Kirk Kittell

I returned to Nassau Bay on Wednesday morning. There is no damage at my building. However, here is no electricity here, though on the same block as us the hospital parking lot and the Lockheed Martin building are both teasing us with their electricity. So, it’s urban campout time.

Yesterday morning, I went for a bike ride with my camera around Clear Lake, which is only about 100 meters from my apartment. The lake has receded to its pre-Ike level, but not before flooding, smashing, or otherwise causing havoc around its shores.

I have posted all of my photos to Flickr: Hurricane Ike, September 2008.

I felt like a jerk riding through other people’s misery, so in most cases I shied away from taking personal photos. The folks in Kemah, on the coast of Galveston Bay at the mouth of Clear Lake, got hit hard. I know that people on the Gulf of Mexico coast were hit harder. The photos below, and the full set on Flickr, are just a small part of what I saw there. Tomorrow I’m going to see if the Red Cross can use a pair of hands — much more useful than snapping photos, though I wanted to share with you that aren’t here what it looks like in my neighborhood.

Now that the storm has passed, Clear Lake is serene again. It’s eerie to consider how different — how powerful — it can be when it is sitting there so silently.

Compare:

A few photos from the day before the hurricane on Flickr: Hurricane Ike, September 2008.

I’m sitting here in my apartment in Nassau Bay, waiting for Hurricane Ike to arrive. It shouldn’t be long, maybe 24 hours from now. My ZIP code, 77058, got the call for a mandatory evacuation today, but I’m staying. It has less to do with bravado, more to do with my placement relative to the other folks in 77058. The folks in houses need to worry about how high they are above sea level and what comes in or smashes into their front door.

In the event of flooding, for me, the worst I expect from my apartment — 14 feet above sea level at the base — is to see the water below me from my window. I’ll be looking, believe me. I feel safe where I am. Not only am I elevated above the ground, none of my windows face an open area. My largest set of windows face the opposing building in my complex, 20 feet away.

Preparation… this is something I don’t understand. What I expected, as a neophyte in the Houston area, is that the residents were ready for hurricanes. I expected that this was old news for them and that they knew how to pick up and move. Maybe I was just too accustomed to the Texas way of self sufficiency and getting things done. Reading the news — something that should be done with a grain of salt, unless hysterics is your favorite form of information — has been a comedy of empty gas stations and crowded stores. I didn’t expect that.

I went to HEB — that’s Texan for “really awesome grocery store” — on Tuesday evening to get a few items that I might need in case of total post-hurricane apocalypse. I didn’t even have to wait in line to checkout. Today: you might be lucky to get a parking spot at Wal-Mart or the grocery store. After HEB, I went to the gas station a few blocks away, figuring I ought to make sure I had a full tank of gas in case of evacuation. Only one of the twelve pumps was occupied. Today: gas stations were running out of gas because the sixth largest metro area in the US collectively exclaimed, “Oh, crap!” and rushed to the gas stations. It turns out that Texans are just like any other people; they have the same tendency to procrastinate and then break into hysterics under pressure.

Now, if I had a family here, or if I owned a house, I’d probably board up and move out. I would have been gone a day ago. I’m staying here as a bachelor for this hurricane, which is much, much simpler than having to care for a family. I have no envy for those folks. Good luck to you.

The upside of this hurricane, so far, is meeting people in the neighborhood, something I have not done since moving here in early April. Something about staying behind for the hurricane creates a common bond between people; either that, or I don’t look dangerous enough to be a looter. I spent some time on the Nassau Bay side of Clear Lake today, taking photos from the boardwalk, talking to people who didn’t evacuate. I met a guy and his wife who bought their house from the last man on the moon, Eugene Cernan. I met a guy whose primary fixation with the hurricane was a desire to go fishing. I met my next door neighbor. In my hopefully-short-term stint in Houston — no offense, Houston or Houstonians, but my job is devoid of any character and I’m going to leave it as soon as possible — these are the first four people I’ve met here in the neighborhood.

So, wish me luck. And if you have some free time on Friday, keep me company on Twitter or Facebook; I expect the power to be out on Saturday and Sunday, but on Friday I’ll be here and bored. I’d say that I hope the trend of the hurricane track (see: Stormpulse) keeps moving to the northeast, but I’d say it only half heartedly. Someone will get hit by this hurricane no matter where it strikes, and it’s a big one. Why not here?