September 2008
34 posts
Mayor White gets it
2:40 CT. Just getting around to reading the Chronicle. Mayor Bill White has a great op-ed. I can’t get the URL since Blackberry service is still spotty but it’s worth checking out on Chron.com.
Crash the mall
2:05 CT.
The photo below is from the Wachovia ATM at Willowbrook Mall in northwest Houston. It was showing the Windows failed boot screen. About half the stores at the mall were open, lest people go without emergency personalized gravy boats, Abercrombie logo shirts, and Bluetooth headets. The snake oil salesmen working from carts were pushier than usual. The Vonage cart was closed down. I...
Op-ed in New York Sun about Ike →
I have an op-ed in Monday’s New York Sun about the first 48 hours of the post-Ike recovery period.
Money grafs:
Because city and county governments are doing what they should do — enforcing the law, sharing critical information, and making honest assessments of the status and future of public services — they have cleared the way for the private sector to respond effectively. By yesterday...
WatchThe view from the front window early Saturday morning after the worst had passed. Buy the time day broke, we were down to tropical storm winds, but the trees that hadn’t snapped during the night were doing their best impressions of hippies as a Phish concert.
Lights!!
7:43 CT Lights are on! Total downtime 40 hours 39 minutes. Not bad all things considered. Found a restaurant that was open around 5. Had a burger. Warren Zevon is right — you gotta enjoy every sandwich. But I was getting pretty tired of them.
5:45 CT Out abd about for the first time. Trees ripped out by their roots, fences down, few places have electricity. Traffic lights all out but people are driving nicely. Spent the afternoon cleaning up the yard along with the neighborhood. The linemen came by to assess the situation — say we might get power tonight but no promises. The neighbor lady baked them cookies.
Bleg
If anyone knows of any open pharmacies in or around the 77070 ZIP code, please email me at ikeonography@yahoo.com. Nothing critical, but we could stand to get a prescription filled. Many thanks in advance.
God's funny sense of humor
8:20 CT. Nasty thunderstorm last night — more tree limbs down. We’re back under a flash flood watch.
Everything's coming up Milhouse?
11:55 CT. Got a burst of email so it looks like T-Mobile is getting coverage back online. This is an excellent sign. Perhaps this blog post will make it out. Still no power and it’s humid as hell and in the upper 80s. Power is likely to be out for days, perhaps weeks. A couple of neighbors have generators which we can hear humming. Galveston is a wreck, as apparently is downtown. Cleanup...
8:50 CT I’m ok. No lights, no cell service, a messy yard, but unscathed. Neighbor’s house had a tree fall on the roof. Few people out on the streets. Curfew still in effect. Will see what tomorrow brings.
County Judge Emmett speaks
7:55 CT Emmett’s statement, given on behalf of himself and Mayor White, was a list of facts and suggestions, a helpful contrast to Bush’s non-statement. Asking people to conserve water. Some of the major bayous (pronounced “buy-yo” in Houston) are still rising and flood warnings are in effect. Houston EMS is still not responding to calls. (I heard sirens near my house...
POTUS speaks
7:45 CT. Bush speaking from the White House. Upshot: he’s sending Chertoff to Texas, and he’s joined the chorus of people rambling about price gouging. All politics, no policy. Local authorities speaking momentarily — hopefully they will be more helpful.
Morning has broken
7:40 CT. It’s morning now and we’re getting our first look at the damage. From my end, nothing serious. Yard and street are strewn with branches including some that are probably a good four times the width of a man’s thumb. I took some video but it would take ages to post and since there’s no power what little laptop juice I still have I need to hold onto. To some degree I...
Early morning update
5:20 CT. We’re getting pounded, and it keeps getting worse. Every couple of minutes there’s a crashing sound of a branch or something else hitting the roof. The yards are full of branches larger than your thumb. The rain is pouring down. The dog, who’s been a trooper so far, is staring to freak out. Virtually all electricity is out across the area except for some downtown and...
Power's gone
3:05 CT. Just watched the transformer behind the house blow. Looks like we’re into the darkness. Perhaps worse, no AC. T-Mobile still working though as is the landline.
Brennans has burned
1:40 CT.
Brennan’s of Houston has burned to the ground. The restaurant, the Texas outpost of the famed Brennan family’s New Orleans restaurants, was engulfed in flames by the time firefighters arrived. The Brennans own several restaurants in New Orleans, inclding Bacco, the Red Fish Grill, and the eponymous French Quarter institution (birthplace of Bananas Foster), which were all...
The authorities
12:30 CT.
Many of the local and state authorities’ public statements stress that official response is already concentrating on the recovery process. This is a good thing. I argued earlier this month in an op-ed in the New York Sun:
The most important thing that public officials must bear in mind at this point [the day after Gustav] is that the recovery process began yesterday. Much of the...
Eleven o'clock update in numbers
11:05 CT.
425,000: People without power
952 millibars: Current pressure of Ike
110 mph: Current maximum sustained winds
1 mph: Wind speed increase that would make Ike a cat 3 storm
13 million: Number of people the Census Bureau estimates will be affected.
90,000: Number who ignored orders to evacuate
100,000: FEMA estimate of flooded homes
6.4 feet: Houston Ship Channel tide level
19:...
What about insurance?
9:30 CT.
Daniel Sutter, associate professor of economics at the University of Texas—Pan American and affiliated senior scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, has already started to think about what we can expect to see when the storm has passed and the damage is assessed:
The Texas Windstorm Insurance Association is the Texas state-run hurricane insurance pool. TWIA...
Landfall -- almost
8:40 CT.
Galveston Island is now getting Ike proper, and the storm is only a few miles from making landfall. Ike is 600 miles wide — the distance between Houston and Panama City, Florida — and is a strong category 2, though the storm surge is being called a cat 4. Authorities have ceased evacuation. About 40% of residents are estimated to still be on the island despite a mandatory...
Markets in everything, markets edition
5:50 CT.
There are a number of small markets still open, but milk and eggs are cleaned out. I’ve driven past a couple of hurricane parties, and beer is still in supply at the Food Mart on Jones Road. Also found a CVS to pick up some last minute supplies, and Ace Hardware is open — the only hardware store I’ve seen open this afternoon.
Two Subway shops are open as are some small...
News conference at 5
4:55 CT.
Houston mayor Bill White and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett are holding a joint presser at 5 CT. Available live at KTRH.com and KHOU.com, inter alia. Word of explanation for non-Texans: County judges are not law judges but equivalently presidents of the county councils.
Emmet is a Republican and White is a Democrat. Emmet’s predecessor during Katrina was Robert Eckels, also a...
Quick update
As predicted, the Tex-Mex restaurants all seem to be open and doing brisk business. We ran into some neighbors at our local joint who were also getting a last meal before, as one person put it, “everything starts to involve peanut butter.” No hurricane can kill the entrepreneurial impulse. But will I still be able to get a margarita at 10 tonight?
This morning was sunny, but...
Local media
I didn’t realize until I moved away from Houston when I went to college that Houston really has exceptional local news coverage. It wasn’t until I was exposed to the “A new virus is killing area hamsters! Coverage at 11 after Sanford and Son!” strain of local journalism that I realized that the Houston television media corps are really the exception to the rule.
I’ve...
Getting ready for Ike
When the rental car shuttle driver asked me, “So, where exactly are you driving to,” it was the first time I realized that it was really strange to want to come into a hurricane zone when most people wanted to get out.
For the last three years, I’ve been part of a team at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rebuilding of the Gulf Coast after Hurricane...