During Hurricane Ike

Southeast Texas was safe from the hurricane the week leading up to Ike making landfall. Unfortunately as most hurricanes do, Ike turned and headed straight for the Southeast coast line of Texas. That change put the Golden Triangle in the Northeast quandrant of the storm, the worst area to be in a hurricane. Thursday (9/11) we woke up with a message saying Jefferson County had a mandatory evacuation for the storm surge. Meterologists said the storm surge could get as high as 20 feet in our county. That was a little bit scary. That meant if the sea wall levees didn't hold the entire county would have flooding. My family spent the day doing laundry, packing, and playing Wii Fit. We let everyone else in the county leave the area so we wouldn't be stuck in traffic. The eye of Ike hit Saturday between 1 & 2 AM 1 mile short of being at Category 3.

We evacuated to Lufkin, TX and watched the weather channel all night long. One of the TV stations from Beaumont was streaming on the internet, so we left the laptop up and running to get the local news of our area. We lost the electricity about 7:30 AM and it did not come back on until Monday afternoon. When Ike hit Lufkin, it was only a Category 1. I took my phone outside and stood on the porch to take pictures with the camera on it and captured a couple videos. The debris wasn't too bad around my brother's house, but other parts of Lufkin had trees falling down. You can only imagine what the Golden Trinagle looked like and Galveston Bay where the eye hit. The worst part about being outside during the storm was a pine needle got picked up by the wind and hit me in the leg. It left a red mark for a few minutes. It hurt for a few minutes too. The pine needle came a pretty far distance because my brother didn't have any pine trees in his yard.

The storm lasted a while and then it was over. After that all we could do was wonder what home looked like since the national networks would only focus on Galveston and Houston and nothing about the Golden Triangle. We didn't have power, so we couldn't get online and watch the internet feed from home. My parents went back home Sunday to check on our home even though the evacuation order wasn't lifted. Several of the neighboring cities were under water, but thankfully our home was safe. Now the only problem was the massive power outage, and Entergy wouldn't say when the power would be back.

The videos don't give the wind speed and storm justice.