The power is back on.
Maybe this time it means it?
The power is back on.
Maybe this time it means it?
Perhaps I have spoken too soon.
The power is off again.
Just as I was getting accustomed to the idea of having air-conditioning.
At last, our story reaches its inevitable conclusion: by 5:10pm this afternoon, power had finally been fully restored to the last segment of Conroe without.
The crowds have returned home from where ever it is that they ran off to, and it is as if nothing had ever happened. I hope that we do manage to learn from this. There was still so much potential for this as disaster. It is easy to suggest that perhaps things would have been easier on the roads had more people who did not need to evacuate or live in a frequently flooded area had stayed, but what if they had stayed - and their infrequently flooded home was washed away?
I have had another discussion with the robot today:
"Repairs have been made, and power has been restored to your area!"
Like hell it has.
"Please confirm that power has been restored in your area! Please press one now!"
I'm waiting...
"If power has not been restored in your area, please press two now!"
2.
"Power has been restored to your area!"
2!
"Power has been restored to your area!"
2!
"I am sorry, but your number can not be connected as dialed! Have a nice day!"
click!
I am really disappointed in Hurricane Rita.
All of this bluster and show; blotting out half of the Gulf Coast when viewed by satellite, a thousand special reports on the news, and an evacuation that drained the coast of millions, closing out all economic services a full two days before the storm itself arrived... and in the end, when her moment came: sound and fury, signifying... nothing.
The rain was more ferocious when I sat in my rental car upon the high Colorado Plateau in Utah. There is no colossal devastation, no trees torn from branches and tossed through the windshield of my car, no constant wail of emergency vehicles moving fast.
As of one PM, it had stopped raining in Conroe, and the wind has died down. It picked up again at intervals, but this breeze only sought to cool us by blowing away the humidity, and to sweep the roads clean of leaves already fallen. By two-thirty, I could see the sun peeking through the clouds, and by four, sharp stakes of sunlight finally cut broad holes through our bilious cover to reveal the bright blue sky above. The small puddles here and there had already begun to dry under its rays.
Perhaps I should not complain: we have dodged a bullet here today. There will be no more loss of life than there already has been, no hundreds drowned in their cars as they tried to escape, no impoverished neighborhoods washed out to sea. People will be able to return to their homes and their jobs and their lives, and things will continue to be as they have always been.
More than I am disappointed in Rita, I am disappointed in our response to it.
In particular, I am disappointed in my electrical company, Entergy - and more disappointed than usual today.
Andrew really doesn't like cold showers.
Four years ago during Tropical Storm Allison, when the Medical Center of Houston was a sinking wreck, and the 610 loop had become the gateway to Atlantis - I still had power at the height of the storm.
Many of my neighbors are now leaving after the storm because the power is still not back up.
When called, Entergy's recorded message of comfort sounds suspiciously as if it were put up before the hurricane even struck. After all, it talks in present tense about the extensive damage and flooding we're all having to endure.
My walk to survey the devastation reveals power on the other side of the interstate and south of 105. As the afternoon moves into evening, I watch these lights approach my own home - and then stop at the fenceline. My parking lot is well lit, but my apartment is not. By eight PM, all power had been restored to all areas in Conroe except for my complex and a one block section to the North of me.
A robot calls to inform me that power to my area has been restored.
The robot obviously isn't sitting alone in the dark like I am.
NPR on KUHF calls me to consciousness as usual. Their top story isn't even on hurricane Rita, and it is the 'morning report' - as usual. Outside, the wind whips a few leaves across my window, and the rain continues in its patter.
I am disgusted to find that there still isn't any power in my apartment. The alarm continues to run on its batteries.
I sigh, kill the alarm, roll over, and pull the covers higher over my head.
Sleep.
Rita must be here. I wonder why I am awake, and I suspect that it is because the power has gone out. The air within my apartment has grown silent and still as the regular breeze of ceiling fans and the gentle rumble of my air conditioner has ceased. The wind outside whispers in quiet response, and there is only a gentle but steady fall of rain outside.
Sleep.
The rain has picked up a little, but it remains irregular, and has yet to be more powerful than a Texas summer storm. There must be some sort of issue with the power - I am getting the occasional flicker from the lights, but nothing out of the ordinary. Well - out of the ordinary for a developed nation, but I live in Texas at the mercy of Entergy.
I give up waiting - I'm going to bed.
Sleep.
The sun has set, and the air outside is still. There is a mild drizzle, but nothing hinting at the significance rumored to be growing but twelve hours to the South and East of us. Many of my neighbors are having small house parties, and the smells of charcoal and grilled meat wafts to me through the moist air. Tonight is no different than any of a thousand other Texas nights.
The wind picks up again, but it is a playful and cool breeze, swirling away the humidity and carrying the laughter and conversations of my neighbors to my ears.
Is this really the calm before the storm?
We will see what twelve hours brings.
The wind has finally started to pick up, and the sky has gone from a washed out and bleary yellow to an increasingly bruise-like blue and purple. I do believe that Rita is ready to make her presence known.
I feel that I have become a tourist in my own town. There are so many people on the road, I barely recognize Conroe. I wander like a voyeur, peering into the sullen windows of a tragedy in the making. The traffic and my amazement only grew as the day passed away into evening. I wish I'd brought the camera out for my second tour near nightfall, as the Interstate and all of the access roads had been clogged with thousands of cars, their white headlamps stretched as far as the eye could see to the South, and their ruby taillights shone like a sparkling velvet carpet into the North.
Of greater concern are those who for whatever reason have been forced to abandon their cars or the road. The Kroger grocery store they had pulled up to was closed, but the parking lot was full of transients. They were mostly poor, and mostly black and hispanic. It was as if the third world had driven up for the weekend and decided to host an enormous tailgate party. Their children ran and played with soccer balls and skateboards in the parking lot, and the men smoked cigarettes and looked serious. The women appeared weary, and searched for water and gasoline with empty gallon jars. The better prepared families brought small camp-stoves and portable grills from within their crowded vehicles, and began to share a generous and impromptu barbeque with their spontaneous new neighbors. Festive Mexican ballads and the steady thump of gangsta rap echoed across the parking lot.
Yet for all this momentary joy, something sinister lurked beneath. This adventure has stopped being exciting, and started to taste more of simple human desperation. Being poor puts a lot of strikes against you. You're less likely to be informed of the evacuation orders, and you are far less likely to have a vehicle in good repair with which to depart in. You are less likely to have the spare cash available to fuel or repair that vehicle as you need it, or to provide additional food or lodging to you and your family. Worse still, your job may have required you to work right past the ideal hour for evacuation, serving others more fortunate as they leave the city. When you finally do get off of work, you may find additional institutional barriers impeding your access to cash even if you do have a paycheck, as none of the banks or pawn shops upon which you usually rely to cash your check are now open.
These folks are just struggling to survive, and more importantly, struggling to help their families survive. If and when the storm starts, and if they are still trapped in the open of that parking lot - I hope that they kick in the windows of the grocery store and seek shelter. I won't blame them. They're just trying to survive.
Had to get a few photos of this:
All three photos were taken from the Wilson Road overpass looking South onto Interstate-45. The first shot was taken at a little after one, the other two were taken at half-past two. Traffic was moving at a much greater pace than it was yesterday. I would have had to jog to keep up with vehicles at one, but they had slowed down to walking speed by two-thirty. Nowhere near as bad as yesterday's "fifteen minutes per half-mile" - but they did open up all of the southbound lanes on I-45 from the Woodlands to Corsicana, so...
Yeah.
Still a little more than forty-six hours before Luv-lee Rita, Hurr-i-cane (nothing can come be-tween us!) makes landfall in Houston, and the place is already a madhouse. While not quite running on fumes, my gas tank was very nearly empty this morning. There was no way that I could make it in to work - and then return home! - especially if traffic kept up the way that it has been.
So I drove the thirteen miles Eastwards down 105 to Cut-n-Shoot, Texas, in search of a pump rumored to be full of gas. Cut-n-Shoot has more claims to fame than merely a full tank of gasoline, mind you. It is also the 'wild-animal' capital of Texas. There is a larger population of tigers there than anyplace else in the world except India, and while India has a greater total tiger population, the population density of tigers is much greater here in Montgomery County. Which leads to some interesting stories in the news every now and again, because as Sigfreid and Roy found out the hard way: tigers don't make great pets.
It is bad enough when the SPCA has to send in Animal Rescue for malnourished, abused or abandoned house cats, right?
On the road to Cut-n-Shoot, I stopped at three gas stations. All three of them were closed, but there were no signs over the pumps to indicate whether they were full or empty. No matter - they were also all the old-style pump which could only be paid for in cash at the counter of the locked and barricaded gas-station. At the fourth station, I hit jackpot. This gas station was also closed, but it accepted credit cards. Given the sheer volume of people at this place nearly sixteen miles off the main evacuation route, I suspect that the only reason this station still had gasoline available was because it was only accepting credit cards.
Cut-n-Shoot really isn't a credit card kind of town, dig?
So when I pulled up and produced a credit card with which to pay for my gas, I was confronted by an older hispanic gentleman of limited english speaking ability and the wide eyes of his children, peering through the windows of their ancient brown Civic. You could see the strain in the wrinkled edges of his face, and the dust on his car spoke of one that was far from home, and not sure when he would be back.
He had cash, and I had access.
An exchange was made, and you could see the relief seep into the man like water in the desert.
After this, I turned and headed back towards my apartment, Interstate-45, and work. Then the announcement came out over the radio: I-45 S had been closed, and was now being opened to Northbound traffic to ease the evacuation. I-45 is the only road directly linking the Woodlands where I work to my home in Conroe. All other options would involve driving at least an hour East or West to then turn back in and head through yet another road for which there was no gaurantee that it would not also have been closed to City-bound traffic.
To spend a day cutting mouse tails at a job I hate, after which I could then look forward to another two-hour drive home?
Unlikely.
It is amazing to realize that I am two days from a watery Armageddon, and that it is also an amazingly nice day outside. What is more amazing has been the further fallout from Katrina: nearly two million or more people are filtering North, evacuating the presumed landfall of lovely Rita. All of these people are leaving at once, and the road home from work has been clogged.
Oddly enough, I found myself in traffic behind a young blonde woman whom I did not recognize driving a dark-painted late-model Corolla. Rather, my inability to recognize her was only odd or significant because of all the people I could get stuck behind in traffic, it appears I got stuck behind a fellow Grinnellian. I'm still not sure she understood why I waved and flashed my lights and then gave her the thumbs-up just before I cut her off while pointing to the sticker on the back of my own car, but should the alumni network point her here, hello!
Can't buy ice, or candles, or bottled water, or an ice-chest, or a small portable parrafin or propane camp-stove to save my life. There has been a run on WalMart for ammunition. Every gas station for miles is out of gasoline, and I am down to an eighth of a tank. I may not be able to make it in to work tomorrow.
I am expected to lose power at some point for at least two days, and possibly seven.
I am sure that folks are overexaggerating the danger and all... but it really seems impractical, and I mostly suspect that Entergy is just going to slack off again and allow localized brownouts to go countywide again.
All this for what is probably going to be under fourteen inches of rain.
