After the Morning After

We were even luckier than I’d thought yesterday morning. Much of the surrounding area is still without power (our neighborhood was spared, but the power’s still out immediately across the street).

People here are cleaning up; people who evacuated are trying to figure how to return (without re-experiencing a mass traffic jam). (Aside: I simply do not believe published reports that 2.5 million people left. There’s no way the roads could have moved that many people in 24-36 hours. While the 2.5 million figure has been widely repeated, I’m watching for refinement.)

While cleaning up, I’m reviewing what happened (in good “knowledge management” form). The After-Action-Review process involves four simple questions: What was supposed to happen? What actually happened? Why were there differences? What will we do differently next time? AARs help isolate lessons-learned and refine “best-practice”. So far, here’s what I have…

Lessons Learned (personal):

• how much absolute, unmitigated luck played a part; I used to live by “Luck is the residue of design” (by Francois Marie Arouet). But, this time it was simple luck that saved us. If we’d been hit with even/only 100 mph winds, much of the house would have been destroyed;
• how to blog for communications (and use FLICKR);
  
• Best-Practice needs for hurricane events;
• -- supplies (tape, nails, sterno, batteries, candles, etc.)
• -- processes (how to prevent slow bathtub leaks; labeling inside doors; taping windows; filling trash cans with water)
• Shelter-in-Place (when, why, how)
• Frank Billingsley, Channel 2/KPRC news (I’m DONE with channel 13 and Marvin Zindler)
• Fear purges jet-lag (not sure about this one, but don’t really want to run confirming experiments)
  

LL (governmental):

• Mass evacuation execution (staging gasoline dumps; counter-flow highway traffic implementation)
• Costs & benefits of “Shelter-in-Place”
  

On the national level, we’ve now had Katrina and Rita. Hopefully the smart ladies at FEMA are mining these experiences for all they’re worth.

A friend commented on the blog references to prayer; maybe Voltaire should have made room for it in his observation.

If the gym's open, I'm going for a swim.

Neighborhood

A couple of houses away. Several other trees are down, but only a couple of homes in our subdivision show damage. One tree is leaning against powerlines, which soon will break I'd guess. It's not really safe to be outside I think.

Morning After

While the NOAA info (07:00 pic/stats posted to FLICKR) says it's still a 100 mph storm, we think it's over for Houston, and our home seems fine (we didn't even lose power!).

Winds are dying down, and the rain has been much less than expected (we got about 2 inches) so there won't be any flooding in the general Houston area, unless Rita stalls (like Alison did in 2000), parks, and dumps rain here for 24-36 hours.

In 1985 I had my first hurricane: Gloria, which came up the eastern seaboard, across Long Island, into and through New England, and WHAM! into our Boston neighborhood. For days afterwards you could hear chain saws, clearing roads of debris. On my first inspection of the neighborhood, Rita was kinder to Houston than Gloria was to Boston.

We're going to walk the neighborhood now. Thanks for your concern and prayers; they seem to have worked for us. I'm still praying for the people in Louisiana.

Landfall; TV newscasters; Houston winds

Rita made landfall 30 minutes ago at 02:37 (local, Central time) about 85 miles east of here, between Sabine and Cameron, Louisiana.

We'd gone to bed about 11:30, but some falling limbs woke us. Seems that Frank Billingsley is human after all; his replacement on KPRC TV isn't a threat for his prime-time job.

We've still got power (obviously), and so does most of Houston. (As of 02:49 there are 460,000 Houston people without power.)

Our dog is doing pretty well, considering. Almost no thunder (which strikes me as odd, but Frank's stand-in says this is typical of hurricanes -- all wind and rain, with an occasional tornado, but no/little thunder or lightening).

More later (the "local radar" URL on the Chronicle's website shows some interesting activity).

Dark now; TV weathercasters

It's almost night here now, and the wind is picking up. We're fairly sure we'll lose power (only one of these big trees needs to lose a large limb over a powerline). So, flashlights and battery-radios (I'm used to streaming NPR on my laptop. Not tonight, I guess.)

I usually hate TV, and used to think that TV newscasters were ranked slightly below insurance salesmen (and lawyers, some would say) on the "contributors-to-civilized-society" scale. Frank Billingsley has changed my mind. He's the weathercaster for Houston's TV Channel 2. He's been on constantly for the last two days, with no apparent breaks for sleep. His presentation has been lucid, calm, and informative. I'm impressed. (No accident that he works for NBC? The network that carries "The West Wing"?)

Real-time Galveston Island weather info

My former boss, Rex Ross, has a place on Galveston Island (he's not there) that he's watching over through webcams and wind-speed measuring tools (et al.).

The "Rex Ross Weather Station" has gotten over 500 hits in the last 36 hours. It's at http://www.rexross.com/weather.html

Slide Show of Tracking Maps

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been using FLICKR to chronicle the various time-stamped prediction maps issued by NOAA (National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration), since Wednesday afternoon (when I got back from Kuwait) to-date.

I've just posted the most recent prediction (still looks like Houston'll escape the worst), and have finally arranged these pictures in chron order. It occurs to me that you might find it interesting to take a look at the what we were "seeing" when I was making the postings here.

The pics are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/16626231@N00/sets/997369/ -- click "View as slideshow".

Even notice how certain smells can trigger quite sharp recollections? For me, this slideshow brings back the feelings I had at 06:00 yesterday.

Twiddling our thumbs

Increasingly, we're comfortable that we'll weather this (my dad taught me about very bad puns!), and so we've reached the point where we can reflect on the process, as the skies darken, the wind rises, and storm approaches. This'll be interesting. (It'll be VERY interesting if the forecasters are wrong and the storm DOESN'T take the anticipated right-hand jog in the next two hours!)

We've done all we can do, and now are just waiting. (TV's reached the point of inanity, so we're watching DVD episodes of "The West Wing".)

Leon Hale is a folksy columnist for the Houston Chronicle, who exemplifies the old-Houston style; I love his stories. Today, he's got a piece about his first hurricane in 1949, and how LONG the wind blows. It's that article that I'm thinking about as we wait.

STORM STATUS: Looks like a direct-hit on Beaumont, about 70 miles east of Houston. Wind speeds are 125mph (200kpm), with gusts to 150 (on the east side of the storm), and barometric pressure holding steady at 931mb. This should translate to top sustained winds here (at the house) around 70mph (not counting any tornados, please!), which the experts say should persist for 6-10 hours. For us, I think the biggest risk will be falling tree limbs (rather than disappearing roofs, or other Oz-like special effects).

REAL-TIME HOUSTON RADAR: The next-best thing to being here. Go to http://www.chron.com/, search for "local radar", and click the link. Our house is just beneath the first "O" in the word "Houston". (Be sure to click "loop".)

P.S. Leon Hale's column is at http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/hale/3365913

Before 2

A few suggestions for you...

Vince,

We're hoping things go well for you, and we're praying as well. The blog is a great idea. I'm watching it throughout the day.

I had a few suggestions for you.

First, blogger will let you post with your cell phone. They call it mobile blogging. The link to how to do it is on the Blogger login page. Use that if your web connection fails. [POLLEY RESPONSE: I'm ready/able to do this, when necessary.]

Second, how about including a link to the google maps page that shows your house. As the storm progresses, it would be good to know where your house is so that we can correlate that to the storm damage reports. If you need a tip on how to do that, let me know. Also, if you don't want to put your address on the blog, just email me your address, and I'll look it up for myself. [POLLEY RESPONSE: Neat idea. URL is {deleted on 30 Sept 2005}]

Third, I know you've probably thought about it, but have you backed up your computer (or atleast the really important files, pictures, etc.) to a remote destination over the web? [POLLEY RESPONSE: All taken care of.]

Best of luck. Let us know if there is anything we can do. Our guestroom is available if it comes to that, but I know you've got family you'd probably stay with if it gets that bad. [POLLEY RESPONSE: Too cold in Minnesota for me!]

[POLLEY EXPLANATION: Michael McGuire is a close friend with a technical bent. I asked him and my two brothers-in-law to be co-owners of this blog, so they could make direct postings to it, conveying information I might not be able directly to post. One of my brothers-in-law is acting as the phone-coordinator for us/Elizabeth -- if we go "off-line" we'll keep him posted if/when we can communicate by phone. Michael may be able to help them manage blog postings.]

Poor New Orleans!

The TV is just reporting that some of the levees in NO are leaking, and there's lots more rain coming there. Those poor people!

I've gotten so caught up in my own fears and problems; only now, that we're beginning to think we'll only get hit hard, but not devastated, do I focus on the fact that our boon is somebody else's doom. Now, we're praying for everybody.

Quiet Neighborhood

A couple of hours ago we took the dog for a walk in a very quiet neighborhood. The sun was shining and the sky mostly blue, with only high wispy clouds. A couple of joggers passed us by, and another lady walking her dog (our small dog walks without a leash, trained to walked along/atop the curb, like a doggie-sidewalk). A dozen or so houses have taped their windows (why not more?) and three have used plywood to board the windows. Many are still flying their American flags from porch flagpoles (which look like flying-projectiles-in-waiting to my eyes; patriotic, but inopportune).

It’s just after nine a.m. and we’ve finished emptying the yard of our own projectiles-to-be, and super-chlorinating the pool (the Chronicle had a pretty good piece on storm preparation yesterday: “Stock Up for the Storm”). The neighborhood is still very quiet, but the birds are making more noise (more than usual? do they sense something? I probably just imagine that they do, but our dog definitely knows SOMETHING is weird – she watches and follows us constantly). There’s the sound of occasional distant hammers.

Walking at 7 am, we saw the half-moon almost directly overhead and commented on it. It was full Saturday night when leaving the Astros game; almost full Sunday night outside the Houston-to-Amsterdam flight; again, Monday night outside the Amsterdam-to-Kuwait flight; an eighth gone Tuesday night (OK, it was actually Wednesday morning, at 2 am) on the Kuwait-to-Paris flight. I’ve been watching it, watching me. (Also eerie: almost no jet lag. What’s with that?!?)

Track stabilizing? TX/LA border

The most recent NOAA pic shows little change from 3 hours ago, except for diminishing possibility that it'll hit Houston head-on. Instead, it's looking more likely that it'll make landfall at the TX/Louisiana border, probably about midnight. Other indicia: the storm's track seems to be accelerating a bit (hastening time of landfall), the sustained windspeed is down a bit (to 140 from 145) and the mm of mercury is up a bit (to 913 mb, from a very scary 897 this time last night).

So, we'll see what happens this time NEXT night.

Good night.

Thanks, Mr. Attorney General, for the duct tape idea.

Remember the duct-tape and plastic sheeting alert? We bought some, and then felt silly.

Now, I wish I could FIND the darn stuff...

What's the big deal, Polley?

Those of you not in the area may think that this is just another hurricane. And it may be, when it finally hits. But, right now (and for the last 18 hours) it sure looks like something VERY different, for those of us here.

Let me tell you, last night I was truly concerned... Try this: imagine a system 140 miles wide, with 175 mph winds (280kph) slowly heading first left, then right, then RIGHT AT YOU! How solid is YOUR home? OK, so you decide "Gee, discretion is the better part of valor. I'll pack up the car, swallow my pride, and relocate to El Paso for a week or so." But then you remember the other 4 million people who are thinking the same thing; you look at the TV and internet maps; you consider the density of gasoline stations in Texas and the wave-front of earlier drivers who'll have worked their way through there in the past 12 hours (locusts, sucking the gas out of the ground); and you wonder just how comfortable your car will be, when you end up sleeping in it. Hmmm.

Get the picture? Scary.

"Whoops! Did I say 'mandatory' evacuation?"

I finally heard the words "Shelter in Place" from the Harris County chief judge (people who have read "Truman" will remember that HST had a similar job in Missouri; many southern States' senior local government official is the chief judge of the county. And, these are elected positions). He'd been earlier beaten up for issuing a "suggested/voluntary" evacuation for Harris County (which includes Houston), while a mandatory evacuation for the coastal counties was still in execution.

The coastal evacuation *IS* critical, because those areas will take the worst of the storm and the storm-surge. The "go-if-you're-scared" voluntary evacuation, issued for the county that includes Houston and has more than 4 million people, of course lead to the unbelievable traffic tie-ups, and collateral bad results. So, now the Mayor of Houston and the Chief Judge are saying "Shelter in Place" unless you're in a dangerous structure (e.g., a mobile home).

Now, part of that might be because some people are in very bad shape on the roads -- hundreds of cars overheating, running out of gas; some with the very old and very infirm (one with a lady in her 80s with a feeding tube, being moved by her daughter) -- and government doesn't want to make this worse. But, maybe somebody from FEMA (I don't think they are a bunch of idiots; only that cronyism/patronage resulted in incompetent leadership) finally got the idea across that Shelter-in-Place actually *IS* a "best practice" in almost all situations.

(At least, I hope it is, in *THIS* case).

More NOAA pics posted at the FLICKR site (the naming nomenclature I'm using there is "RITAxx", with xx increasing incrementally; I can't yet figure out how to re-order their presentation on that site. Probably 'cuz I'm using a Macintosh, my PC friends would knowingly advise).

BTW, they now have opened two of the three major highways to "counterflow" -- I-10 and I-45 are now running both sides of the highway in the same outbound direction. Highway 290 is not, to the disgust of thousands of stuck travelers who had been told that'd happen too. But, gov't decided that they needed at least ONE inbound artery to support recovery logistics.

Hurricane tracking pictures (chron order)

For the first time, I'm trying to play with FLICKR. I've uploaded 4-5 pics of the storm track prediction, which I've grabbed from NOAA over the past 18 hours or so. Hope the (possible) trend continues.

Pics at http://www.flickr.com/photos/16626231@N00/sets/997369/

Vince

Comms already going "spotty"

Sorry for the delay in postings -- been unable to get a network connection for 3-4 hours. Back now, but don't know for how long.

COMMS.
SBC seems to be having trouble with their DHCP server -- assigned IP addresses are being dropped, and it takes a LONG time to get a new one. Our land phone line seems to be working OK, but our daughter reports that Verizon has a recorded message (when she tried to reach us on my cellphone) saying that Hurricane Rita may prevent calls from going through for a long time. On the other hand, we seem to be able to make OUTGOING calls with Verizon.

TRAFFIC & EVACUATION.
Saw one fellow driving his bicycle (!), with a couple of garment bags strapped over his back. Hope he's got lots of water. It's 95 degrees, and headed to 100 (again; it hit 100 yesterday, too).

Increasingly, think that we made the right decision at 06:00 this morning. People are running out of gas on the highways, after 6-12 hours of travel (covering only a few miles).

LOCAL TV MEDIA.
Being fairly responsible (not too "end-of-the-world"), but increasingly running out of things to say. Mostly, we wait for NOAA updates on the storm's direction, and wind speeds.

VISIT TO HARDWARE STORE.
Went to a hardware store for a couple of things (how DO you get a bathtub to hold water, when the valve doesn't seal perfectly?!? Lesson-Learned: a wide mouth plunger with vaseline on the lip -- seems to be holding the seal on at least one tub).

In the local ACE Hardware, there was a queue leading back into the storeroom -- employees would find something, yell it out (e.g., "Propane! Anybody want propane?") and somebody would grab it. Everybody was in good numor, though.

More later. Anybody got a "best practice" on how to tape windows (with masking tape)?

No mandatory evac for Polleys

There is a mandatory evacuation for the coastal and lower-lying areas of Houston, but that area doesn't reach to us. (Generally, the mandatory evac map is at "http://images.chron.com - evac_hcoem.gif" -- you can also find this map online at http://www.chron.com/ -- search for "Mandatory Evacuation").

The hurricane tracking map (http://weather.chron.com/tropical/tracking/at200518) shows a turn to the north, heading the storm directly at Houston. That's a bad-news (obvious), good-news story. The "good" dimension is that we're no longer to the immediate east of the impact area, which is the area that gets the worst damage.

Shelter-in-place

OK, traffic is impossible. A friend who left at 03:30 today, 3 hours ago, is 90 miles away, and stopped in traffic on a back road (the major highways are stopped, period).

Prospect: not being able to get clear of the traffic mess, and running out of gas within a 200 mile radius of Houston. Gas stations are all empty 'round here, and our CONFIRMED hotel reservation 600 miles away was cancelled yesterday by the hotel (Lynn found when she double-checked).

Alternative: shelter-in-place. At least we'd have food and water, and be with people we know. Last May, I participated in a war-gaming exercise some of you have heard about. We simulated a small nuclear (ok, I always say "nu-cu-lar" -- it's about the only thing I have in common with President Bush!) explosion at the port of Long Beach, CA. One of the dozen or so "lessons-learned" from that exercise was that it's far-and-away best for people to "Shelter-in-Place" in almost all circumstances that carry ambiguity (until informed authorities give other advice).

Lynn and I shut off the TV (which is just fueling the panic right now) and sat down to talk about it. We've just decided that shelter-in-place is best, and that's what we're going to do.

OTHER COMMUNICATIONS:
1. While I've got internet connectivity, that might be an easier way to contact me than by phone (already, cellphone coverage is being overwhelmed). So, while my computer is working and internet connected, I'll have some IM systems working, and Skype, too. Details:
AOL screen name: vip54law
Skype user-name: vpolley
MSN user-name: vpolleyXXXXhotmail.com (replace XXXX with the @ sign)
Yahoo chat: vpolley

I'll post to this blog for as long as I can from home.

Vince (07:00 on Thursday, 22 September 2005)

First post

Vince & Lynn Polley started this blog from their home in Houston on Sept 22, at 06:30.