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Riding
Out Hurricane Ike in Houston, Texas
By Rajesh Anand
Oct. 13, 2008 |
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The drone
of the vehicles speeding at 65 miles per hour on
the freeway barely a couple of hundred metres
from my 3rd floor apartment in North Gessner,
Houston, Texas is monotonously constant. The
noise recedes quite significantly when the doors
and windows are closed but with slight
concentration the 24x7x365 sound is very audible
especially in the quiet of night. The one-room
apartment in the residential community called
“the Franklin” which is my home for 8 weeks
while I am on an assignment to work on the front
end engineering of an oil and gas project is
cozy, well laid out and very well furnished. The
apartment standards are, clearly, very
impressive in US going by experiences of my
previous stays. As a minimum, the floors are
carpeted, the rooms designed with plenty of
storage space including a walk-in wardrobe and
the furniture provided are very functional and
comfortable. The bed, this time round, is not a
slinking type, the one which had caused me a
nagging pain during my stay in Houston on a
similar assignment in 2002, the year of SARC.
The kitchen is equipped with all gadgets
including a sleek dishwasher and a huge fridge
(for the size of the flat) which makes cooking
chores quite simple and easy. In a nutshell, the
unit is too good for someone with a modest taste
and needs. It is not easy to have a sound sleep,
and at 4 am in the morning, the brahm muhurtam (
2 hours before the sunrise, which is considered
the best time for spiritual saadhna - the legend
says Lord Shiva especially takes a round to make
a note as who amongst us are awake and
remembering the divine), I open the door to the
balcony and hear the sound of the vehicles
zipping past on the freeway which is so much
louder in the open. The number of vehicles at
this unearthly hour is incredibly high. Some of
these vehicles are real big, the likes of which
I could not ever have imagined. In US everything
is big – cars, trucks, water cans, bakery
products, milk packs, yogurt packs etc. etc.
My thoughts turn to the burning topic of the
week which is the hurricane Ike. Ike is to hit
the Texas coast today. Our client, where we are
assigned, has declared a holiday. In fact, the
majority of the offices in Houston city are
closed. Everyone has been advised to remain
indoors, to board their glass windows (nail
wooden planks) and to stock up food, water etc.
to ride out the hurricane. In US, they call it
“hunkering down”. The areas which are close to
the coast including parts of low-lying Houston
are being evacuated. Curfew has also been
imposed in certain areas. A fellow acquaintance,
Ravi Ranjan who works in JP Morgan in Singapore
and whom I met in the flight and who was in
Houston for a weeklong business trip, has moved
to Dallas as advised by his Houston office.
Somehow, similar plans of ours have not
materialized and now it is too late to try
flying out of Houston. My friends and I have
visited the nearby shopping mall Kroger last
evening and brought quite a few food and other
items such as canned water, fruit juice, buns,
cheese, fruits, biscuits, candles, a lighter
etc. Haldiram packets, Kaju barfis and Moori
(puffed rice) brought from Mustafa in Singapore
are there too. The safety department of the
local company has clearly warned us to be fully
prepared for water and power outage which can
last up to two weeks. The administration has
also helped us in all possible ways by providing
the essentials such as additional cans of water,
eatables and a torch apart from giving us a full
briefing in advance which was of great great
value.
I pass the day looking out into the balcony and
simultaneously watching TV which is broadcasting
a running commentary of the happenings from the
potential hurricane zones. I also occasionally
glance at the windows and the roof which do not
promise to be capable of bearing the higher
categories of the Saffir Simpson hurricane
scale. Ike is supposed to be a category 3
hurricane (maximum wind speed 203 kms/hour and a
maximum storm surge of 12 feet). However, my
mind fears what if it becomes category 4, “will
the house apparently constructed with relatively
thinner walls and steel frames be good enough?”
The words of the HSE director sound somewhat
scary “At the time of the storm, hide into the
safest place of the house, say, the bathroom,
lie down in the bath tub with a few thick rugs
over you”. I am at my wits end. Should I really
take his words by the letter? Moreover, he has
also asked us to fill the bath tub with water
since the taps will go off in the hurricane and
the tub water will be required for the barest of
the bathroom ablutions. Gingerly, I start
filling the tub, an act which was to prove to be
a very intelligent one to do. In my mind, I have
already decided to sleep in my bed with the
windows tightly closed behind the venetian
blinds. I survey the neighborhood and assure
myself that with houses on both sides of my
apartment block, the chances of the windows and
roofs being blown off are quite remote.
By late afternoon, the tell-tale signs of the
impending storm are palpable. The clouds are all
over. The sunshine has started to fade. Some of
my other colleagues living in the same
residential community pay a visit and run
through the do’s and don'ts. I tell them about
my plans of not hiding in the bathroom and
instead of riding it out sleeping in my bed. As
expected, the Ike is about to arrive in the
coast now. The daredevil correspondents of the
local channels are out in the field giving a
full picture from the coastal areas as well as
from the city. I can easily observe the rapidly
deteriorating weather and a drizzle has also
started. The latest news is that the hurricane
will hit the city at about midnight. It is about
9 pm now. For once, the freeway has become
quiet. Other than an occasional car or a truck,
there is no movement at all. Soon, there will be
no vehicles there. The TV shows footage of some
Galvestonians (residents of the famous Galveston
town which was the scene of the worst hurricane
in the history of America which killed nearly
8,000 people in 1900) who have refused to be
evacuated. The correspondent asks a lady why has
she taken such a risk of remaining in her house
and she replies “you know we Galvestonians are
like that. All my life, I have lived here and it
is not at all easy for me to move out with my
cattle and the pets.” By now, the coastal parts
of Galveston are already getting flooded due to
storm surge. The TV shows another lady and her
pet dog being rescued from a marooned location.
Miraculously, my roaming mobile phone which has
been failing me constantly, starts to work. By
this time, the storm has really picked up. I am
now busy reading news reports on my laptop. All
this will soon be luxury because the power
failure appears a certainty as I can feel the
growing intensity of the storm outside. And
inevitably so, the power goes off plunging
everything around us in pitch dark. I am still
not sure whether the hurricane has hit the city.
The scene outside (observed from inside by
slightly opening the balcony door which is so
difficult against the powerful wind force) is
chaotic and a tornado like situation has already
built up. On my miracle mobile I make a couple
of calls to my family in Bangalore. They are
watching the live reports about Houston city and
informing me about the hurricane. For the next
2-3 hours or so until the hurricane had
completely passed over, my wife continues to
give me the update. “The hurricane has hit
Galveston, curfew has been imposed in Houston,
the entire Houston city is pitch dark, some of
the downtown Houston offices have had their
windows completely smashed etc.”
The next 2-3 days that we spent confined in our
apartments without electricity, telephone and
water and on a diet of cold snacks and bread
were indeed a humbling experience. There was no
fire to cook. The cooking range I had runs on
electricity. The TV and the laptop were gone and
the mobile phone was also about to go dead with
the fading battery. It was abundantly clear that
no matter how much advancements we make in
science and technology, a little twists and
turns by nature are enough to deflate our pride.
That exactly was the case when we were filling
our bathtubs to prepare for the power and water
outage or when we were contemplating hiding in
the safest locations in our house to protect
ourselves from a possible smashing of windows or
damages to the roof itself. The 13 trillion
dollars economy of America representing a 25%
share of the world’s GDP seemed helpless. Every
morning, in the next couple of days, we would
hope for the restoration of power and water but
the damages were widespread and it took the
authorities quite a while to restore the
services which was decided to be done in a
prioritized manner. Luckily, the audio tapes of
spiritual discourses and a battery operated
audio cassette walkman, which I do not normally
carry with me became the best companions. The
walkman had a radio too which helped me to get
the local news through its FM channel. On the
2nd day after the hurricane, during the relaxed
curfew hours, we ventured to set out in our car
into downtown Houston and saw the devastations
closely. The worst was the traffic lights which
in Houston hang from the cables. Many of them
had broken loose. While driving, we came across
a number of houses which had been damaged by the
trees falling over them. We desperately wanted
to sit in a café and have some coffee or tea.
But that was not possible. The water and power
outage had completely paralyzed the city. In the
melee, we could hardly identify the roads
leading to Hillcroft Avenue, famous for numerous
Indian shops, restaurants etc. In any case
Hurricane Ike was one of the most severe storms
in the history of USA. For most of us, there was
no precedent of this situation. Fortunately, the
storm was close to a category 3 only when it hit
the coast. It still brought down a number of
trees, traffic lights, window panes and
billboards etc. in Houston glimpses of which
some of you might have seen in the news. That
the loss of life in the coastal areas was
minimal was thanks to advance warnings and
preparations by the government and the
respective agencies who did a commendable job.
As I write this article, everything is back to
normal. Actually, within a week’s time, most
part of the city was functional. The gas
stations had opened and so had the malls.
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