A hard kick in the face

Oct. 6, 2008
Hurricane Ike, 600 miles in diameter, devastated Haiti and Cuba then came roaring into the Texas Gulf Coast in the wee hours of Saturday, Sept. 13, and gave the Galveston-Houston areas a sodden hard kick in the face.

Hurricane Ike, 600 miles in diameter, devastated Haiti and Cuba then came roaring into the Texas Gulf Coast in the wee hours of Saturday, Sept. 13, and gave the Galveston-Houston areas a sodden hard kick in the face.

Normally bustling with more than 4 million people, Houston was eerily dark and quiet following the storm’s 8-hr battering that littered manicured lawns with tons of debris and toppled majestic trees and power lines in a jarring tangle that would take weeks to clear. Few people were unaffected.

To the south, whole neighborhoods were chewed up and spit out by the enormous storm surge that left only colossal debris piles and a few isolated posts where beautiful beachfront communities had been. At least 64 persons in Texas died.

In the aftermath, a stunned populous found themselves in the dark with little available electricity, water, food, gasoline, or means of communication. Gas stations could not pump gasoline, tap water had to be boiled, grocery shelves were bare, cell phones didn’t work, areas were flooded, mosquitoes swarmed, and a curfew was necessary to protect people and vacated homes. Laundry was a problem, businesses were closed, and there were long lines for food, water, and gasoline.

In the sultry air, it was difficult for the “most-air-conditioned city in the world” to be without cooling for 2-3 weeks. But Texans are resilient. The long, hard cleanup began immediately. The city will pay $25 million to haul away all of the debris.

People helped each other wherever, however they could.

OGJ staff scattered

Those in the path of the storm surge were required to leave before the landfall. OGJ’s Chief Technology Editor Warren True and his wife were among those in the mandatory evacuation area. Editor Bob Tippee invited them to his northwest Houston home, which sustained roof damage but regained power after only 14 hr. Two days later Production Editor Guntis Moritis joined them, staying for 2 days before driving to Austin to work there.

OGJ’s offices were still dark on Monday, so Senior News Editor Steven Poruban was sent on a 9-hr drive to Tulsa to oversee completion of the final (General Interest) section of the magazine. When office power was restored Monday afternoon, Poruban was recalled to Houston. He had driven halfway to Tulsa.

Chief Editor-Exploration Alan Petzet, whose home had no power for 13 days, did drive to Tulsa and worked there for the duration.

This editor, heeding pleas from my daughter in Austin, drove there with my dog on Friday as the storm was approaching, and I slept on her couch and used her laptop and internet connection to edit articles and e-mail them back to Houston for the web site, E-Newsletter, and magazine. Highway signs in Austin and Dallas all week flashed, “Do not travel to Houston.”

OGJ Senior Staff Writer Paula Dittrick, who was without power for more than 2 weeks and had to contend with damage to her home as well, e-mailed that it was a major coup that she got some gasoline after waiting only 30 min during her lunch hour.

Getting the job done

Before, during, and after the storm, Tippee, who had power in his home, wrote updates on the production numbers and storm damage to oil and gas facilities, and he and the General Interest staff got the E-Newsletter out daily and populated the web site.

Until power was restored to the office, Senior Writer Sam Fletcher used a neighbor’s internet connection to send in his daily Market Watch, which also carried hurricane data.

Drilling Editor Nina Rach flew to Brazil before the Houston airports were closed but couldn’t work on files online because the Houston server was shut down for several days. “It’s hard enough juggling regular deadlines when traveling as well as reporting on whatever event you’re attending,” she said. “But in those first few days after Ike hit, I finished a 7-page Drilling Market Focus on Australia, due for the Oct. 13 issue,” and wrote the story from the Rio conference on presalt (see p. 30).

She then flew to Houston, took a cab home in the dark, changed, repacked, and flew to Denver where she went with her luggage straight into convention presentations.

‘Cone of uncertainty’

Communications enabled more than a million people to leave before the hurricane struck. Many who remained had bought water, food, batteries, generators, and other supplies “just in case.”

Potential storm paths lay in a wide “Cone of Uncertainty” with 7-9 landfall possibilities, so until Sept. 11, one was never sure it really was going to affect us. After all, hadn’t Hurricane Rita in 2005 missed Houston after millions of people fled and were stranded in giant traffic snarls, running out of gas in the late September heat?