To all our friends,
First, we want to express our appreciation for the barrage of concern we've gotten since Ike hit Galveston. Although the news channels seem to have pounced on the disaster, the following link will give you some visual idea of the devastation:
From what can be determined, although Ike was just under a Category 3 when it hit Galveston, the storm surge was greater than anything measured in the past 100 years. If you saw the storm on the satellite feeds, you saw that the storm was as large as the state of Texas.
We are currently staying at a friend's home in Richmond, Texas, about seventy miles from Galveston. We have not been able to get on the island to personally assess the damage to our home. However, we were fortunate to have a couple of friends who were on the island briefly and able to go by and inspect things. We came our far luckier than most. It appears that if water reached into our house, it just got to the floorboards, then receded. There's a chance it didn't even get our rugs wet, which would be incredibly lucky. Our garages and the Tiki Room did not fare so well. The description we got was that it looked like 'a bomb hit it'. Thus we are bidding farewell to our cute little Mercedes, a couple of motorcycles, lots of power tools and all those other sundries we all store in garages.
The pool is filled with debris and black. Big deal. The yard is covered with limbs and crap. Big deal. The fence blew down in spots. Who cares. The fish pond is sans fish. Sad for the fish. Hope they swam off to someplace peaceful.
Our plans remain up in the air. For now, here's what we're thinking: We will stay with our friend Linda for at least a couple of weeks. We have a trip planned to meet Colin and Diane in New Orleans in about 10 days. Seems like a good diversion, so we're still going. Thereafter, we'll come back here and hopefully there will at least be water and sewer on the island.We have a big generator and lots of gear to get going on the clean-up. We have an upstairs game room with its own kitchen and air conditioning. We can live there. We anticipate a protracted, frustrating ordeal with insurance companies.
Clif has volunteered to serve as an emergency physician with FEMA/Red Cross. Some of you know he did this back in the Katrina/Rita fiasco. He is waiting to hear if they need him.
Once things are fairly secure, we suspect we will close up and head back to Crested Butte for a while.
We consider ourselves far luckier than most. We have our health, our resources, and most importantly our friends and family. Please consider contributing to those who need help far more than we.
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