Texans

[bubba]

Worried and praying for our numerous Texans in Galveston/Houston area.More people are trying to send you good thoughts than you know.Hope all is better than we see in the Media.

[TikiRick]

Just got a PM from Palmsrgreat (Michael Smith) in Houston.

He got some roof damage, water damage inside his home, fences down, and garden ripped up.

Seems what the general concensus is at the time. Glad to hear that he and his wife, Dianne, are okay. They just got power restored today (Tuesday).

Write your own words, Mike! All the best to you guys in the Lone Star State.

[palmsrgreat]

Hey, thanks for the concerns guys. Got some fair amount if damage here but nothing too serious. Good news is everything can be repaired or replaced. My company has been giving out 10 gallons of gas per person/per day plus 40lbs of ice and a case of water. Dreyer's has been very good to its people during this so far.

Bubba, I'm glad to see that you started this thread. Thanks for the thoughts, only thing I missed was seeing Trindon Holliday run two punt returns back for touchdowns. Speaking of which, my friend has an extra ticket to the matchup in Gainesville and wants me to go. As much as I'd love to, I don't know if the timing is right to purchase a flight with all we have going on here.

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts during this time. There are many people still without power.

[steve 9atx]

I second Michael's "thank you" for everyone's prayers and best wishes. Some areas are much worse than

others, but it is safe to say that Ike tore Houston a new orifice. We still don't have power and have no idea

when we might get it back. I think there are still over 2 million customers without power in the Houston/

Galveston area. Galveston and the Bolivar peninsula have nothing: no power, water, sewer, gas, phone.

In fact, Galveston has a "look and leave" policy - if you can prove you're a resident, you can come in for

a few hours to look at your property, but you have to be gone by 6 pm curfew or you get fined or arrested.

Houston has a 9 pm curfew. Thank goodness we had a cool front come in after the storm so we can sleep

at night. Except for generators and chain saws, everything stays pretty quiet - even the birds that survived

the storm don't seem to sing anymore.

Regarding palms, almost all of them are damaged to some extent. I'll post some photos to solicit your

advice for nursing them back to health.

Here's a view of the driveway with probably a 6" caliper limb that fell off the pecan tree. I lost two other

limbs around 8" caliper that skidded off the garage roof and smashed the board fence between me and

my neighbor. It took my wife and me around five hours with a bow saw and chain saw to get these limbs

cut up and drug out to the curb:

Here's a shot up the driveway. I lost my papaya. A Butia archeri and Arenga micrantha are leaning and

now staked. I couldn't get the Butia very straight with the stake as it is so close to the ground:

Steve

[steve 9atx]

Foxtail (also notice the Italian Cypress in the background - I have two of these laying on the house):

Spindle:

[steve 9atx]

Triangle:

Dypsis decipiens got hit right on the spear by a falling pecan limb:

[steve 9atx]

Cycad:

Butia/Parajubaea hybrid and Crinum smashed by falling limbs. Bangalow had some fronds knocked off also,

but the new spear looks almost undamaged:

Steve

[steve 9atx]

Some neighborhood shots - Chinese elm that fell away from a house:

Chinese elm that fell on a house:

[steve 9atx]

Hackberry being held up by a fence:

Cedars with trunks broken off:

[steve 9atx]

American Elm was to be the required street tree for new construction:

Med fan and Sabals blown down to the spear:

[steve 9atx]

Stump of an American Elm that fell on a car. This was a 5-6' caliper tree (cf with sidewalk):

Most of the older live oaks like this one didn't lose many limbs. The resurrection ferns on the

limbs were happy with the rain:

[bubba]

Glad you guys are OK.Some great Palms.They will come back better than you expect.

[steve 9atx]

Washys and CIDP did ok. Pindos look like they have crown damage:

Street debris cleanup. Believe it or not the City will eventually pick all

this up and make mulch out of it:

[steve 9atx]

Live oak broken off:

Live oak down by the roots:

[steve 9atx]

Pecan down by the roots:

Loblolly pine broken off. This was about a 4'+ caliper pine, probably 120'+ tall.

They just don't get much bigger than this. This one was laying across the street

before they cut it up:

[steve 9atx]

Water oak broken off at mid-trunk. In general, the water oaks didn't do very well in the wind:

Massive southern red oak, another 4'+ caliper tree down. This one too was across the street.

Someone had a seriously long chain saw to cut this one up and get it out of the way:

Well, that's a 30 minute walk through my neighborhood yesterday. Thank goodness not a lot

of structural damage to dwellings, but plenty of trees down or damaged.

Steve

[Really full garden]

My brother lives in Houston in Oak Forest and they never lost power.They do have trees and limbs everywhere.

I lived in Houston during hurricane Alicia.It was amazing how quickly things recover.Thank God it was not a Cat 3 !

[palmdudetx]

Thanks to all for the kind thoughts and words concerning the hurricane damage to the Texas gulf coast. Galveston is completely uninhabitable, the mayor has asked everyone still there to please leave.

We faired a little better than most of the folks in Houston, we are located about 50 miles west of Houston. Thank goodness I did not loose any of my live oaks, just a few limbs. Spent two days preparing my palms as best that I could and trying to make sure nothing small was left outside in the open. We were spared a lot of misery compared to some of the others.

Some of our friends in Louisiana are still without electrical power, from Hurricane Gustauf. It only takes going through one of these, to wish for the end of hurricane season.

Marvin

Southern Waller County, Texas

[bubba]

I have never spent real time in Houston or Galveston but from the pictures I see it is much more beautiful than I realized.Those Live Oaks are sacred.Steve's palms are fascinating,even though some are damaged.They will return. Texans are dam tough Hombres.Kinda of blown away by Steve's Palms.What other cards are you not telling us about?

[steve 9atx]

Of course in post #6 I meant Livistona decipiens/decora. Here's a link to some amazing photos of the Bolivar Peninsula and the West End of Galveston:

http://jakeabby.com/cb/

Steve

[gsytch]

I am sooooooo glad that most people came through. However, I still have to wonder WHY are they building in these places? It is not a matter IF they will get flooded/destroyed, but when....again and again... and why would they rebuild? Just to have it all happen again???? I can only imagine who eventually foots the bill? (hint, it is the taxpayer)

[Big Tex]

We drove around Houston yesterday for the first time. It was amazing to see how much has been cleaned up in a weeks time. The downtown area is for the most part cleared and doing business. the Chase building is still a mess and several other building lost windows. Most of the trees that were down have been cut up and stacked by the roads waiting to be picked up.

We did not go Southeast areas closest to the Gulf, but the worst are I saw was the Memorial area. This area is in the middle of an old oak tree forest. I have never seen so many old trees gone or so many huge oak trees in peoples' houses. Since the people who live in the Memorial area have plenty of money they had done an amazing job of contracting tree removal services to come in and clean up the mess. Every street in that area had 5- 10 foot stacks of cut up trees lining the streets waiting on FEMA to come by and pick them up. Because of all the trees falling, lots power lines were down and poles snapped in half. Naturally all of that area is still powerless. As of today I think close to 1.2 million are still without power.

With all of the oak and pine trees I see snapped in half, I saw very few palms up rooted or broken. Made me glad we have palms in our yard and not hard wood trees. Believe me I had to argue a log time with our home owners' association over that one. None of them are from hurricane prone areas and they had no idea that palms take tropical winds much better than hard woods and pines.

From what I could see, there were lots of grocery stores opening and lots of gas stations available. I managed to fill up without even a wait. The price had gone up about 30 cents a gallon but grocery stores are still the same price.

[Big Tex]

Triangle:

Dypsis decipiens got hit right on the spear by a falling pecan limb:

Too bad about your Triangle Palm. Had the pecan limb not hit it, the palm would have never had a problem. All of my palms took a good beating and most had to be staked upright. My Triangle didn't even have a frond messed up. In fact it has a spear opening up right now. I also expected to have my Pitaya broken up in pieces but it too came out unscathed. Both took direct hits from the North winds. My Papayas are all ok, a bit short of leaves, but i did loose all the fruit except two.

[palmdudetx]

Triangle:

Dypsis decipiens got hit right on the spear by a falling pecan limb:

Too bad about your Triangle Palm. Had the pecan limb not hit it, the palm would have never had a problem. All of my palms took a good beating and most had to be staked upright. My Triangle didn't even have a frond messed up. In fact it has a spear opening up right now. I also expected to have my Pitaya broken up in pieces but it too came out unscathed. Both took direct hits from the North winds. My Papayas are all ok, a bit short of leaves, but i did loose all the fruit except two.

Yes bigtex,

Regarding your message of how the palms faired, if you notice from some of the photos of the Galveston area after the storm, there are quite a few washies and sabals that are still upright and look pretty good. I have seen a lot of oaks and various other trees uprooted in my area, but no large palms. Just small palms recently planted are blown over, but not all of them.

Marvin

Southern Waller County,Tx

[Dave-Vero]

Those photos are painful, but I expect things to look pretty good within a year.

The live oak photos are similar to how ours looked in 2004. Some trees fell over, a few snapped, lots of branches down, but most of the trees held together well. The tendency here is to think live oaks offer quite a lot of wind protection in residential neighborhoods.

I think most of Syagrus and Butia are from parts of Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina that don't suffer strong winds. Syagrus romanzoffiana and S. botryophora are known for not doing well in wind. Australian Livistona do well in wind, according to John Dowe's research.

In 2004, I spent 5 days cleaning the yard after Frances. Jeanne only took a single day. At the time, I had only a few tiny little palms and a couple of big Sabal palmetto. All survived and a tiny Archontophoenix cunninghamiana now has a nice trunk.

[Big Tex]

Yes bigtex,

Regarding your message of how the palms faired, if you notice from some of the photos of the Galveston area after the storm, there are quite a few washies and sabals that are still upright and look pretty good. I have seen a lot of oaks and various other trees uprooted in my area, but no large palms. Just small palms recently planted are blown over, but not all of them.

Marvin

Southern Waller County,Tx

I noticed also that the filferas in the area suffered very little damage as compared to the robustas.

[steve 9atx]

Here a week and a half out, I thought I'd provide a little post mortem on the storm. The estimate

of trees that fell is in the many 10,000's. There have been at least 8000, and by now up to 11,000

tree trimmers and linemen working 24/7 to get power restored. This includes help from 50 different

companies in 30 states. They've managed to get all but 27% (616,000 customers) hooked back

up since the 13th. A lot of other utilities have given up equipment they had in factory production

for our local power company to appropriate and install. Even with this, folks that are out due to a

blown transformer still have a long wait ahead of them - they still have to locate transformers to

install. I'm sure some folks will have to wait well into October. We got power back Saturday night,

a week after the storm. Thank goodness.

Fortunately for those still without power, the temps have been unseasonably cool, up to 10F cooler

than normal, so it is possible to sleep with the windows open.

After it hit us, Ike rode up into Canada on a cool front. In fact, I have a client in Pittsburgh that got

his power knocked out for three days by the remnants of the storm. A friend of my partner's in

Columbus, OH got his power knocked out for almost a week.

Galveston residents that live behind the seawall can come back to the island on Wednesday, but

there are still no services. They say that there are so many leaks in the domestic water system,

that the City's reservoir tanks are draining out even though they are pumping fresh water furiously

from the mainland into the City's system. Residents of the West End (not behind the seawall) are

able to come back on a "look and leave" basis only. The giant old live oaks down Broadway were

inundated with salt water - they'll have to figure out a way to flush them with fresh water or they

will be lost.

As gsytch said, many of the beach houses will not be rebuilt. Where the beach has eroded in many

places the Texas Open Beaches Act will kick in (basically the area between mean high and low tides

is public property). Some people will find that their beach house is now on public property and will

therefore be condemned. Also, FEMA regulations say that if you are in a flood plain or floodway

(storm surge zone) and your damage exceeds 50% of the structure's value, you won't be allowed

to rebuild. Many of the beach houses you saw blown away were built in the 40's and 50's with little

though to anything but economy. Most were intended as second homes. They were not engineered

for a 12' storm surge and 115 mph winds. Newer beach houses built according to current Codes

substantially survived the storm.

They say the tree and construction debris out on the curbs will take at least 90 days to pick up. The

City is using its own forces as well as contracting out for debris pickup. They're going to wind up with

a mountain of mulch once they shred all of that plant material!

They're estimating that at the end of the day, Ike will be the third costliest storm in US history. The

only saving grace is that the death toll has been mercifully low.

Steve