Post Ike

I thought I should share a little about our experience with Ike. For a few days leading up to Ike's landfall we were being told it might hit closer to us and leave San Antonio without power, fallen trees, flooding...Outcome-We didn't see a single drop of rain. The homes in South Houston that sat within 1 mile from any body of water sustained substantial flood damage. A lot of homes also suffered minor structural damage due to trees simply falling over or being whirled about and crashing into roofs and siding.
Last Friday night at about 8pm I received a phone call from our Elder's Quorum President asking if I could sacrifice my Saturday to go down to Houston and help clean up some of these damaged homes. To be honest I was really ready for some R&R, but because I couldn't find a justifiable reason to stay home I volunteered. We left Saturday morning at 6am and made the drive down. (For those in Utah the drive from San Antonio to Houston is about the same as driving from Salt Lake to Cedar City) We were sent by the LDS church to League City which is about 25 miles south of Houston. We reported to the Stake Center where assignments were being given out. All of the requests submitted by members of the church had already been completed so we (The 5 guys that drove down together from our ward) were given a 7 block area to cover and were told to just drive up and down the streets asking anyone and everyone if they could use our help cleaning up.
We were able to find enough work to keep us busy all day and got back to San Antonio around 10 that night. I learned a lot about emergency preparedness and heading warnings. I feel lucky to have been able to learn from this disaster without being a victim and sincerely hope Houston never has to return the favor.
These pictures are borrowed from the web. I did not take my camera because I didn't want it to get ruined. I just wanted to point out that when the water gets this high everything gets this high. (sewage, sea creatures, snakes, gators...)

The water levels inside these homes is equal to the water levels on the outside. Some homes sit higher and only suffered damage up to the baseboards, others were cutting everything from shoulder height down. When this much water just sits stagnant day after day, mold begins to develop very quickly. Add Houston's humidity to that and the chance of it just drying out is non existent.

As we drove around we saw boats that landed in the middle of the road, cars that were washed into the bay, and homes that previously stood on pylons that now sat across the street and even a few that were carried out into the bay.

Sorry this image is so small but it is the only image I could find that captured what we were doing. Just about everything the water touches has to be torn out. We tore up carpet and padding, cut out drywall, ripped up wood floors, threw out furniture and appliances. It was terrible to see all the materials these families had worked to purchase just go to the curb to be picked up by a front end loader and taken to the dump in the back of a bubba truck.