Hurricane Ike- Day 4- Saturday 9-13-08

I woke up at 4 am to the sound of the fan in our room turning on and off. After a few times, the power never came back on. I tapped Nick and I said, “Here we go.” I could hear the wind howling outside and the house was making all kinds of creaking noises. I was pretty frightened and I sort of wished I could see outside to see what was going on. My heart rate increased because everything was unknown as to what was happening outside. All I could do was pray and eventually I relaxed and fell asleep.

I woke up around 7 am and Nick and I both got out of bed to go check on the animals in the garage. As we walked through the living room, we peaked outside and it was still pouring outside, but the wind had settled a bit. Both of the animals were fine. Nick decided to try and let Perdi outside to go to the bathroom. She really did not want to go out, but she went and was really quick. As we went back into the house, we were just so amazed at how dark it was inside. We had to use flash lights to get around.

By noon, the wind was finished blowing, but it continued to rain the rest of the day. The house continually got stuffy and hot throughout the day. We decided to get in the car and travel around to see what damage had been done. As we drove, it was still raining. There was debris everywhere and trees were down. Some of the roads were flooded. We even drove past a house that had a tree land on its roof and was resting on the inside of the upstairs. (See photo below) It was amazing to see all of the damage and it almost felt unreal. The pictures we did take do not even do the damage justice. You just kind of have to be here to feel it.

For lunch, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches along with some chips. For dinner, we had cold leftover spaghetti and roast from the day before.

The guys went out and took down quite a few of the boards to let more light into the house. Our bedroom window could now be opened once it stopped raining to let some air in since we had no power which ment no air conditioning.

We stayed up and played Euchre by lantern light. That was a lot of fun and kept us busy so we wouldn’t get so bored. It was so hot and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get any sleep that night.

I took a shower to try and cool down and was surprised to find we had hot water. We went to bed with no covers and laid there sweating. I don’t know how we fell asleep, but we did. We woke up in the middle of the night because it was storming and raining. We had to shut the window because the rain was coming in, but it just made it hotter inside our room. This was not a very restful night of sleeping.