Hurricanes: Part 1

My husband and I grew up in the mid-west. We were taught how to deal with thunderstorms and the occasional hail and tornadoes that can come with them. With tornadoes, you get about 20 minutes warning, and in an hour or so, it's usually over. The power might go out, but most tornadoes are small storms that don't do a lot of damage. There's not a lot of preparation to do for a tornado. You just "duck and cover," and odds are, it won't get you anyway. Growing up, we kept flashlights and candles for if the power went out. I remember my mom discussing emergency supplies with someone and saying that she kept a big enough stock of canned goods in the pantry that we should be okay. My idea of being prepared for an emergency was having a working flashlight.

We moved to Houston in August 2005. Hurricane Katrina had just hit New Orleans. A month later, Hurricane Rita was headed to Houston. We had never dealt with hurricanes before. The apartment complex put a note on our door saying we were in an evacuation zone. The note went on to say that if we chose to stay, we should have 3-4 days of food and water and be prepared for several days without power. We had nothing prepared. We didn't know that you need to check the weather nearly every day from June 1 to November 30 in this part of the country. So, we decided to get up early the next morning and drive north to family. We were in the car the next day for 11 hours. We went 37 miles. Mapquest says it should take 48 minutes. I have never seen so many cars as I did on that day. There were so many people trying to evacuate, that everyone was just inching along.

We spent Hurricane Rita with a friend from college and his parents and sisters. I learned so much about hurricane preparation by watching them. They had bottled water and lots of canned goods of course, but they also did so many other things that I never thought of. They had huge trash cans on their patio that they had filled with water from the hose for flushing toilets. They filled both bathtubs with water for washing people. I hadn't realized that when the power goes out, the water pressure is gone. They had a grill for cooking. They boarded up the windows and put tape on the glass. Our friend told us that he had propped his mattress and box spring in front of the window and patio door of his downtown apartment to keep glass from getting everywhere.

The night before the storm hit, everyone took a shower. Mother and daughters made batches of cookies and muffins. Then we watched movies. (Twister was one of them.) We all eventually went to bed. The storm hit, at some point the power went out, but by the next afternoon it was back. We called our apartment complex to find out if we had power. We did, so we went home. We left with gifts of groceries, gas that was intended for their lawnmower, and knowledge of how to prepare for a hurricane. 

Hurricane Rita didn't do much damage in Houston. The eye landed miles east in Beaumont. For us, attempting to  evacuate was more traumatic than the storm itself. I'm very grateful we had the experience. We learned that it is not always necessary to evacuate, and you should be prepared so you are not forced into any decisions. These lessons helped prepare us for Hurricane Ike. Which I will tell in another post.