Hurricane Ike

The storm at 3amYou can see the boarding from insideBoys asleep in the downstairs closet at 11:15pm

30 minutes before the power went outA small tree snapped in our back yard
This is what's left of our treeWe lost 5 big branches from the top of our great shade tree in the back yard
Here are the branches
Of the 14 trees on this little street 7 trees went down, 2 halfway down and 3 okay
Surveying some of the damageA tree on a truck
Fences are down all over
Trees were being cut down really fast
Workers trying to fix a broken water line

Here is some info of our experience with Hurricane Ike. We boarded up every single window on our house and thanks to the plywood and double paned windows the noise was bearable for the kids inside. I put them to bed in our downstairs closet about 9:15pm with a noise machine turned up full blast and had the downstairs bathroom filled with hurricane supplies. The power went out about 11:45pm, about 5 minutes after I had drifted off to sleep on the couch. I tried to sleep in the closet with the boys for awhile, but it was too hot and crowded due to no A/C. Keith and I went outside the front door (there was no other way to see out of the house and we only boarded the glass portion of the front door so we could crawl out underneath) and took a little video of the wind a couple of times before it got too crazy. It was pitch dark, so there wasn't much to see. The kids woke up at some point in the middle of the night when things got really loud and were up for a few hours (we were all up at 3am when the storm looked as it does on the radar image above). I put them back to bed in the closet around 3:45am and dozed off and on for about 3 hours. It was impossible to stay asleep due to the wind banging and howling.

At 7:30am I went out to survey the damage and could see downed trees, and fences everywhere and water spraying into the air like a geyser from a broken water pipe. I took some video of around the neighborhood and am trying to get some of it uploaded ... more on that later. Later in the day we drove around the neighborhood and were floored by how many trees, fences and stop signs/street signs were flattened to the ground. Shingles were scoured off of some roofs. Sturdy trees and metal poles were on the ground from winds apparently going in North South East and West directions ... not in one direction at all. We were wondering of a small tornado didn't come through our area due to the concentrated patches of destruction from winds seeming to come from every direction.

We were without power for only 15 hours or so, which is unbelievably lucky. Lots of our neighbors still don't have power, and some are without water. We ran a generator just to power our fridge until the power came back on, but still lost a fair amount of food ... it just tastes wrong, so we threw it out. It had been 8 hours or more with no power before we could safely get outside and power up the generator.

Our gate and short section of fence blew down on one side of our house, and a long section of fence on the other side of our yard has a serious lean to it so we have it propped up with boards so it doesn't fall over. A large branch broke off of a small tree in our front yard. We lost a section of gutter and flashing from the back of the house. A small tree broke in half in our back yard - which is great because we wanted to get rid of it anyway. LOL! We lost 5 large branches from our wonderful shade tree in the back yard, so now there is a gaping hole in the shade cover. Keith and I bet money our front tree would fall down but even though 9 trees went down in the four houses directly next to us, our front tree was spared. We also thought our back patio that I re-roofed last year would fall down in it's entirety, but it only suffered one tiny puncture.

We have been so incredibly blessed and protected. God really had his hands over our family and our home. We pray for everyone else who is still suffering and thank the Lord for seeing us through this storm.