Hurricane Ike Remembered

Four years ago this morning Hurricane Ike hit Houston as a level 2 storm and gave us a run for our money.  My family had long since headed to A&M to escape the storm, enjoy Aggieland, and visit with David.  While we had fun reliving old college days, my family's house and my school got an unapproved Aggie Whooping.  Wow.  Houston can't complain based on experiences from Katrina and Rita, but Ike sure rattled our cage. 

A home between my family's and my school.

Dad has pictures from our home's damage, but I don't.  We lost part of our roof, and three rooms, the foyer, and a hallway had to have major work done from water damage.   Many of my friends and several students though completely had to demolish their homes due to mud and water damage.  We're talking 9 feet of mud in some of these homes.  Yeah, that's not really salvagable.

SCIS got hit hard.  I made it up to campus four days after Ike hit.  Most of the water had receded, but in my classroom, it was 3" deep during the storm.  The wind blew the rain horizontally.  It came in through the window panes, seeped through the cinder block walls, and flooded my interior cooridor classroom.  My room had no roof damage, but 3" of water.  Seriously?!  I didn't have carpet from September until April.  We didn't get books until the next year. 


Part of the roof over the gym pulled back from the wall.



The gym roof was horribly damaged.  By the time clean up crews made it to school, the wood had warped several inches into the air.  It looked like a skateboard park.

  

The hallway nearest the gym.  Yep, the roof is on the floor.  The water was up over the baseboards during the storm.



The roof doesn't belong on the field, does it?

Is it good?!

We've had AC problems ever since.  Hmm...

Yep, that's the roof.

 

The hotel near my school.

I must say, my kids were incredibly resilant that school year.  So many of them literally lost everything their families owned, but they came back, worked hard with what we had, and kept a smile on their faces.  We learned writing on cement slabs before carpet is reinstalled can be healing.  We learned we can make do with very little.  I learned that sharp metal objects cause bad injuries and to stay away from them.  Ha. 

Houston will hopefully not get another direct hit from a hurricane for a long time.  There are still parts of town that haven't really recovered or weren't rebuilt.  The excitement gets replaced by reality very quickly.  Ike was enough to satisfy my desire for stormy adventures!