Assessing the Damage

Well, we're in Houston. We had to leave Austin, but I won't go into that. :S

We're at my brother's and will be for a bit. Yesterday, we headed to the house to see the damage ourselves. On the two hour drive to our house, the closer we got the worse the damage was. Winnie (near the coast) had some trees down or snapped off, but once we hit Beaumont, we saw even more damage.

Several buildings had roof damage and debris was everywhere. Every once in a while you'd see a powerpole down and some trees toppled. When we got to Vidor, the damage was intense. We stopped by my parents house and found ten trees down. Three across the driveway, one on the house that went through the garage and kitchen. Another fell on Dad's shop, narrowly missing the back of the house.

After relaying the damage to them, we headed to Orange. It looked like a war zone. Trees were down everywhere, as well as power lines and power poles. Some subdivisions you couldn't even get into because of the trees.

I'm not sure how we got into Vidor or Orange with all the National Guard blocking off all the exists from Beaumont to the TX/LA border, but we did. We made our way over to our subdivision, and I prepared myself for the worst.

We had three trees in the front that snapped off at the top littering the driveway with debris so thick we couldn't pull into the driveway. Other than some roof damage, the front of the house looked sound. Before we went inside, we walked around back. Two of our oaks were uprooted. One crashed through the kids wooden swing set, and the other took out the power line that ran to our house. It yanked the fuse box and the facing board on the house off. When that happened it took all the bricks in the area off. All the wires to the fuse box are hanging outside the house, leaving a hole in the wall.

We've been told that could have damaged the wiring for the entire house, which might have to be rewired.

Inside was fine so far. With rain coming, we now have to worry about mold growing in the house thanks to the hole in the wall. Thanks to the 98 degree heat, we weren't able to stay long. I went back outside to look at the backyard once more. As I was thinking how lucky we were compared to some of our neighbors I spotted three hummingbirds fighting over the feeder that hung outside my office window.

Life goes on. :)