We Survived Hurricane Harvey

It's been a long time since my last blog post.  The last time you heard from 

me was just prior to the arrival of Hurricane Harvey.  It was such a scary time.

David was out in west Texas, about an 8 to 9 hour drive away when I learned

that the hurricane was predicted to make a direct hit on our area.  I called him

and encouraged him to please cut his business trip short because the storm

was in fact, headed our way.  

We really did not have too much time to prepare.  I needed him home to

board up the windows.  We have about 25 windows in this house and they

are primarily huge ones ~ floor to ceiling in many rooms and 17 feet

of windows in the family room.  The family we purchased  the home from

(and the original builders back in 1948), left us with sheets of plywood to

cover the windows in case of a hurricane.  When you live on the South Texas 

Gulf coast, hurricanes are inevitable. 

Our home is surrounded with huge live oak trees.  The possibility of having

one of these trees either being uprooted, or having huge limbs fall on our

house was daunting.  

The hurricane made landfall between Port Aransas and Port O'Connor

on Friday night as a Category 4 storm with winds of 130 mph.  Port 

O'Connor is only 51 miles from Victoria.  Port O'Connor is a little fishing 

village on the Gulf and it is a very popular place to visit for residents

of Victoria because it is so close, and has such great fishing.  When

we learned that Harvey was at our back door, and not farther to our

west, we were really scared.  Port O'Connor is just a tad bit to the 

southwest of us and that would put us on the eastern side of the eye,

or what is known as the dirty side of a hurricane.   

The winds began around midnight.  I lived through Hurricane Alicia

that struck Houston in 1983.  It hit Galveston as a category 3 storm.  Where

I lived at that time was to the northwest of Houston, and although the winds

were still very strong when the storm reached my door, it had weakened

a bit.  However, Alicia's winds at my home back then, were nothing like the

winds we experienced from Harvey, a category 4 storm.  

Because we were on the dirty side of the storm, we sat in a slow moving

wall of the storm for a full 8 hours.  We would never experience the eye

passing over us.  The eye is actually a hole in the storm where the winds

are calm.  It's the walls of the storm that are strong, persistent and deadly.

That's where we were.  The power had gone off and all we could do

was to brace ourselves in the dark and pray while the strong winds

continued to batter our house.  At one point I thought we were going 

to die.  Sometime after 10 am the next morning, I filmed this short

video of the destruction from our front porch

The carnage of the storm seemed huge.  Limbs were down everywhere.

The long and persistent winds stripped the trees of their foliage.  Our

magnificent magnolia tree was still standing, but had been shredded.

Heartbreaking yes, but we were unharmed and that is the greatest

blessing.  

On our driveway, you can see the Yukon and a big generator.  David works

in the oil field service industry and was able to borrow a big generator to

power our house.  We didn't run the air-conditioning off of it because we

were concerned it would consume the diesel too quickly, but it powered 

our lights and kept the refrigerators and our chest freezer going, so we

didn't lose any food.  The power remained off for a week here in our 

neighborhood, and we lost water too.  Fortunately we filled our bath

tubs up prior to the storm so there would be water to flush the toilets.

David also picked up cases of water at the Costco in San Antonio while

on his way back home from west Texas.  We were fine in that respect.

We discovered that dear little Bentley figured out a way to keep himself 

cool by standing in front of the fan.  Here he is, windblown and loving it.

He was such a good and calm little guy throughout the storm.  He was

the only one who slept as the winds kept David and I awake for hours.

He is a brave and darling little one!

We had a crew come in and begin the yard clean up.  There is a huge

mound of fallen limbs and debris surrounding our house.  Eventually the

city will pick it up.  There is so much damage everywhere, that I expect

it will be weeks before we are back to normal.

The extensive flooding from the Guadalupe river never reached our 

door.  We are only about a half mile from the river, but fortunately it

is downhill from us.  The river was 10 feet over flood stage and many

areas were and are still flooded.  

If there can be any good that comes from this storm, it is this ~ in times

of crisis, neighbors pull together.  Hate just does not exist.  The playing

field is leveled and we are all important.  Once this storm and the devastating

floods that hit Houston have receded, and the clean up is complete,  it is

my prayer that we remember how special and important each and every

life is.  Life can be so fragile and nature is always in control.  Let's put

down the sword and hold our tongues and learn from this tragedy.

God bless us all.

Love,

Susan and Bentley