Hurricane Days

Houston. It’s Worth It: Ike, excerpts published on pgs 136-137 (.doc file here)

Friday

Houston’s typically congested freeways were barren the afternoon before Hurricane Ike was set to make landfall. I drove up Interstate 45 to meet my friends Jonathan and Russell, and together we planned our escape from the city roughly thirty miles northeast to Spring, one of Houston’s many suburban off-shoots. Sunshine was abundant, but businesses left and right had boarded up their windows. Some went so far as to spray-paint empty threats on their panels of plywood: VIDEO MONITOR IN USE LOOTERS STAY AWAY, messages with the intimidation factor of a sick Chihuahua. The giant inflatable dinosaurs and gorillas that crowned the roofs of the freeway-adjacent strip malls were missing. Here was a city holding its breath.

In the early evening we arrived at Russell’s parents’ Spring mansion, which he had been instructed to house-sit. Resigned to the house after a failed attempt at finding fast food and gasoline for his car, we nervously watched the news before going to bed. Geraldo was making an ass of himself by the beach in Galveston, a city south of Houston which was getting the brunt of the hurricane before it traveled north. The winds had pinned Geraldo onto the side of a small palm tree and he was struggling to stand upright. He looked like a sloppy drunk, yelling incoherently and repeatedly pulling his hood over his hair as it flapped away. Everyone in the living room had a chuckle before parting ways for the night.

Around two in the morning, what sounded like a constant barrage of BBs and sand sweeping the windows kept us from falling asleep, and I later learned that the repetitive popping and buzzing outside were transformers breaking. Above me, the ceiling fans stopped and the gust of the air conditioner audibly died. Wide awake and without power, I listened to AM news coverage in the dark on a battery-powered radio. Person after person called in from different parts of the city reporting the same things: lots of rain, trees down, fences down, power out. The worst call-in was made by someone whose message went like this:

Radio DJ: Hi, where are you calling from?
Caller: I’m from such-and-such area.
Radio DJ: Can you describe the conditions there right now?
Caller: Well, I—I don’t really know what’s going on outside right now… I mean, I’ve been in a closet for the past few hours.

Saturday

When daybreak hit, the heavy rain had passed, and we surveyed the damage. The few fallen fences and tossed trees were expected. A pyramid of branches was stacked around Russell’s basketball goal, the rim and net poking through the top like the crown of a bonfire. There appeared to be no actual damage to the exterior of his house, and poking our heads down the street, the rest of the neighborhood looked unscathed also.

What had taken us by total surprise were the widespread power outages. Part of our hurricane plans included catching up on some DVDs because we assumed the storm simply meant a lot of rain, and what better time to sit in front of the television and pop in some movies? But we were part of the unlucky several million people in the greater Houston area who had no electricity. Aside from some serious raking, we had very little to occupy our time without cell phone signal, television, or the internet. Hence the biggest challenge of the hurricane emerged: the task of entertaining ourselves without power.

When Russell called his parents from his house phone to report the damage, he was instructed to take family’s frozen meat and grill it ASAP to avoid spoilage. The meat freezer was one of those long, white, horizontal boxes that opens from the top, and it contained about ten pounds of marlin, salmon, elk, and other gamey meats hunted down by his father. For several hours until dusk, the three of us took turns grilling, wrapping the cooked pieces up in foil and bringing them to the kitchen, and relaxing in the folding chairs outside. We sipped soda and listened intently to the radio for information on damage reports, open businesses, and traffic. Most of Houston’s main arteries were strewn with debris, and downtown was covered in glass blown from the windows of skyscrapers. To deter looters and keep people off of the treacherous roads, almost all hurricane-affected areas in the state had been issued curfews. The air was damp, flies were incessant, and we did not say much to each other around the heat of the grills in the breezeway, fronted by a driveway buried under twigs and leaves snapped off and carried away by the wind.

The last of the meat finished cooking as the sun went down. We ate platefuls of elk and awkwardly cooked eggs in the now foul-smelling kitchen. I chased two buzzing flies around the room until successfully flattening them against the wallpaper with a rolled-up issue of Time, my personal triumph of the day. As darkness swept the house, so did ennui, the only sources of entertainment being a grand piano and each other. Naturally the course of the night was steered toward the liquor cabinet. Being a touch hazy-brained helped turn the inactivity into calmness instead of painful boredom. The living room was arranged with four armchairs facing a central ottoman on which we placed our flashlights skyward, illuminating the eighteen-foot ceiling where we stared and named the shapes of shadows until we fell asleep.

Sunday

The next morning word spread through the radio of grocery store and gas station openings, so we quickly got in the car to get gasoline. Clearly we weren’t the first to hear the news because the venture took us over two sweaty, aggravating hours queued in a line which snaked around a grocery store parking lot, clogging the adjacent street. Exhausted store employees in safety vests directed traffic in the heat, keeping things moving at makeshift intersections. About an hour in and halfway to the pump, Russell announced that he was craving Mike and Ikes, so Jonathan and I left the car to buy snacks at the grocery store. The lights were dimmed and there were no produce or dairy items to purchase, but a line for bags of ice extended out the door and into the parking lot. Inside, the canned foods and chips and bottled liquids aisles had been picked clean. Everyone was scrambling to find their share. By the time we checked out and left the store, the car had moved a few yards.

After filling up the car tank and two fuel containers, our next mission was to pack some of the leftover grilled meat into a cooler, then drive an hour and a half north to Russell’s lake house, also bereft of power, where another freezer and fridge of perishables awaited. It was dark by the time we arrived, so we sorted packaged meat and sauces by flashlight, holding our noses as we debated which items were still edible.

“You think this salsa is still good?”
“Uh… looks fine.”
“Gross. Throw me that trash bag.”

We packed the salvageable food into the cooler and drove another hour northbound to Huntsville, where one of Russell’s old college friends, also temporarily off the power grid, was grilling some chicken outside his apartment. We figured this was a chance to rid our cooler of meat that would otherwise go uneaten, occupy our time, and make some friends in the process. On the road we passed police cars slowly driving by glass storefronts, shining lights into the windows in search of looters. We reached our destination not long afterwards, an apartment complex in the middle of nowhere, suspended in a sea of black asphalt that blended into the night sky. Beyond the parking lot were shapes of trees, nothing more. I shook hands and spoke with several people whom I identified only by voice and silhouette, watching burger patties cook in darkness. The only sources of light came from flashlight beams and the occasional flicker of the grill.

Around midnight, we noticed a car circling the apartment complex, flashing a light through the breezeway. Someone announced that the police were looking for curfew breakers, which threw everyone into an immediate frenzy, rushing to press their bodies flat against the walls. For a few moments the only words spoken were brief whispers. No one had time to grab the grill or cooler, which sat in the middle of the hallway. We prayed they wouldn’t give us away. When the car slowly drove off, everyone let out a collective exhalation.

Monday

We were finished with business in Spring by Monday. Though most of Houston was still un-electrified, the roads had been cleared enough for traffic to pass slowly (though without benefit of signals at intersections), and Russell learned from his roommate that their apartment complex had electricity. During the drive back south, we braced ourselves for the worst, expecting to see our sparkly downtown in shambles. But from the freeway, things didn’t look so bad. Sure, trees seemed to be leaning strangely, the sign on Minute Maid Park had taken a beating, and skyscrapers were missing windows here and there, but I suppose I had imagined something more catastrophic.

It wasn’t until we had exited the freeway and drove on street level that we were able to see the true extent of the destruction. Our mouths dropped open as we gawked at a Shell station whose fuel pumps were woven with the tangled strands of what was once a corrugated metal covering. Previously horizontal patches of grass had been yanked upward at ninety degrees by the roots of fallen trees. Homes were sliced open like wedding cakes, exposing entertainment centers and tidy beds to passers-by like life-size dioramas in an exhibition: Interrupted Domesticity. Shiny blue tarps were draped over the bend of gabled rooftops as far as we could stretch our sight.

Arriving at the apartment, we threw down our belongings and collapsed on the couch. A working refrigerator! Air conditioning! Television! Internet access! Perhaps we should have been overjoyed knowing that our lives would soon resume a sense of normality, but as we slouched around regrouping our thoughts, I could tell the same restlessness that accompanied us during the past two days still lingered in the back of our minds. I guess it was the guilt of knowing that we were the lucky ones, that for the rest of the city, the effects of the hurricane had only just begun.