Our good friend Tom Johnson in Houston by email:
Minor house damage to report, nothing that lets the weather in. We are one of about ten homes with power in our neighborhood (100homes). We were on the clean side of the storm, about 80 miles away from the hard hit part of Houston. We are very fortunate.
Watch the clean-up of the 4th largest US city. I have a feeling it will astound. The false alarm from Rita gave public officials around here a dress rehearsal on how to screw up, and I think they have a pretty good handle on what is required. There have been some FEMA issues but it was kind of funny. Yesterday FEMA informed the State that they weren’t able to move the relief commodities from Reliant Stadium to the Points of Distribution. The state, probably correctly, is focused on the coast and was unable to shift the National Guard to the PoDs. The Mayor and County Comm. just told the State to get out of the way. Apparently they had established some kind of volunteer corps for this type of eventuality. The state handed off permission to talk to FEMA to local authorities, and once the local to FEMA direct billing was verified with Chertoff, the trucks were rolling to the PoDs last night. They are fully stocked this AM and have restocking in place so there will be very little running out. The logistics of the relief effort are fascinating to me. It is totally devastating to a citizen to sit in line for what will be hours in the early days to be told we just ran out, so, keeping the supplies coming is as important as the initial relief effort.
All taxpayer paid workers were expected to be at work today. As the mayor said: This is going to be the largest garbage pick up in history.
I’ll have more as it processes.
I expect the Houston Red Cross would be happy to hear from you.
Tom Vanderwell says:
Glad to hear that Tom’s okay. I’ve been wondering about how he made out….
Tom
September 15, 2008 — 12:16 pm
Kam Hubbard says:
My prayers(and people from Cedar Rapids, Iowa) are with the residents suffering from Hurricane Ike.
September 15, 2008 — 2:14 pm
Greg Swann says:
You’re a big-hearted man, Kam, considering you’ve been through the travails of Job yourself.
September 15, 2008 — 2:18 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Good to hear Tom’s OK!
As you can probably imagine, I follow animal rescue news during times of disaster.
Code 3 Associates, Denver Dumb Friends League, Humane Society of Missouri, Noah’s Wish and SPCALA (Yay, Los Angeles!) have all deployed to aid Houston SPCA in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Conspicuous by their absence are Best Friends Society and Pasado’s Safe Haven; both were very active in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and deployed early to Louisiana in preparation for Hurricane Gustav.
Pasado’s web site carries a short statement about why they have not responded to Hurricane Ike.
I don’t know what bureaucratic feathers might have been ruffled (Pasado’s ~was~ pretty intense in their Katrina efforts), but I think it’s a damn shame that ready, willing and able hands are turned away.
September 15, 2008 — 7:00 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Good to hear that Tom’s OK!
As you can probably imagine, I follow animal rescue news during times of disaster.
Code 3 Associates, Denver Dumb Friends League, Humane Society of Missouri, Noah’s Wish and SPCALA (Yay, Los Angeles!) have all deployed to aid Houston SPCA in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike.
Conspicuous by their absence are Best Friends Society and Pasado’s Safe Haven; both were very active in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and deployed early to Louisiana in preparation for Hurricane Gustav.
Pasado’s web site carries a short statement about why they have not responded to Hurricane Ike.
I don’t know what bureaucratic feathers might have been ruffled (Pasado’s ~was~ pretty intense in their Katrina efforts), but I think it’s a damn shame that ready, willing and able hands are turned away.
September 15, 2008 — 7:06 pm
Cheryl Johnson says:
Oops. Sorry for the duplication.
September 16, 2008 — 3:51 am
Stephanie Edwards-Musa says:
Hey Guys, Glad to hear he is ok also. I’m tethering from a restaurant nearby, still millions (including me) without power from the storm and it is turning the real estate world upside down right now. If anyone has a secret how to get the insurance companies to write new policies right now to be able to close, I’d love to hear about it.
September 18, 2008 — 9:48 am
Greg Swann says:
Sorry to hear about your troubles, Stephanie. Was your home hit hard?
September 18, 2008 — 10:15 am