What we learned from Hurricane Ike

In September Hurricane Ike ripped through Texas with a vengeance. My Sister Marva, husband Steve and kids, though they resided hundreds of miles north of hardest hit Galveston, still lived through a exciting adventure. They were well prepared with food and provisions but learned many things through their experiences.

After talking with her on the phone after the ordeal I discovered that they had been without power for over 10 days. I asked her about what they had learned and she told me some very interesting things. I also asked if she would write her insights down so they could be shared with others. I have, with her permission included the text of her email below and hope you will ponder and prepare as you may in you own situations.

"I wrote many thoughts I had down about our experience with "Ike" the other night. My thoughts are jumbled, figured it would be better to send you this jumbled than not at all.

Generator: would have been nice for a fan and the fridge.
Next storm, I will put all the frozen food into the fridge to help keep the food cold longer.

I was amazed at how quickly fatigue set in. (Laundry in the tub, carrying water & not sleeping well because of the heat, but more because of the smoke from burning wood.)

When I plug in my freezer in the garage, I will be freezing large blocks of ice to keep on hand. I heard people here did that after "Rita" and had them ready when "Ike" came.

I would have had many more paper towels on hand. I was amazed at all the kitchen and bath towels we went through. (We did go in the back yard when it rained the following day, to cool off and collect water.) I think I washed my kitchen towels three or four times. I was always worried about cross contamination.

Luckily I had screws, rope and clothespins to make a clothes line between the fence posts in the corner of the yard, initially it was in the garage. I wish I would have had more clothespins. There were no where to be purchased.

It would have been nice if the cordless drill battery had of worked (we need a replacement), next time I will recharged the battery the day before. I made the clothes line with a screw driver and had to take down the plywood off the first and second windows with regular screw driver.

I would like to purchase a siphon for the gas tank. So that we don't have to worry about having multiple gas cans for our new generator. We keep our large van gassed up.

It would have been nice to have 2 or 4 electric or stand up lamps. Our kitchen does not have a window close to the stove, we felt like we were always cooking in the dark. We did realize after a few days that we had a hurricane lamp and oil. We were in heaven!

I was surprised at how many matches we used. Between the candles, gas stove and lamp we went through a lot.

Remember, the early bird gets the ice from stores, but waiting in line for FEMA is not worth 4 miles of gasoline and 4 hours of frustration. We chose to go with out rather than stand in long lines. We did discover that gas stations out of the way were stocked with ice. Who would have thought?

Heavy duty paper plates, bowls, silverware and cups would have come in handy. We had the good bowls, but found our plates wilted in the humidity of the air before the food. SO we decided to use real plates. Which gave us the opportunity to wash many dishes by hand. We used the dishwasher as a drying rack. I was surprised at the amount of water it took to do dishes.

We were always worrying about cross contamination of food and counter tops, because we cooked so much raw meat. We ended up going and getting 3 container of Clorox wipes after using what we had in the house, just so we wouldn't worry as much.

We found it helpful to use a small tub to wash dishes in, and rinse them in the sink that did not have the disposal. We did not want to have a foul smell from food in the disposal. We then flushed the dish water down the toilet.

Remember, if its yellow, let it mellow. If it is brown flush it down. At first I had the kids just pour water into the toilet. Then I realized that was counterproductive and we took the lids off all the toilets and kept the tanks full.

We always keep candy in our 72 hour kit. The Jolly Ranchers became one big piece of candy-even in the unopened original bag. Star Bursts and individually wrapped Life Savers were awesome!

What surprised us the most was that we never ate the food in our 72 hour kit. Except for the granola bars, they were nearing their expiration date, and there were kids always looking for a snack. We ate whatever was in the fridge and freezer. We had a unusually large bag of flour tortillas and ended up eating chicken casadillas more often than I would like to admit. They were easy to customize and make. We boiled the chicken, chopped it up. We even made homemade tortillas, none were to be had in the stores. We did have to Google the recipe though.

We have always meant to get a water bladder for the tub. Here is the link:

http://www.redcrossstore.org/Shopper/Product.aspx?UniqueItemId=197&Page=1&StartAtPage=1&SId=353714&LocationId=0

http://www.redcrossstore.org/shopper/ProdList.aspx?LocationId=1

Water became more of a luxury than electricity did. The night it started raining after the storm passed I got up, maybe I was a little fanatical, but with 90 degree weather and 90 humidity can you blame me. I woke some of the kids to help me empty plastic bins to collect rain water. I dumped out Christmas containers, sewing supplies etc. I did not want to be without water. It was refreshing to be out in the rain, we even took some soap and kind of had a shower. We ended up boiling some of the water to use for dishes and to warm up water from the tub to take a shower with a small bucket.

The storm brought unseasonably cooler weather. What a blessing this was!!!!!!
Texans are hard working people. Before the rain from "Ike" had completely stopped, many were out with chainsaws cutting trees that had fallen on roads. When we took a ride to see the damage, it was amazing to see what people were already doing.

When we finish repacking our 72 hour kit, I will not worry so much about mobility. Living here, there is no where to go. I would rather be in my home than on a freeway stuck in traffic. I think that I will also label and make a master list of the contents. When the kids and I helped a couple a street over, I was eaten by fire ants and discovered we did not have any Benedryl. We went out at 9 p.m. and discovered that nothing was open due to the curfew, not even a CVS by the hospital. While we were gone, the kids discovered that we had Benedryl in the 72 hour kit. It had not even occurred to me to look.

It was a good experience for us. Some of the other comments the family made were:
They were amazed at the number of hours of darkness.

It was nice to have a UPS for the Internet. A few days when the phone worked we were able to see pictures of what had happened. We would have liked to have seen more pictures. We saw very little of the destruction.

It was nice to have work gloves. I would like to get more for when they get wet(sweaty) or muddy.

We had a portable radio which was wonderful to be able to hear the news.
We had charged our batteries and mp3 players.

We did the laundry before the storm. We ended up wearing clothes that would survive being washed in the tub and bleach int he sun.

Chinese checkers is fun to play with six players. Although, as the sun goes down it is hard to distinguish the marble colors.

We gassed all the vehicles 2 days before the storm, lines were short. Lines were extremely long the day before the storm.

We boarded up the back of the house, we did not worry about what the neighbors think. It seen kind of weird putting up boards 2 days before the storm in 90 degree weather. We knew that it would be breezy the next day. We did see another neighbor doing a few windows. We tied rope around the boards, used the ladder as a pulley to hoist them up to the second story. We could have used more rope and kept the ropes on some of the higher boards. (A previous storm, many in the neighbor hood had taken down sections of fence and covered their windows.)
We had about 12 sheets of plywood in the garage. Did not have to go stand in line at Lowes. It took longer and hard work to put the boards up on the windows. Although, I must confess that we have many windows.
The nice thing about boarding up the windows was that Steve and I slept through the night. I know that I would have worried all night it I had not put the boards up. We heard stories of how loud the storm was. Danny came down stairs because it was so loud.

My last piece of advice is: take care of you and those around you. For days we saw the lines at grocery stores, gas stations, donut shops, FEMA, Subway, etc. and were glad that we did not have to wait in line. I was at the grocery store Thursday Oct 2, the store finally looked fully stocked. I was surprised at how long it took for things like eggs, milk, bread, Miracle Whip to be stocked in the stores. It had never really occurred to me that not only was there a run on the stores before the storm, but that after power was restored people needed to restock all the foods they had lost.

I do miss the simplicity that we enjoyed. It was good to take time to stop and reevaluate what is important. Replacing the annoying washing machine that I have is not even a priority anymore. I was surprised at how I reacted some of the time. I do not think I realized the amount of stress and fatigue we were all under. We did not even have any damaged. I cannot even comprehend what others are going through. I will confess that I was getting a little whiny that last day.

The last observation I have is that not having power was the toughest on Steve. I wish I would have realized it sooner.

But life is good. We were watched over and had opportunities to serve others. Sometime I need to tell you the story of going to help one of the members of our ward, but ended up helping someone else that needed assistance.

I think I have a better perspective of life and challenges. There are so many good things that come from tough times. The future looks way more challenging than this hurricane was.

Hard work, faith and service goes a long way.

Gotta Go.
Love Marva"