We still have power but we’re clearly one of the lucky ones in the area. The last news report says only 122,000 total households out of the 2 million that lost power have had it restored.
I went out exploring a little after noon on a bike to see what the area situation was. It appears we are the only neighborhood in the immediate vicinity that has power. I saw a few CenterPoint energy crews out there working on various utility problems but it isn’t immediately clear why more of the area doesn’t have power.
The H.E.B. grocery store at SH 6 and Dulles Avenue is open but the fuel station there did not yet have any fuel. Most of the other businesses along that stretch of SH 6 were not yet open, but the news says the Kroger at SH 6 and Murphy was open.
I saw no working street lights or fuel stations with fuel during my trip. It looked like several of the fuel stations had power so chances are they will have some fuel within the next day.
I biked over to the north part of Oyster Creek Trail where it meets Lexington Boulevard and saw continued flooding in the park. The bridge over Oyster Creek on the north end of the trail was very much impassable.
While we have internet access now, I’m wondering the situation of Comcast’s cable network upstream. Their system may be on generators right now for all I know, so we could lose internet connectivity at any time.
There are way too many people out driving around aimlessly right now. While the roads in this area are open, there are still no fuel stations open nearby so it seems like a tremendous waste if people cannot safely resupply in the next few days.
As of 7:30 pm our local power came on. We’re hoping that it stays on through the night at a minimum, and really hopeful it is back on permanently. I spoke with my parents in the Houston Heights area of town and they said power is not back on in their section of the neighborhood, but it is a few blocks over, so hopefully power will be restored in most parts of the “city” areas that are away from the coast in short-order. Right now, CenterPoint Energy is saying power will take 2 to 3 weeks to be fully restored, but given the damage to the coastal areas this is not too much of a surprise.
Lori and I walked around our neighborhood and took some pictures of the damage. It is clear that we personally got very lucky – we have no damage at all, save a couple of tree branches that we’ve already cleaned up. Many other people in our neighborhood and surrounding ones have substantial damage from fallen trees on their homes, and many of the older fences and trees have been destroyed. There is debris everywhere. The good news is that, for the most part, the wind was not high enough in this part of town to destroy structure from wind alone. We saw no broken windows, a few torn gutters, and a handful of shingles, but that’s been it.
Some select pictures from our walk around the neighborhood:
Damage to trees and fences in the area much more extensive than in our neighborhood. Still no major structural damage seen except from downed trees. Power is still out but generator still running well. Power flickered on around 5pm so maybe we’ll get lucky.
Lori is mad the storm didn’t kill off all the mosquitoes.
It is around 9:30am and we are still experiencing storm conditions here. We have occasional tropical storm strength gusts and some light rain. The bulk of the storm is north of us now so conditions should continue to improve from here on out.
The power is still out so we got the generator out and running to keep the freezer cold. There is no indication of how long the power will be out.
As far as damage, there is little to report. There appears to be no structual damage to any of the homes in the neighborhood. A few small trees are down and there are branches everywhere. Our neighbor’s fence has some damage from a small tree that fell on it, but that is all so far.
Once the storm subsides soon I will venture out on the bike to get more details. The city’s curfew ended a few minutes ago but they still want people off the roads.
