Stuff and please post personal points on disaster preparedness...

Hello there. We all have alot of it. We accumulate, despite not liking it, not using it, or just not remembering it. People will be logging hundreds of items (if they are "lucky" enough that the "stuff" did not just get washed away) on each of their insurance claims. You see evidence of it all around in all of the piles. Some things were probably loved and used frequently, other things just cataloged and passed into the street.

Notes to self: Every once in a while, at least, walk through the house with a video camera slowly and capture everything. Also make sure that everything that you put away in your "emergency" kits not only are in a safe place (i.e. not near ground level, not under other things and only in plastic containers) but also have been played with (a disaster is the wrong time to figure something out or realize it is broken. Also make sure that you focus on things that really mean something to you so that you don't realize you should have focused on other things with your time.

What tips do you have for disaster preparedness? Please leave a comment. NOTE: You can leave a comment anonymously, you don't have to sign in if you don't wish.

Remember that you are not alone.

There's a hole in the roof, dear Liza, dear Liza...

Hello there all, tall and small, wet and dry, fixed and not. I went to check on the water heater in the attic after the storm, and noted a defect in the roof (you can see the moon thru the hatch).





An access hatch had blown off into the yard, revealing a neat place to look through. It also, in this great post storm weather is providing a nice ventilation port. The wind at rooftop height is more active and keeps the house cool. No a/c yet (electrician is working on the breaker boxes which broke and then need to work on replacing a/c units). Read a few articles that stated there are various things including water heaters washing up on shore around here.

Just to get an idea of the destruction that has befallen Port Bolivar, realize this - the debris (the peninsula was raked clean essentially) piles are more debris fields, each something on the order of 7-10 yards tall and the size of half a football field or more. The property and souls lost will not be found for a long time at best. Good luck to all having to deal with any disaster, whether it is massive from nature such as the fires in California, or on a personal scale.

The lights are slowly coming on. This is a shot from rooftop towards UTMB. This is definitely going to be a whole new world for the university no matter how you slice it. Everything points to everything being effected.

Remember that you are not alone. Go find someone who can help you, then go find someone you can help.

The Cleanup

Hello All!!! Sorry, I have been tired at night and not as inquisitive as to the rest of the island right now. Working on the house has been consuming my time and energy lately. I promised a friend that I would put up a video of the trash collection process on the island and here it is. They come in different sizes, typically a very large dumpster truck with another dumster trailer. On the back of the truck is an arm similar to the machine on the video with two hydraulic legs to stabilize. The video has a tractor trailer being loaded by a separate second machine.

So then, other than just watching another construction-type video, why show it and talk about it? Well, the contract that was put out for this service (fulfilled by many different companies, all with similar equipment) is somewhere between 18 to 24 months. That tells me that perhaps someone with some experience on disaster recovery has said that this is needed for that long of a period. Tell me that is not significant. No, really please tell me that this is not what is happening. Oy.

This is a short video of the piles of trash around. It gets cleaned up. The piles are then refilled as if the homes and apartments are magicians hats that can produce prodigious portions of detritus in perpituity. I recently saw The Weather Channel special on the Galveston Storm of 1900 (other site here)and the pictures there more so reflect how it feels now. Currently the buildings are standing but the spirit is temporarily gone. Make no mistake - the majority of buidings were affected and need some combination of gutting, re-roofing, or major fixing.

Remember that you are not alone.