, so far, at about 10 miles per hour, if the storm passes directly over an area, the winds of 100+ miles per hour will last for about 50 hours – over 2 full days.

In case you didn’t know, Sara and CJ’s area also received a mandatory evacuation notice. So, they left yesterday for Orlando. We were in touch with them by cell phone several times during the day. CJ had to teach a class in the morning and then he was suppose to work the rest of the day. But they were shutting MD Anderson down so he went home and they packed up and left – got away about 11 am. They appeared to be ahead of much of the traffic and made it to Beaumont (about 90 miles east of Houston, near the Texas/Louisiana border before traffic starting backing up. They got off I-10 and went on state road 90 for a while. But this storm is so big that storm warnings go from Mexico all across the gulf to Pensacola, FL. So, people had started evacuating from the coastal areas and as they came to cities of any size the traffic was a big mess. Most people were heading north rather than East, so after they would get through the cities, they could go at freeway speeds again. But at Beaumont, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, the traffic was terrible. Sara said it took them over 2 hours to get across Baton Rouge. So, it took them over 10 hours to make 300 miles. They stayed in Slidell, LA last night (they had made hotel reservations in advance) and hopefully, were far enough east that they should be out of most of the traffic problems today (We haven’t talked to them today). But it is still about 10 hours or more from there to Orlando if the traffic is clear, so they still have a long day ahead of them. But we are pleased they are out of harm’s way in any event.

Steven had sent me an e-mail offering to have CJ and Sara shelter at their place in Humble if they wanted – they are about 40 miles or so north of Houston on higher ground apparently. So, I forwarded that e-mail to Sara. But, since the Orlando trip has been scheduled for a long time (CJ has a meeting there) they just decided to leave early and go ahead with that. They plan to spend time at Disney World and Epcott. I think they will be there most of next week. Steven is in Delaware and is suppose to fly home today, but I doubt that the Houston airports will be open.

When they left, their neighbors were boarding up their homes, but CJ and Sara decided to not do that even though CJ had bought the plywood for it earlier in the week. They decided they needed to get out. CJ told Sara, “everything that is important to us is in the car, so let’s just go. The stuff in the house is replaceable.” So they hope they will have a house to go home to when this is over. I hope they didn’t leave any toys, barbecue grills or swing sets setting in their yard – they will be gone for sure – along with the fences. But it was good they got ahead of the Houston traffic. Later in the day, they called to talk to friends who were still in Houston who told them the freeways were all completely jammed – just big parking lots.

Houston decided to recommend that many areas “shelter in place” or “hunker down” as they say in Texas, rather than attempt to evacuate over 4 million people. Last time they tried to evacuate the whole city, over 110 people died in traffic – far more than were killed or injured by the hurricane and thousands of people became stranded because they could not get gasoline. So, only the lower lying areas south of Houston were told to evacuate - but that is still over 1 million people.

We expect we will hear from Sara and family as they get to Orlando so we’ll let you know.

Dad