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September 23, 2005
Getting the details down
With the hurricane moving a bit to the east, some of the areas in East Texas to which people were evacuating are now in the hurricane's path. Lufkin, the town in which John was born nearly 37 years ago, was a place of refuge. Now, they are evacuating Lufkin. Yes, it is 150 miles inland, but it will still be in Rita's path for tornadoes that will be spawned with the first band of the storm, heavy rain, etc. The storm surge is expected to be 22 feet high and will likely come into and inundate a great portion of Orange and Beaumont. Think tsunami. That's a big refinery area, so expect gas prices to keep rising in the coming weeks. The state emergency office estimates 6,000 homes will be destroyed in East Texas. That is also pine tree country and likely we will lose many trees, which in turn will barricade roads as they fall.
The estimated number of Texans evacuating the coastal regions is 2.5 million. Just three weeks ago, Houston took in 250,000 evacuees from New Orleans. Those New Orleanians who were still in the large shelters such as the convention center when Rita formed out in the Gulf and started this way were put on airplanes early this week and flown to Arkansas. The Coast Guard and the Navy are providing planes at Ellington Air Force Base and some airport over in Beaumont to fly out people. Several thousand people will be evacuated in those planes. But they have to be out of here by three this afternoon.
The McJiltons are battened down. This summer, Mike helped pull a man's pickup out of the sand down at Quintana Beach. In return, the guy gave Mike the rope they had used. Mike has now used that rope to help tie down our carport. We have lots of water and ice. I've got my last load of laundry drying, and I baked a batch of molasses drop cookies this morning just to keep busy. We have packed some of our artwork in my car, and we are parking the car inside my neighbor Cathy's garage. We have checked out the yards and houses of our neighbors who have left and tied down trash cans, turned a trampoline upside down so it wouldn't go boinging around and breaking things, laid down and secured a portable basketball goal, brought potted plants inside, etc. In a few more hours, we will turn off Cathy's water and gas. We ate steaks for breakfast that Cathy gave us as she was leaving. I have cranked our air conditioning way down in hopes of having some cool air for a while after the electricity goes out.
Oddly enough, our winds won't come from the south. Rather, we will have winds driving down from the northeast. The weatherman is estimating gusts in our area of 75 mph., but as he repeatedly points out, he can only estimate. We have our enclosed hall and a southwest bedroom to stay in with lots of mattresses and sofa cushions for padding. We should begin to see rain and winds picking up about three this afternoon. My neighbors two doors to the west have taken different protective measures. They started drinking yesterday morning. There is weather proofing and then there is weather denial.
Speaking of denial, this morning some guy in Galveston took his surfboard and jumped off a fishing pier into the waves. A news crew saw him do it and called the police. The surfboard washed up, sans surfer. While the police scanned the waves with lights borrowed from the news crew, up comes the guy, sloshing in from the surf. He was looking for his surfboard so he could do it again. This was not a kid. This guy looked every bit of 50 plus years. Give it up, guy. The police arrested him because it is illegal to jump off fishing piers, not to mention really dumb. Another guy has decided to stay in his mobile home in Baytown (the name tells you where the town is located) because he just bought a big screen TV and he wants to protect it. On the other hand, we have people going out from their homes with gas cans filled to help people who are stalled.
Okay, guys. I'll write more later, but this is pretty much where we are. Just waiting for the inevitable. We'll be fine.
Posted by susan at September 23, 2005 11:21 AM