It's 12:45p Friday afternoon. Surfside is flooded - Highway 257 is covered by the Intracoastal Waterway. In Galveston the seawall is covered with debris. The waves are crashing up to about 20 in the air when they hit. There are some of the stupidest people in the world standing on the edge of the seawall taking pictures of the waves. How stupid can humanity be? There you go. That's it.
There are still people on Boliver. OK. I guess that's stupider. One guy was just saying on the phone that They missed the last ferry last night, and that by the time they tried to get out on 87 it was covered with water, and Rollover Pass was inundated. There are 150 calls piled up with the Coast Guard on Boliver, people asking that they and their families be rescued. Do they not know that helicopters can't fly in high wind? Oh, did I say Too Stupid To Live? LITERALLY? You've probably never been on Boliver. I've been going there for about 30 years. Go look at your kitchen counter. Take a pound of sugar. Open the bag and pour it out in a long line along the counter. The counter is the Gulf on one side, Galveston and Trinity Bay on the other. The sugar is Boliver. Oh, wait. Run your hand along the line of sugar and flatten it out a little more. There. That's Boliver. It's flat. FLAT. Highest elevation is 10 feet. Sort of like the brains of the people still on the peninsula.
The winds down there aren't about 40mph yet. This is just water now. No rain. We've got about 5mph up here in Spring Branch. We're forecast for about 85mph sustained by about 3am. I hate it when a storm comes in at night. You don't get to see it and there isn't any good video later. There is looting in Kemah. LOOTING!! Already!! Broadway is flooded on Galveston.
I have some relatives hiding in the dog track at Texas City - they can't leave their dogs. Texas City has a levee, but lots of the people there have finally realized that the seawall might keep the bay from doing to them what is happening on Galveston, but it's not going to stop the overflow and the backfill. Again, stupid. People in Texas City are saying "We went through Alicia and we were fine!" How many synonyms are there for IDIOTS?
We've taken pictures of everything. We've got the food, the water, the flashlights, the Beijin radio so we can hear the weather after we loose the lights. We're about to pack a couple of bags so that if we need to leave the house we can just grab them and we'll have some clothes and our Must Have papers. And my jewelry box of course. The Black Dog is low maintenance thank goodness.
We haven't boarded up - we've got everything that could maybe fly in the garage. I'm about to go out and chop down the hibiscus that is next the the bedroom window. The BIG trees by our house are on the south side so if they tear out they're likely to land on the neighbors to the left instead of us. Our front yard oak is only about 9 years old so it's not big enough to tear out the whole roof it it comes down. It would just take out the dining room. The garage door is strapped down. The Honda is out front so we can use it after the storm if we need to, or so the Miata will be safe in the garage and we'll have one good car if we loose the Honda. We've got the safe room almost ready - water, dry food. Towels, radio, pillows, blankets. I was a couple of years from being born during Carla but my Mother always talked about it with horror in her voice.
I've heard "hunker down" 18 times so far. Three of them were from The Husband. I threatened to kill him. Now he's saying "shelter in place." Better. I'll be back. Gotta go chop down the hibiscus.Labels: headlines, personal urban drama, texas |
