MO GOOD NEWS....

Dateline: Conroe, Texas. Saturday, September 24, 2005

Doug Caddell reporting

Hi from the north Houston area, on the flip-side of Hurricane Rita's visit. I waited and waited last night and finally went to bed. She finally knocked on our door at 2:38 in the morning. Actually, she rang the door bell. It was like a scene from a horror movie... you heard the 'pop' of a power transformer somewhere on the street, the lights flickered, the dogs starting barking... all of the outside lights flashed on and off a half-dozen times - then the door bell rang. And nothing but darkness. Weird, just like a bad movie.

We got a bunch of wind and some rain from that point onward. Nothing catastrophic, but did loose two large pine trees (about 12-18 inches in diameter and 100' tall) and a smaller one as well. We were lucky as the storm veered to the east and passed about 50 miles from us. Not a lot of miles, but just enough. This morning some light rain, and moderate winds from time to time. There is a lot of debris all over, but no major destruction in the area except for a few good sized trees that Rita used as tooth picks. However, in the news it showed major tree (crashing into houses) and other damage just to the east of us. The storm did not stall as was thought, so the rain stopped about Noon. It remained overcast with a light breeze all day - which was good because we lost power when Rita rang the door bell. I'm typing this on battery power with a light and a fan powered by the generator I bought Wednesday outside of Dallas. Well at least I got to use the generator! No returns of generators permitted.

As of a few minutes ago the news reported more than  800,000 people without electricity in southeastern Texas - so I guess that I'm not that special. I hope that we get power by the morning. Otherwise it is going to be a very hot and humid day - although the temperature is forecasted to ONLY rise to 94 degrees. Hey, it's hot in Houston... but, it's a WET heat.

I drove around briefly today, Saturday. The southbound lanes if I-45 were fairly busy - some of the nearly three million people who left S.E. Texas returning. The word is not to come back yet. There is NO gas and the stores have no food. Driving around was like the other day... just like a sci-fi movie - the end of the world, or an asteroid movie, something like that. Some cars on local streets, but ALL stores are closed and there is a lot of litter around the stores from the exodus that took place Wednesday and Thursday. It's like aliens sucked up all the people into their spaceship -except for the few who were somewhere else at the time. I almost expected to hear the requisite sign, squeaking as it swung in the wind.

The next few days, no weeks, will be interesting to watch. There is literally NO gas available. When I say that all the stores are closed, I mean all stores. Even on a holiday the corner convenience store /gas station will be open. Everything is closed - there is nothing to sell. Grocery stores are closed - there has been no milk or bread on the shelves since last Wednesday. And there will not be any for days into the future. Just restocking everything will be a monumental task - IF the delivery trucks can get gas, and the employees can get to work.

This is the weirdest experience of my life so far. And I have seen some weird stuff.

Fast forward to Sunday: People are heading back to Houston on I-45, although the police are limiting exiting from the freeway because there is limited gas and no food. I hear that in places they are checking your gas gauge to see if you really need fuel. Sunday night a few restaurants and stores are open. Went to a Chili's restaurant... the normal menu was put away and in its place was a Hurricane Rita Menu. About two dozen items typed up on a sheet of paper. As we left the restaurant closed - that was about 6:00 p.m.

It's still bizarre driving around the little that I did - not much going on. Gas lines at the stations near the interstate with police making sure that there are no problems.

Still no power for us, although many in the general area have electricity. It's going to be a hot night as the house was baking in the sun all day. It is really dark outside. It's amazing how much light a small flashlight puts out when you are in total darkness.

A hot night it was! I tired to find a relatively cooler spot to sleep and finally moved to the floor of the bathroom. It was hard, but cooler than anywhere else. ... didn't get much sleep there, so about 3:00 a.m. I moved back to the bed, the bedroom having cooled off a bit.

Fast forward to Monday: Still no power. The good news is that it is only going to get to 100 degrees today :-) . The bad news is that the Heat Index will top out at the equivalent of 114 degrees. It is hot. Not much else to say.

About 11:00 a.m. the power came on! Yay! ... for about three minutes. Went to find lunch in a cool place. Lots of lines and limited menus.

Returned home about 2:00 p.m. - about an hour ago. POWER! And it is still on! Now I can connect to the internet and send this out.

End of story.

It has been interesting. I started to write this before Rita arrived so that I could let many of you know what was happening - as many of you had asked. I received a lot of well wishes from everyone - Thanks!! And you wanted to know how we made out. Hence, this "rest of the story." As I wrote this, the thing that intrigued me was the exodus from Houston and its impact on the local area. Of the 2 million or so people that left Houston, I would say that about 1 million passed within 1.5 miles of my house. Seeing an interstate highway turned into a one-way street was interesting. I don't think that has ever happened in the U.S before. This was probably the largest evacuation in U.S. history. Houston is the 4th largest city in the country. But starting last Wednesday I bet it dropped in rank to 8th or 9th - until maybe tomorrow. Downtown Houston is mostly closed today and local schools are closed until Wednesday. I would imagine that most everything will be back to normal next Monday - including more seasonal temperatures:-) .

We were lucky that Rita turned to the north. Other areas were hit much harder, and of course those that were impacted by Katrina and the hurricanes last year in Florida had much more loss than us. The reason I finished this story was not to imply that we were having a difficult time - those hit directly by Rita and prior storms had "real" problems - but, because I found the exodus aspect to be unique. And also because many of you have asked how we made out.