hurricane ike part three

i'm really not sure why i started this running timeline of hurricane ike. probably out of sheer boredom sunday evening. but, now that i'm online for a few minutes, i'll post it here for posterity. i'll split the timeline by each day and post them seperately. i started with friday evening / saturday, so keep scrolling until you find part one.

Monday, 6 am
Dad leaves to pick up the tractor from Trinity. I go back to sleep; it is too dark to do anything anyway. Our water is completely gone. Not even a trickle when you turn the faucet.

8 am
It’s a beautiful day. Thank goodness for nice weather during these days without power. Hear on the radio that one particular power company will be down for a minimum of 3 weeks as they have to rebuild their plant (or something). Gee… I hope that isn’t the one that supplies our company.

9 am
It’s time to face the refrigerator... Nothing is remotely cold anymore. We fill up about 5 trash bags from 2 refrigerators and freezers (keep in mind they are not full bags, otherwise they would be too heavy). We do find a handful of salvageable items. Half frozen tamales cooked on the grill becomes our lunch later on.

1 pm
Dad has brought back a generator from a welding machine. It takes a little while to get it running, but finally we are able to plug in one refrigerator, run the septic system, and charge cell phones. Unfortunately, we were unable to save anything in our deep freezers. We’ll let those refreeze once we have power and throw the contents out later. Trash pickup is tomorrow and the load is already heavy without those bags.

5 pm
Find out we are among 5,972 other households in our zip code without power. That puts us in the group of lower outages than most zip codes. Not sure if that’s good or bad. However, it does confirm that we are NOT on the power company grid that is rebuilding. Hallelujah!

5:30 pm
Got to watch a little of the news while the generator ran. Lots of devastation all around us. We’ve also realized that the phone line is out – so no internet access, despite the generator! Talked to my grandma in Chester. Just as the news yesterday suggested, Ike visited them in the form of thunderstorms and power outages Sunday. Of course, all of their power has been restored.

6 pm
Dad brought Arby’s home for supper!! Definitely a highlight of the past couple days.