'Reflections on Ike: where’s the shooting and looting?'
By John David Powell (09/26/08)
One of the disadvantages of being a writer and former journalist is that I’m always sharing news and information. It’s also an advantage in times of crisis by providing instant therapy. Recipients of my Hurricane Ike email updates may have less flattering names for it.
I attended a meeting on the Tuesday before Ike invaded our shores. One participant said we shouldn’t worry, because the Gulf is big and the chances of Ike hitting us were small. I predicted we’d see a lot of wind, rain, and flooding, something akin to Tropical Storm Allison back in 2001. Only without the flooding, I added.
The next night, I watched the wife go throughout the house packing. “You better get started,” she admonished. I replied that I would wait until morning, still clinging to my prediction of the previous day.
Thursday morning arrived with the news my daughter and son-in-law were skeedaddling to Austin. A quick look at the hurricane tracker confirmed I should not go into the weather-forecasting business.
My wife and I, along with her three cats, ended up in Austin at our younger daughter’s apartment, while my older daughter and her husband sheltered at my wife’s uncle’s house.
Once settled in, I fired up my laptop and took over my daughter’s television so I could follow the evacuation of the Galveston-Houston area in front of Ike’s advance. I would not leave my makeshift command post for the next three days.
As I did during Allison and Hurricane Rita, I disbursed a series of email updates. A former colleague at an Austin television station, where I was a producer and anchor back in the 80s, was on the list. He tracked us down and asked if we’d agree to an interview. I felt strange, knowing that thousands of Gulf Coast refugees in Austin were staying in shelters; but, our stories and circumstances were valid chapters in the overall tale of what may be the largest evacuation in Houston’s history.
As with most journalists, I’ve covered all sorts of weather stories resulting from tornadoes, tropical storms, hurricanes, blizzards, flash floods, and those slow-rising river waters that accompany Midwestern floods in spring. I’m still not sure which is worst for the psyche, the tornadoes and flash floods that wipe out neighborhoods and whole towns with little warning, or hurricanes and river flooding that approach by the inch and underscore the helpless state of humans when confronted by a determined Mother Nature.
Friday night found me with four Houston TV stations and a Houston radio station pulled up on my computer screen. The television remote control allowed me to flip among three or four weather and news outlets. At one point, two Austin stations took live feeds from sister stations in Houston, meaning I sat in Austin and watched live Houston coverage of Ike.
About 1 a.m. on Saturday, someone reported that Ike had taken a turn to the west and all indications pointed toward landfall farther down the coast. That was just a juke, as Ike squared his shoulders and set his eyes on Galveston.
Today, at Ike-plus-14 days, about a million people remain without power. That is a staggering number. It’s about the total population of Rhode Island.
Life without electricity is causing considerable Ike Fatigue for people who are accustomed to roofs over their heads, electricity, and drinkable water. Hundreds of thousands stayed put and now live by candlelight, while hundreds of thousands more returned to darkened and damaged dwellings. Daylight means an extended commute into the city for people expected to be in their places with bright, shiny faces, but who operate on little sleep and an abundance of anxiety.
Journalists never fully report on the logistics of disaster recovery. It’s too big of a story and doesn’t lend itself easily to quick sound bites. But consider that search and rescue personnel conducted 470 missions, rescuing 1,900 storm victims; officials authorized up to 7,500 Guard personnel to active duty; FEMA distributed 2.5 million liters of water, 2 million meals, and 100,000 tarps in the first week after Ike; Dominos gave away 1,000 pizzas to recovery workers and displaced people in one day; Comcast called in 500 extra technicians to bring customers back online; CenterPoint Energy gathered more than 1,000 trucks and maybe twice as many people from around the country just to clear away trees so 14,000 linemen from Texas and other states could restore power to a 15,000-square-mile area just in Texas.
Here’s a small list of things we’ve not seen: rampant looting; reports of assaults and rapes; bullets fired at helicopters and rescue workers; people standing around complaining about FEMA; a general meltdown of society.
Here’s a small list of things we have seen: people clearing their property and repairing their homes; neighbors pooling resources; thousands of volunteers collecting food and clothing with thousands more distributing water and food from social service agencies, churches, and FEMA; a strong and immutable spirit that is Texas, and in reality, that is America.
John David Powell
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