The Return

So I think that I am finally ready to write about Rita's damage in our lives here. It has taken me a couple of days to let it all sink in. We spent all day Tuesday in Vidor. We had left Austin at about midnight and drove the night through arriving at about 5:30am. We had one of Chris' second cousins with us, he was returning back to his parents house as they were going to be heading somewhere else until we all get power back. Since it was still dark and there is a curfew in effect we stayed at their house until it got light enough to see. They have been using a small generator there to give them some power, though that power meant that only one room in the house could have air conditioning and there was one fan in the living room and a light. We have been having extremely hot weather lately too, in Austin the heat index reached 108F (42C) two days ago, so sitting in a room with just one little fan hardly seemed enough. Finally our patience had worn off and all we wanted to do was go and see our homes. We headed out and on the way to our houses every single road showed evidence of Rita's terror. Trees and power lines down everywhere. There were even some streets that you could not drive down because of the power lines draping dangerously on the pavement, or trees completely blocking the roads.

We started at Glenn & Dianne's new house and surveyed the damage. It was not as detrimental as we had at first thought, but still quite a bit of damage and it will require a good deal of work to fix it all up. They had two trees land on the back of their house and one of the tree limbs actually managed to puncture straight through the roof and into the sheet rock, so that now they have a part of a limb boldly peeking in through their ceiling.

Next to their new house is Dianne's sister Susan's house and there was a blown out window and some shingle damage but overall things looked good, minus the downed trees all around. Emily's house, Susan's daughter, which is next door looks like it managed to escape any damage.

Our house, unfortunately, was not so lucky. We knew as of Monday that a tree from the neighbours yard had fallen on our house. Naturally our three huge pine trees in our own backyard are standing tall with only a few minor limbs missing, but otherwise intact! To think our own trees were our biggest concern and they turned out to be the least of our problems. So we had the rumours. "A tree has fallen on your house, Magda, and one of the limbs is sticking out of the opposite wall." We had tried to imagine what this would actually look like and we all had theories as to how it fell and where this puncture had occurred. I must admit that I was not prepared for what I actually saw. The massive tree lying across the back of my house was a devastating sight in and of itself. What no one had imagined though was the damage to the inside. I was the first one through the master bedroom door and I have never cried so hard in my life. It is destroyed. It was a truly devastating feeling to open the door to a room in your house and find it in such an unrecognizable state. The tree that fell punctured two big holes in our roof and I suppose with the wind and the rain from the storm a lot of water accumulated in the rafters until finally the weight of the wet insulation was too much and the entire ceiling gave way, causing the major collapse that you can see in the pictures below. Despite our major misfortune our newly framed wedding pictures which we had hung in that room were spared. After seeing that I hardly knew what to do. We tried to see what we could salvage from the room that was of utmost value and importance. We then went through the house and tried to collect other important items that we did not want to leave again. The stinky job of cleaning out the fridge was next, since all of the food in there had to be tossed. Also, water from the ice machine leaked out onto the floor ruining that part of the hardwood, yet another thing to show the insurance guy.

Ah yes, and speaking of insurance guys. We had called the day before to make our claim since we knew from Chris' cousins that there was a tree on the house. When we called the insurance company again on Tuesday to tell them that the damage was pretty severe on the inside and that we really needed them to act fast they told us that we were responsible for removing the tree ourselves and covering up the holes. You can imagine our shock and dismay at this news since it was a maze just getting to our house because of all the blocked roads. Where were we going to find a company to remove this great big tree from our house in all of this. I mean our home wasn't even the worst of the worst. So we headed out to our insurance reps office where luckily the secretary said that she knew a guy who would be able to help, since he had done it for the four trees that had hit her home. Unfortunately as of yesterday the tree has still not been removed, though they did go by and try to cover the holes. This is what Dianne tells me because she was down there trying to get her business back on its feet and trying to find their patients who are now scattered all over Texas. (Dianne and her sisters run a home health care company.) As far as an insurance adjuster is concerned though, he will not be coming by to look at our house until October 6. This is equally frustrating because it means that everything is just going to sit there like that for a close to two weeks before anyone even has a look at it.

So we continued through town, taking in all the devastation, saddened by the state of Vidor and by the apparent lack of government involvement there. When you drive down the I-10, all of the exits into Beaumont are blocked with police and military, but the second you get into Vidor ... NOTHING. At one point some churches were handing out food, water, diapers and other essentials and FEMA told them that they had to stop and leave because they were not authorized to be there. The question being, where was FEMA up to that point, that the church groups were able to get there first.

It was a sad day in general. There are rumours about the power being back as early as next week or as late as November. Who knows what to believe anymore. And alas, we have fallen off the headlines, a mere hiccup in the news world and the media which seem to only think of Katrina and no longer shows us what is actually happening in our towns. People should understand that while yes, there are a lot of small towns in that area, hundreds of thousands of people live in the areas affected by Rita. Vidor has a population of about 19 000 and Beaumont isn't a dot on the map, so trust me a lot of people have been affected by this disaster.

We hope that we will be able to go home soon. It is hard to live in limbo, not knowing when you will have a regular routine again. I hope that it will be soon and I hope that when it does happen we will be able to start fixing up our house to it former 'cozy' glory. Wish us luck.

















Here is the back of the house, where the tree fell. I am not sure that the picture does justice to what it actually looks like when you are standing there in real life looking up at it.























Here is another picture of our bedroom ... after Rita. Once upon a time, in its original state, this bedroom was a beautiful, restful sanctuary, and we loved it! We hope that one day soon we will have our space back.


















Orange St. The street that you need to be on to get to our house. This is just one of the reasons why it will take longer that a couple of days to get power back up in Vidor.