Practice Management

I did the smart thing by demanding that my grown children get the hell out of Houston.  They live near downtown and the University of Houston.  On Thursday morning they did not want to miss their classes and leave, but I did the Dad thing and yelled at them.  Hence, they missed the exodus that clogged roads for hours.

I tended to think that a little more than a hour from the coast I did not have to be overly concerned.  Now it looks like Ike is headed up the Houston Ship Channel, meaning it will hit downtown Houston as a cat 2 or 3 hurricane and travel straight up I-45 to us.  They are now predicting over 80 mile per hour winds in The Woodlands.  With huge pine trees everywhere, that is not good.

Galveston is already is distress and the storm is not hitting that hard.  They ordered a mandatory evacuation.  About 40% stayed.  Nearly the entire island is under water now due to the surge.  There is no electricity or fresh water on the island.  Helicopters have been rescuing all afternoon.  The causeway out is now under water and the wind is too high to leave.  Search and rescue and first responders have been ordered in and can no longer help.  Residents there have been told to write their social security number on their arms so their dead bodies can be identified later.

The storm is 600 miles long, and it is going to take a good time to fully pass.

Other than Galveston, 250,000 homes on the mainland are without electricity now and it is projected that 2,000,000 will lose electricity before the night is over.  The utilities have 7,000 people stationed outside of the area to come in and get it reestablished.  But, this could take days.  The Woodlands is not as bad with power going down because most of our utility lines are buried, which the utilities refuse to do everywhere else.  This has been accomplished only as a result of the payment of a lot of money and much litigation.  However, when the lines go down leading up to The Woodlands that has to be restored.  Then we usually have rolling brown outs because the temporary connections are not enough to fuel the entire electricity consumption of the city.

The end result of this is that I am likely to go silent for a matter of hours or days after it hits full force tonight.