Back to Normal.......Almost

As Promised I have some pictures from Hurricane Ike. I thought I didn't have too many because when I was walking around outside a cop stopped me and made me go home because he said it wasn't safe enough, but after uploading them I do have quite a few good ones. The hurricane itself was pretty amazing. I have never been in such a storm. We actually were able to stand on our balcony because we are enclosed in our cement building and the wind was blowing parallel to us. everything was blowing so hard that it was horizontal, and there was so much rain that it was just a rushing river below us instead of a road. Our power went out at about midnight, but the actual hurricane did not hit us until 5:00 in the morning. As good as we fared, we only lost power and water for 6 days, there are many many people that are going to have a hard time getting back to normal. Many gymnasts that go to our gym have trees in their houses, and many people that evacuated cannot go back to their homes for quite awhile. Many people losts their lives, many more than they are reporting because they have not been able to go through a lot of the wreckage. I hope that they don't find as many bodies as they think they will. We were very blessed that we fared as well as we did. Anyway, the pictures here were just taken around my house the morning after the storm.

The Storm rolling in Friday night.

Sky lighting up with electric transformers

Looks Alright at first glance, the trees are a bit bare

The calm of the city after it was ravaged. Downtown got the brunt of the storm. This is the view from our apartment

Chris on the roof of our building

Poor little street sign by my house

This is the front of a church next to our building. Lots of debris everywhere

Another poor street sign. This was basically the norm. Whole billboards were twisted in knots by the freeways so I guess these little signs were lucky.

There were/still are trees down everywhere. They still have to cut most of them up so cars can get down the street.

This was a brand new gas station that had just opened by our house. Poor thing didn't get much time here in Houston.

This is what most of the power lines around our apartment looked like. Gee, I wonder why we didn't have any power. That is our apartment building in the background. this is the side we live on, and it was fine. The other sides had a lot of damage from debris and wind.

This is a tree that is blocking the whole road. I was trying to get back to my house, but had to go around. Yep, that is still my apartment behind that tree.

This is the Chase Building downtown. I looked like a bomb went off in it. Those are all blown out windows.

This is some of the flooding that happened right after. Those are the TOPS of the trees

More flooding

More flooding right up to the overpass

This is a building by me that has its whole roof blown off to its side

More trees downtown blocking the roads

Another building by me. Trees snapped like twigs.....

That is all the pictures I have, but they show a pretty good picture. This is the 3rd most expensive hurricane after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now to get back to Normal.....