Ike and us…

Its over a week and a half now since we faced Hurricane Ike. Well, for my readers from India….Hurricane is nothing but Cyclone, as its known in India.

So, how did it all go ?

It was a major storm, and the first and worst we ever faced. Hurricane Ike hit Galveston as a strong category 2 hurricane with wind speeds of up to 110 mph (~178 kmph!).  Galveston is the coastal area which took the direct hit. Within Houston, which is around 55 miles away from Galveston, the wind speeds were around 90 to 100 mph. The Eye of the hurricane passed directly over Houston downtown (city center).

We live in the Houston Suburb called Katy which is on the west end of Houston. Luckily for us, we were on the clean side of the hurricane, but we did get winds of up to 80 to 85 mph! Its not just the wind, its wind and rain like you have never seen before. The sound of the wind is awful & scary!

I really appreciate the city of Houston for the way they handled this unfortunate event. They were very well prepared for this hurricane (after the lessons they learn’t from Rita and Katrina). They ordered evacuation of areas that were really needed (unlike whole of Houston during Rita — which lead to major problems on the evacuation routes). The city Mayor Bill White and Judge Ed Emmett did a commendable job. I can’t imagine our city corporators and politicians back in India doing such a amazing job.

Ike was a very big hurricane in terms of size (around 400 miles in diameter), with the eye being around 50 miles wide. Ike made landfall at Galveston Island at around 2.10 AM on 13th September (Saturday morning). And due to its size, we felt the winds pickup in Katy area around 6 hrs prior to landfall.

We lost power (in Katy) at around 2 AM on Saturday. And soon, we could feel the Hurricane force winds (winds over 74 mph). It was pretty scary. My main worry was if our window glasses & our roof could withstand the winds. Luckily they did. The wind and rain continued to pound till about 8 AM in the morning and then slowly died down. By noon, the weather was much better at least in our Area. The hurricane had moved north and was causing havoc there.

Prior to the Hurricane, the power company (CenterPoint energy) predicted that if Houston took a direct hit, it would take up to 4 weeks to restore power to everyone. And they were pretty accurate in predicting it. CenterPoint energy has 2.2 Million (22 lakhs) customers (connections) in Houston. At the High of the storm, almost all of its customers lost power. Around 100k customers were with power. Talk about Luck! As I write this, around 25% of Houston is still without power. Its the biggest power outage in the History of US. Well, for us, we got power back in the evening of 15th September (Monday). So we were without power for around 60 hours!

In India, power cuts and failures are pretty normal, and people are used to it. Life goes on smoothly without power. :) … But here in the US, there is too much dependency on electricity. I have never seen a major power failure in US. Tooooo many things are dependent on electricity here. So, without power for 60 hrs was a challenge!

To give you an Idea… no power means:

• No water (since the pumping stations don’t have electricity to pump water).
• No AC or Cooling - Immediately after the hurricane, it was typically hot and humid. The houses and other structures here are designed for Air-Conditioning — so not many windows to open !
• No cooking - since most homes have electric cooking range (and not gas). Even if its gas based, then the gas supply would be disrupted.
• No TV, No Internet - all down. The only means to get information is via a battery operated Radio, assuming you have stocked up enough batteries.
• The cellphones/laptop last as long as the battery in them last!
• No fuel - All the Gas stations (petrol pumps) work on electricity.
• No hot water to bath. (if you are lucky to have water supply)
• All the food in the fridge goes bad - (also means if you have stored medications like Insulin .. etc in the fridge, they are gone!)
• No way to wash cloths!
• Many people could not shave!!! (Thanks to the electric shavers!!!).
• No ironed cloths.
• None of the shops/supermarket open immediately. Even if they are open, they only accept CASH since the credit-card machines won’t work without power. ATMs won’t work without power - so you can’t withdraw cash!
• No water = toilet flush won’t work!

Luckily for us, we had water supply through out the event. So, a major relief. Also, I had fill up the fuel tank of my car before the hurricane, so we were able to drive around. And we had stocked enough drinking water and non-perishable food. Overall, we were pretty well prepared for the storm, thanks to the hurricane preparedness guidelines published by the government and various other agencies.

The only inconvenience for us was being without power for two and a half days. But that’s nothing compared to thousands of other people who are still without power or worse, without a home to stay :( and lost everything that they had.

We feel blessed!

Thanks to all the people who called us right after the storm to check if we were all right.

Overall damage : estimate at the lower end is around USD 27 billion.

Some photos of the aftermath (source : unknown; credits the people who clicked the snaps; I did not click them):

2 comments | September 24th, 2008 at 05:29pm

Got my US Driving License

I got my US driving license yesterday. Driving in US is pretty easy, specially after driving for couple of years in India. But here, its a totally different ball game.

• Its a left-hand drive here. i.e, you drive on the right side of the road.
• The laws and the rules of the road are very clearly defined.
• Everyone is expected to obey the rules and laws. And as far as I have seen, almost everyone does
• There is proper enforcement of the law, and If you are on the wrong side of the line, you are penalised, and your wrong doings are recorded against your history!
• Everything is tracked. Your driving history, vehicle history, and you can’t escape from it!
• Almost all roads that I have seen here have proper markings on it. (lane makings, directions, signals, boards etc!, And, everything is standardized. So, you just need to learn the sign once.
• The traffic moves at pretty high speeds compared to India. i.e., the official speed limit itself is pretty high compared to the speed limits in India

But one major difference I found is … In India, you drive with the assumption that the other people on road won’t be following the rules, and you are always ready for the unexpected and you are always alert. But here, people tend to assume that the other folks on the road would follow the rules….., and by chance if they don’t follow the rule, there is a high possibility of a crash!

For e.g., here in US, at an small time cross road, If you don’t see a “Stop” sign, you are not supposed to stop, but go ahead after slowing down. You assume that the people on the cross road would stop since there would definitely be a “Stop” sign on the cross road. But if the driver on the cross road doesn’t see the stop sign, then the chances of accidents are very high! But in India, one would be very cautious at a cross road. And, I am sure my Indian driving experience would definitely help me out here!

I had taken around 6 hrs of driving lessons from an instructor over here, just to get to know the driving rules and laws etc over here. And, there is an Drivers Handbook (every state has one) too which is very useful. You can download it from http://dmv.org/

Anyways, getting the drivers license was pretty easy. First I had to give an exam (Computer based), after that I had to give an small road test, where they would test my driving skills etc. It took around 1.5 hrs in all. So, the next job is to buy a good car. Its very difficult to live in the United States without a car.

Let me know if you know of any good car deals in the Tri-Cities/Kingsport area!

13 comments | February 24th, 2006 at 08:28pm

Real-time tracking of US bound flights

My wife is finally on her way to US as I write this post. Her trip was postponed many a times. But now things have been sorted out. She would be reaching Houston on Sunday.

The good thing is, I can track all her flights online. And that too in real time! And if its a US bound flight, I also get to see a graphical view (map kind) of where the flight is, its altitude, speed, distance travelled, ETA etc.

There are lot of sites which offer this facility of flight tracking. But most of it seems to have some kind of common back end.

Here are a few of them which I use:

1. Google! - Just key in the flight no, and it gives you an option to track the flight on TraveloCity or Expedia or fboweb.com (When you reach this site via Google, it also lets you track the flight in Google Earth, which is too cool!)

2. FlightArrivals.com - this one too is pretty cool. Doesn’t show a graphical map, but is updated often and the details are pretty good.

3. There are tons of other sites which let you track US bound flights. (FlightView.com, FlightExplorer.com, Aeroseek, Flytecomm)

Apart from the above, most of the airlines let you track their flight from their homepage itself.

Hope this info helps.

2 comments | December 4th, 2005 at 10:38am

Sky news finally gets it right!!

Cant stop laughing at this image!.
“BUSH: One of the worst disasters to hit the U.S”

Finally Sky news gets it right!!!

[Via KKJ]

2 comments | September 13th, 2005 at 09:10pm