well, we came back from masjid at around 12:30am, given that the hurricane was diverted so far to the east that it barely even rained here in Katy. Plus the hurricane was degraded down to category 1. Still, we did lose power for about 10 hours, though it just came on again about 20 minutes ago. (attn mumineen: see the Bilad e-Akhbar blog at mumineen.org for details).
So, we are in good shape. About to go back to masjid for afternoon prayer. Looks like the worst is behind us :)
Of corse, I hope our house in Dickinson is ok.. that is something I cant worry about right now though of course. We will cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, we are all safe at my inlaws' place, and happy, and even comfortable - what more besides water, power, and DSL could we want?
sincere thanks to all bloggers and commenters who linked and sent their support and prayers our way.
9/24/2005
Houston Makes It Through
(Guest poster Taha Raja is a businessman in the Sugarland area, a member of our local congregation of Dawoodi Bohras in Houston)
Hello all,
My name is Taha Raja, a close friend of Aziz. Fortunately, Rita barely touched us here in Katy at our masjid! It was a miracle to say the least considering the menace that was in front of us two days ago! I am now back at my house in Katy and this area barely received a couple of inches of rain and sustained winds around 30-40 mph. This was a non event for Katy Residents - Thank God!
I wanted to add that having experienced this from the beginning, I am truly impressed by the outstading leadership provided by Mayor Bill White, Judge Robert Eckels. The Greater Houston Area evacuated around 2.7 million people as per the press conference this morning! WOW! Yes we saw the gridlock, yes we saw gassless cars, and yes there was tremendous frustration. No doubt in hindsight we could have done better. But without any precendent, without knowing all the factors ahead of time, the simple fact that 2.7 million people got out in time was an amazing feat by our city, county and state leadership.
Can we improve on this? Absolutely! What can we do? Well I am sure there will be numerous pundits and experts that will analyze and cross analyse this event to come up with alternatives. In my humble opinion, I would say that if we are to expect everyone to evacuate in their own vehicles (for the most part) then the choices are going to be few and far between. There will be gridlock and there will be these surreal images of hundred mile traffic jam. But the Federal Government can assist. We can have prepositioned gasoline, motorist assistance, and other aid all along the evacuation routes. We can have as many busses as possible to increase density of evacuees - thereby reducing individual cars. We can have the "counterflow" planned and opened up prior to the evacuation orders. Staged zipcode evacuation may be an option as well - not sure exactly if this would work in a panic situation like we had.
So now in retrospect, we thank the Almighty for his grace on Houston. It was truly amazing to see a reporter showing young trees bent as the only damage in downtown this morning. And while she was reporting you could see streetlights all lit up! Power was still on in downtown. Centerpoint reports only 75000 homes without power. These are amazing statistics considering the doom and gloom we faced 2 days ago from Rita!
I do not want to undermine the total effect of this storm. Obviously there are many family, friends and citizens who are effected in the East Texas and Lousiana area. I am sure the damage there is greater and as of 6AM this morning this is still a CAT 2 Hurricane. My thoughts and prayers are still with them and as a concerned citizens, if there is any help we can provide after the fact, we should and we must! God Speed to all! Shukran! (Thank You!).
Hello all,
My name is Taha Raja, a close friend of Aziz. Fortunately, Rita barely touched us here in Katy at our masjid! It was a miracle to say the least considering the menace that was in front of us two days ago! I am now back at my house in Katy and this area barely received a couple of inches of rain and sustained winds around 30-40 mph. This was a non event for Katy Residents - Thank God!
I wanted to add that having experienced this from the beginning, I am truly impressed by the outstading leadership provided by Mayor Bill White, Judge Robert Eckels. The Greater Houston Area evacuated around 2.7 million people as per the press conference this morning! WOW! Yes we saw the gridlock, yes we saw gassless cars, and yes there was tremendous frustration. No doubt in hindsight we could have done better. But without any precendent, without knowing all the factors ahead of time, the simple fact that 2.7 million people got out in time was an amazing feat by our city, county and state leadership.
Can we improve on this? Absolutely! What can we do? Well I am sure there will be numerous pundits and experts that will analyze and cross analyse this event to come up with alternatives. In my humble opinion, I would say that if we are to expect everyone to evacuate in their own vehicles (for the most part) then the choices are going to be few and far between. There will be gridlock and there will be these surreal images of hundred mile traffic jam. But the Federal Government can assist. We can have prepositioned gasoline, motorist assistance, and other aid all along the evacuation routes. We can have as many busses as possible to increase density of evacuees - thereby reducing individual cars. We can have the "counterflow" planned and opened up prior to the evacuation orders. Staged zipcode evacuation may be an option as well - not sure exactly if this would work in a panic situation like we had.
So now in retrospect, we thank the Almighty for his grace on Houston. It was truly amazing to see a reporter showing young trees bent as the only damage in downtown this morning. And while she was reporting you could see streetlights all lit up! Power was still on in downtown. Centerpoint reports only 75000 homes without power. These are amazing statistics considering the doom and gloom we faced 2 days ago from Rita!
I do not want to undermine the total effect of this storm. Obviously there are many family, friends and citizens who are effected in the East Texas and Lousiana area. I am sure the damage there is greater and as of 6AM this morning this is still a CAT 2 Hurricane. My thoughts and prayers are still with them and as a concerned citizens, if there is any help we can provide after the fact, we should and we must! God Speed to all! Shukran! (Thank You!).
9/23/2005
the power is ours
We chose to come to the masjid for one reason: in numbers, we have strength, and prayer. Such was our salvation. The storm is making landfall further east and there will be very little threat to Houston. There will be even less threat to Katy, where we are.
I am in our comunity's masjid in Katy, with a large fraction of the jamaat here. We were prepard to sit out the storm here. We will likely remain here until morning, but it definitely wont be as bad as was expected. We will hang out here tonight and if things are pretty calm (relatively) we might go back to my inlaws place as early as 8am. We have generators, water, food, etc here in the masjid (not to mention a wireless connection :) so we are all set.
I am in our comunity's masjid in Katy, with a large fraction of the jamaat here. We were prepard to sit out the storm here. We will likely remain here until morning, but it definitely wont be as bad as was expected. We will hang out here tonight and if things are pretty calm (relatively) we might go back to my inlaws place as early as 8am. We have generators, water, food, etc here in the masjid (not to mention a wireless connection :) so we are all set.
shelter in place
ok, final decision. Headed to masjid for mghrib, will sta there tonight and most of tomorrow until storm passes. Last update for a while, but cell will work for a while longer so call me :) Blogging will resume after we get back from masjid, if power and DSL still remain.
contraflow
the new favorite word of every broadcaster is "contraflow". I swear I hear it a thousand times a day. All it means is that they reversed the direction of traffic on the eastbound lanes on I-10 and the southbound lanes of I-45 so that traffice could expand to those lanes also. I-45 has been positively demonic; people have spent 30 hours on the freeway and barely getting past Waco. I-10 has been pretty bad too; we did hear from some friends who made it to SA having left at 7am and taking them from between 12-15 hours. The main reason we didnt leave was concern about running out of gas and being stranded like so many have been; the aforementioned friends were driving a Camry and went without AC. That just wouldn't work for us, we need to use our big SUV to accomodate everyone and we cant go 15 hrs without AC given that we have a 3yr old. The contraflow arrangement started at 4pm and initial reports are that it did start to help clear up some of the congesion, but given the storm's continuing NE-drift, we decided to sleep comfortably here tonight and eat a good breakfast.
This morning we slept in; I tried to stay up after praying fajr but was just still wiped out from the hellish drive to Katy the day before. We just woke up and I checked the advisory, and found this from advisory #23:
Overall, the storm is weaker and is even further away. The next advisory is at 1pm, so things may change, but for now it looks like here in Katy we won't have hurricane force winds. We will likely have tropical storm force winds (39mph) and significant rain. Its even possible we wont lose water or have an electricity outage longer than a few hours. I'm being optimistic :)
So, contraflow. Our plan is to stay here, not try to reach SA. We are headed to masjid this afternoon, and will simply ride it out from here. As for our house in Dickinson, it will certainly fare worse there than here; I hope that the damage is limited to shingles and food spoilage, but it's likely that there will be some flooding. I hope the preparation we did was enough, but I just cant think about that right now. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it...
This morning we slept in; I tried to stay up after praying fajr but was just still wiped out from the hellish drive to Katy the day before. We just woke up and I checked the advisory, and found this from advisory #23:
RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 10 MPH AND THIS MOTION IS
EXPECTED TO CONTINUE DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE
CORE OF RITA WILL MAKE LANDFALL NEAR THE SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND
UPPER TEXAS COASTS EARLY SATURDAY.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE DECREASED TO NEAR 135 MPH WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. RITA IS AT THE BORDER OF CATEGORY FOUR AND THREE HURRICANE
ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. SLIGHT WEAKENING IS POSSIBLE BEFORE
LANDFALL...BUT RITA IS EXPECTED TO COME ASHORE AS A MAJOR
HURRICANE.
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 85 MILES FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 205 MILES.
Overall, the storm is weaker and is even further away. The next advisory is at 1pm, so things may change, but for now it looks like here in Katy we won't have hurricane force winds. We will likely have tropical storm force winds (39mph) and significant rain. Its even possible we wont lose water or have an electricity outage longer than a few hours. I'm being optimistic :)
So, contraflow. Our plan is to stay here, not try to reach SA. We are headed to masjid this afternoon, and will simply ride it out from here. As for our house in Dickinson, it will certainly fare worse there than here; I hope that the damage is limited to shingles and food spoilage, but it's likely that there will be some flooding. I hope the preparation we did was enough, but I just cant think about that right now. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it...
9/22/2005
update
took us 9 hours to go 60 miles from our home to Katy at my in laws' place. Exhausting. Rita's track now projects to pass directly over Galveston island, which means that we are out of here. Headed to San Anonio this afternoon.
If theres any silver lining, our hourse will now be in the southeast quadrant - maybe teh wind damage will be less. But Galveston is going to be hit hard, as will the medical center in Houston.
family: cell phone shoudl still work fine, will call mom/dad when we reach san antonio.
3:40PM: nevermind, still in Katy. Traffic is impossible - will never reach San Anonio on a tank of gas. Maybe leave tonight, esp now that I-10 is open ion both directions westbound. We will see, still deciding. We are in Katy house, call us here (land line number), cell phones are intermittent.
4:00PM - woah! storm tracks are pushing further east. If it makes landfall near Beaumont then Galveston will be spared, and we prolly wont even lose power here in Katy. The thing can turn on a dime, of course. Theres supposed to have been a 4pm advisory by now but it isnt out yet. I'll check again in 15 min and try to blog again around 5pm.
ah, here it is. Public Advisory #21:
Hmm. Our plan is to stay put in Katy until this evening and re-assess whether we still want to go to San Antonio depending on whether the storm continues its curving away towards Louisiana.
If theres any silver lining, our hourse will now be in the southeast quadrant - maybe teh wind damage will be less. But Galveston is going to be hit hard, as will the medical center in Houston.
family: cell phone shoudl still work fine, will call mom/dad when we reach san antonio.
3:40PM: nevermind, still in Katy. Traffic is impossible - will never reach San Anonio on a tank of gas. Maybe leave tonight, esp now that I-10 is open ion both directions westbound. We will see, still deciding. We are in Katy house, call us here (land line number), cell phones are intermittent.
4:00PM - woah! storm tracks are pushing further east. If it makes landfall near Beaumont then Galveston will be spared, and we prolly wont even lose power here in Katy. The thing can turn on a dime, of course. Theres supposed to have been a 4pm advisory by now but it isnt out yet. I'll check again in 15 min and try to blog again around 5pm.
ah, here it is. Public Advisory #21:
RITA IS MOVING TOWARD THE WEST-NORTHWEST NEAR 9 MPH...15 KM/HR. A
GRADUAL TURN TOWARD THE NORTHWEST IS EXPECTED DURING THE NEXT 24
HOURS. ON THIS TRACK...THE CORE OF RITA WILL BE APPROACHING THE
SOUTHWEST LOUISIANA AND THE UPPER TEXAS COAST LATE FRIDAY.
Hmm. Our plan is to stay put in Katy until this evening and re-assess whether we still want to go to San Antonio depending on whether the storm continues its curving away towards Louisiana.
9/21/2005
batten down the hatches!
Good news, my wife is not classified as E1 so that means she wont have to ride out the storm at the hospital. She is however E2 which will be on call mmediately afterwards. If all goes well, that could be as early as sunday; if not, then possibly tuesday or even thursday. She was already given her special medical car permit so that she will have access to Galveston island despite police blockades.
We are evacuating this afternoon to my in-laws' in Katy. Due to the kindness of my neighbor, a pastor at a local church, I have precut plywood for the south and east facing windows, but all stores around here are totally out of PlyLox. I just spent a pile of money at Loews on brackets, drill bits, screws, etc to see if we can jury rig something to hold the plywood in. I'll send one car with my wife and daughter ahead and will stay behind with the handyman to finish the work, then drive out to Katy early evening. Will probably hit a lot of evacuee traffic, but c'est la vie :)
As they say, if you evacuate voluntarily, you get to go in your car, to your destination of choice. Waiting until mandatory evac means you go how and where they tell you. Any Galveston county residents: get out today.
This thing will hopefully blow over, pun intended :) I wish I had plylox; will definitely buy some after the storm. Hope I dont damaege my brick too much today, but have to do what I have to do...
We are evacuating this afternoon to my in-laws' in Katy. Due to the kindness of my neighbor, a pastor at a local church, I have precut plywood for the south and east facing windows, but all stores around here are totally out of PlyLox. I just spent a pile of money at Loews on brackets, drill bits, screws, etc to see if we can jury rig something to hold the plywood in. I'll send one car with my wife and daughter ahead and will stay behind with the handyman to finish the work, then drive out to Katy early evening. Will probably hit a lot of evacuee traffic, but c'est la vie :)
As they say, if you evacuate voluntarily, you get to go in your car, to your destination of choice. Waiting until mandatory evac means you go how and where they tell you. Any Galveston county residents: get out today.
This thing will hopefully blow over, pun intended :) I wish I had plylox; will definitely buy some after the storm. Hope I dont damaege my brick too much today, but have to do what I have to do...
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