Be safe Texas.

[Bleacher Creature]

bring them to the Houston area. saw them selling them off trailers
I got one Friday and and was glad i did
in Magnolia and still no pwer ,just got water last nite .
when rumor of gas stations open hits people take off and wait in up to 2hr. lines
saw at a kroger lines forming just cause someone parked at the pump?
heck i even pulled in to see if I could get a few gallons for the generator.
no Scholl for the next few days
we had a trees go though a number of homes in the area.
just propery damage and not too many lives lost ... well one is too many but you get the point

[DonnieS]

Do you have propane stoves, camping type stoves? How are you getting online? You will be surprised at how innovative you will become in the next few days and weeks. Hang tough - any thing we can do for you from the south part of God's country?

[Tucson]

My nephew in League City is getting on line with his Blackberry.

He returned home to a devastated backyard. The pool, 80 feet of fence, landscaping and outdoor kitchen are gone. I "think" that the house only lost a few shingles.

He sent me a picture of canned ravioli and spam that they had bought. I told him that I would roast a hotdog first.

They do have a generator and window A/C.

I think that people in my generation know how to get by. I guess it is time for his generation to figure it out, too. (I think that DD would be completely lost.)

Will the banks have generators? Can they run their computers?

[DonnieS]

He sent me a picture of canned ravioli and spam that they had bought. I told him that I would roast a hotdog first.

I ate a lifetime of spam and vienna sausages 38 years ago, I tried some spam a month or two back to see if I could stomach it yet, and if it had gotten any less greasier. Nope.

After Hurricane Celia, 38 years ago, I worked for a grocery company, most of our stores in our area were destroyed and our job at that time was handing out ice and cleaning out merchandise from the destroyed stores so the construction guys could do their job. We had a cook, Ed, who would cook hot meals for us each day with whatever he could find. He would take unmarked cans, cans that had the labels washed off during the storm, look through and find good stuff, like beef stew or corned beef hash or chili and put them in the big stew pot and cook them for us. One day, we saw him near the dog food aisle , didnt think much of it , but a few days later, we found out he had mixed Alpo in with our beef stew. We all talked about it, it wasnt that bad, compared to spam, but we assigned one kid each day to follow Ed and make sure that we werent depriving the local dogs from their Alpo. Now Kenl Ration was a different story, even hungry college kids have their standards, that stuff was nasty.

[Bleacher Creature]

I have a generator and an air card that just started to work yesterday
i run the generator about half a day (5/6 hrs in the A.M. and then in the afternoon evening)
about 6 gal per day,to keep the frige and freezers cold.
cant even work out on Softball as DD fx'd her ankle the monday before this thing hit. (freakin volleyball)
task for today is to go find fuel
saw on the rabbit ear T.V. lines of over a 100 cars lined up to get gas.
still have some in the boat if needed
thank goodness for the cold front and the cool nights.
BTW T-Mobil still no signal
ATT_ worked first then Verizon

[DonnieS]

I have a generator and an air card that just started to work yesterday
i run the generator about half a day (5/6 hrs in the A.M. and then in the afternoon evening)
about 6 gal per day,to keep the frige and freezers cold.

How big a generator do you have? We have family in the Sugarland area and Lake Livingston and Bellaire areas- we heard last on a 3rd party call that the Sugarland group were fine as of 6:00 am Saturday. Havent heard from the others yet. The ones in Sugarland - the hubby is in Nigeria and that is who we have heard from after a friend got a call out - 8000 miles to hear from 180 miles away.

[3'sDad]

The in-laws are up in The Woodlands...no power and localized loss of potable water due to trees being uprooted and tearing out the water lines. They filled their cars with gas and charge the mobile phones in the car....they also bought a $10 phone at Wal-Mart prior to the storm as phones with cords will work if the lines are still intact.

[Lefty's Dad]

We had a block party up until friday night about 10pm when the rain hit our area. From there on all he!! broke loose. Luckily we didn't get any damage but some neighbors weren't so lucky. We just got power this afternoon but did have a neighbor with a generator and helped us all out, you know, keeping the beer cold. Cell service got back to normal this morning. Damage around Houston is wierd, looks like a bunch of small tornados hit the whole city. Media wants to blame FEMA so bad for all kinds of stuff but the local government keeps telling them FEMA has done nothing but help. Looks like we get to play this coming weekend

[slider201]

We regained all of our utilities by Monday morning. Now waiting on the insurance company to send out an adjuster and wondering whether I should just go ahead and make repairs.

I tried to be prepared. I would have liked to have had a generator. A coworker purchased a 10kw arcwelder as a generator and is able to hook it into his 220v somehow.??

One thing I wish I had done was laundry. Get the clothes washed before the storm. Sweating our back sides off working outside ran through quite a bit of clothes.

About television digital transition: Digital transition is where all TV transmission after February 2009 will be digital, therefore analog TVs will no longer receive. Now, with a storm such as Ike, where power is out to 4 million people (2+/- million households), internet is out, telephone is out, cell phone service is terrible, where 99.99% of all important announcements/information/etc etc etc are transmitted over TV, what do we do? Our analog portable TVs won't work. As far as I have seen, there are no portable digital TVs. Where, how, with what do we get disaster information? Point to ponder.


Edited: OK, so there are portable digital TVs. The price of progress. I wonder if FEMA will give a coupon for a digital TV.

[Joe]

Letter to the national media from a volunteer nurse...another city, another hurricane...


Hello Mr. O'Reilly,

I am a nurse who has just completed working approximately 120 hours as the
clinic director in a Hurricane Gustav evacuation shelter in Shreveport,
Louisiana over the last 7 days. I would love to see someone look at the
evacuee situation from a new perspective. Local and national news channels have
covered the evacuation and "horrible" conditions the evacuees had to endure
during Hurricane Gustav.

True - some things were not optimal for the evacuation and the shelters need
some modification. At any point, does anyone address the responsibility (or
irresponsibility) of the evacuees?

Does it seem wrong that one would remember their cell phone, charger,
cigarettes and lighter but forget their child's insulin?

Is something amiss when an evacuee gets off the bus, walks immediately to
the medical area, and requests immediate free refills on all medicines for which
they cannot provide a prescription or current bottle (most of which are
narcotics)?

Isn't the system flawed when an evacuee says they cannot afford a $3 copay
for a refill that will be delivered to them in the shelter yet they can take a
city-provided bus to Wal-mart, buy 5 bottles of Vodka, and return to consume
them secretly in the shelter?

Is it fair to stop performing luggage checks on incoming evacuees so as not
to delay the registration process but endanger the volunteer staff and other
persons with the very realistic truth of drugs, alcohol and weapons being brought
into the shelter?

Am I less than compassionate when it frustrates me to scrub emesis from the
floor near a nauseated child while his mother lies nearby, watching me work
26 hours straight, not even raising her head from the pillow to comfort her own
son?

Why does it insense me to hear a man say "I ain't goin' home 'til I get my
FEMA check", when I would love to just go home and see my daughters who I have
only seen 3 times this week?

Is the system flawed when the privately insured patient must find a way to
get to the pharmacy, fill his prescription and pay his copay while the FEMA
declaration allows the uninsured person to acquire free medications under
the disaster rules?

Does it seem odd that the nurse volunteering at the shelter is paying for
childcare while the evacuee sits on a cot during the day as the shelter
provides a "day care"?

Have government entitlements created this mentality and am I facilitating it
with my work? Will I be a bad person, merciless nurse or poor Christian if I hesitate to
work at the next shelter because I have worked for 7 days being called every
curse word imaginable, felt threatened and feared for my personal safety in the
shelter?

Exhausted and battered but hopefully pithy,

Sherri Hagerhjelm, RN