Hurricane Ike Aftermath

We got hit hard by Hurricane Ike. Thankfully I have yet to hear of anyone that got hurt in our area, but our neighborhood was slammed by what a lot of people are saying must have been tornadoes spawned by the storm since the inland winds were not supposed to be that fierce.

I never slept much at all during the storm, listening to every wind gust and watching the clock. At 4:25am, the power went out and the real nightmare began. We heard a horribly loud whistling wind gust followed by a thud louder than anything I've heard before. We went upstairs with a flashlight but the only thing we could see was a partially broken window an Harrison's room. There were no trees on it, and there no visibility outside so we went back down the bedroom. From that point on every wind gust caused all kinds of knocks and thumps on the roof, so we knew something was up there.

At around 6-ish, I was just drifting off to sleep when the window in our bedroom shattered. We rushed all the boys to the hall bathroom and stayed there. During a slight lull, Lindsay went back upstairs with the flashlight and saw the leak in the game room and what looked like the tip of a tree branch poking through the ceiling. We put a bucket under that leak and retreated back to the bathroom to wait for daylight.

When the eye came over, it was daylight and one of our neighbors came over to check on us and to let us know there was a tree on our house. That's when I got the first look from the outside and that's when I went ahead and called in our insurance claim. The only remaining damage we sustained was when the top of the pine tree in the yard behind us came down and smashed the fence right behind the swing set. That was around 9am and I happened to be checking out of that window at the time and watched the whole thing fall.