Well, it has been an interesting few days in the Houston area. Our district cancelled school for Friday in order to allow students, teachers, and other staff to make preparations for Hurricane Ike. The hurricane hit with less force than projected, but has really left the area devastated. The television stations have shown nothing but hurricane coverage for days and will continue to do so to try to reassure people that help is coming. Now, school is cancelled for Monday and Tuesday also due to power outages and facility damage. I don't even know how my students are doing or if we will have a school to go back to.
I'm lucky because we live west of Houston and were on the "good side" of the storm, if such a thing actually exists. We lost power for about 15 hours, lost some fencing, and have a roof leak. However, we are so lucky and blessed. We spent time yesterday cleaning up the yard, repairing the fence, and clearing the debris from the street to allow the water to drain off.
I can't even imagine how devastated some people are because their entire houses are gone, entire islands are underwater like Crystal Beach, and there are large boats, refrigerators, and televisions in the middle of the I45 freeway leading south to Galveston. I see the pictures on the news, but it seems surreal. Now, people are trying to recover, but we have lost people due to trees crashing into their rooms while they were sleeping and a 5 year old died from carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator that was not ventilated properly. I think this recovery will take quite a while, as the power company is predicting it will take, at least, 3 weeks for all of the power to be restored.