Hurricane Ike

[Yegolev]

Looks like NASA got their thumb over the lens.  Again.

[Tale]

Homeland Security is saying lives have been lost: http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/weather/entries/2008/09/13/chertoff_says_u.html

Michael Chertoff, the U.S. secretary of Homeland Security, suggested today that an unknown number of people may have lost their lives to the hurricane, though he didn’t have details as of about 1:30 p.m. Texas time.

“We have already heard some initial reports of a few deaths,” Chertoff said. “Obviously one death is more than we want to hear about. But we may learn of other losses in the hours to come, particularly among those people who did not evacuate.”

[Sir T]

I hope that all that are in the path of the storm come out ok, but I will be following this guys story. I personaly think this is Darwin worthy.

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-83417

"I've decided not to evacuate," said iReporter Matteu Erchull on Galveston Island. "We have a lot of faith in the seawall, and we have boards on the windows. Most people on the island live on second or third stories, so they don't have to worry about the water so much."

However, Erchull started having second thoughts as the sea surged in.

"There's a lot of concern, actually, because we were getting all gung-ho about staying here, and just now I've taken all my electronics and [I'm] putting them on top of the refrigerator," he said.

"There's water on my door. It's like you're all ready for it until you start to see it yourself.

"The window of opportunity for us to leave is still available, and I wouldn't be surprised if I heed that warning in the next hour."

I'm sorry but what kind of a Moron is this guy? Where can I read the blog of what he wrote as all I can see from the link is pictures and comments.

[Tale]

This storm chaser's blog entries are good: http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/498441

[bhodi]

[Oban]

Holy shit, I can not stop laughing at the description of Ike.

[Furiously]

Too early or late to talk about impact to oil industry?  Or should we do that in the Thuderdome?

Can't we just get beyond Thunderdome?

[Hawkbit]

I've never been anywhere near a hurricane.  But damned if Ike's remnants didn't fuck things royally here in Ohio.  Four hours of 60-75 mph winds, trees toppled everywhere.  Some of them are big freakin trees!!  Luckily, nothing broke on my property but I'm picking up a whole bunch of neighboring houses' shingles out of my yard.  Nearly all Columbus's schools are closed tomorrow as well.  Local news said they've never recorded winds that strong in central Ohio when it wasn't attached to a tornado. 

The wife watched a street sign ripped from the ground and go hurtling across the road and I saw a barn ripped to pieces.  Infuckingsane.  I don't know how people do it that live in prone areas. 

[schild]

Because the other 9 months out of the year in those places are AWESOME. Smart people have homes in Florida and SoCal. The poor folk who think the New Orleans HIPNESS is enough to keep them there are just CRAZY.

And I don't know why anyone would live in Galveston.

[Merusk]

Ike fucked up my house, the bastard.  Ripped off some trim & siding and knocked my power out for 6 1/2 hours yesterday.  Of course, I was one of the lucky ones as I now have power.  1/3 of Cincinnati is still without power and I, in rural bumfuck Ky, do.  Go figure.

Of course, driving in to work the lights were out everywhere UNTIL my building.  There's only 2 buildings in this whole 20-building medical office park (Yeah, I don't know why our office is in here either.) that have power.  Mine is one of them.   

[ClydeJr]

Oblique aerial photography of Bolivar Peninsula, TX, on September 9, 2008 (top) and September 15, 2008, two days after landfall of Hurricane Ike (bottom). Yellow arrows mark features that appear in each image. In addition to the loss of houses, the evidence of inundation here includes eroded dune face and sand deposited well inland of the shoreline.



More pictures at http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/ike/photo-comparisons/bolivar.html

[Yegolev]

I'd love to put some sadly-funny work-related shit in here but I'm pretty sure it's confidential info.  I can probably only say that Ike has indirectly caused IBM to lose a datacenter contract.  Directly, it was their own incompetence.  Hope you fuckers are stocked on orange juice.

[Ingmar]

Just change the names to protect the guilty! I love IT fuckup stories.

[Yegolev]

Eh, well... ... there's this company based in Houston and it outsourced its datacenter support to, uh, HAL.  There was some sort of issue last year where the company had to recover its servers and the summary is that HAL fucked it up, taking over a month to do the recovery.  This made some people irritable since HAL is being paid a seven-digit sum to maintain this hardware/software.  This year, well we had Ike assault Houston and there's not much electrical power there, and for some reason that I cannot ascertain, WE are going to do the recovery.  Not HAL, who is paid a large sum to do so and who has a large presence in Austin.  I haven't gotten a straight answer from anyone yet.

There was a conference call and what I heard went something like the HAL guy said he waded into the water to get a 8mm tape (one version had him yanking out the tape drive but that seems unrealistic) and a box of 3550 tapes which was later put into U.S. Mail to us.  Apparently FedEx and UPS were closed.   No one is really sure where these tapes are, other than "in Atlanta", but I'm sure they will arrive eventually.

Anyway, the HAL guy is saying he really wants to fly to the ATL and handle the recovery.  Everyone on the phone, even other HAL people, are like "Hey, shouldn't you be taking care of your family?" and he's all "My wife has the insurance people lined up, it's all taken care of" and the watercooler take on it is that this must be the guy responsible for the recovery from last year as well as this year.  He is probably very concerned because he does not actually know what is on the tapes, and when my friend who has been handed this recovery asked what the root password for the image was, the guy said "... uuuhhh...".  Verbatim.  Whee!  Not that it's hard to crack root, but srsly.

However this falls out, I expect we will be absorbing the company's IT assets in 2009-2010.  Interestingly, they have a SCO server, which means we will too.

Please note that this story is entirely fiction.

[Cyrrex]

I like stories that involve HAL fucking up and taking it up the poop chute for it.  The partner my company uses, uh, JCN, doesn't need natural disasters in order to royally screw up.

[HaemishM]

If HAL is the same company I've dealt with for hosting in the past, this entirely fictional story is in no way surprising. I still cannot fathom how people can pay these fuckheads 7-figure contracts to host shit so badly.

[Yegolev]

I need to post a followup in light (keke) of new information.  I got an answer on why we were doing the recovery.  Turns out that this server was the SCO server.  Also turns out that all of the other servers were recovered at the DR site in Boulder (I think), as per a contract with HAL.  The SCO server was slated to be absorbed into our infrastructure two months from now and someone here has decided to drop the support contract earlier than the move.  Then Ike shows up at the right time and hilarity ensues.

Also, and this should be little surprise to anyone involved in DR, the guy who swam for tapes (our guy, turns out) sent us ALL of them.  Power was restored last night, however they cannot perform any backups since they don't have any tapes for the library.

This story is fiction and I work for Nuka-Cola in this story.

[WayAbvPar]

So maybe the helicopters landing last week were the data tapes?

[Yegolev]

Ha.  No, our stinginess knows no bounds.  It's USPS for us.

[Grimwell]

Is it bad that when I heard someone suggest printing out Ike Turner shirts reading "I'm sorry Galveston, it will never happen again, I promise!" I instantly thought of actually going for it on Cafe Press?

[Yegolev]

No, sounds like you're just a level-headed businessman.  You should work in finance.

[Selby]

That picture of Bolivar is maybe 1/2 a mile from my mother-in-law's beach house (or rather, where it used to be).  They made out just fine without too much damage at the house in SE Houston, but it still was lots of fun with FEMA fucking around again as I've been told.

[hal]

I had no (as in none) involvement in this despite allusions to the contrary. really it was two other guys named SAM. That is all.

[Sir T]

This is highly irregular, Hal...

[Nazrat]

We took a good hit in the Beaumont area from Ike.  Since I live one county inland from the coast, we didn't evacuate as there was no chance of storm surge making it that far inland. 

We lost power for 5 days and survived on my trusty little generator.  We had stockpiled more than 6 days of supplies including gasoline for the generator.  We were very lucky as we suffered no damage to the our home.  However, we lost a lot of our wood fence and one of my metal gates.  So, the storm is going to run me my wind storm deductible of $6700 at least. 

My state agency still has not opened as there are no schools running in the area as I type this.  The county courthouse is still closed and they just lifted the boil water notice for Beaumont this weekend.  Good news is that the curfew was pushed back to 11pm to 5 am. 

Two of my employees lived in Bridge City and lost their homes.  So, it is tough to feel sorry for yourself when you see the loss of others.   Many of my lower paid employees couldn't evacuate because they were out of funds from evacuating for Gustav. 

Since moving to the area in August of 08, we have been hit or evacuated for 4 named storms:  Humberto, Eduard, Gustav and Ike.  That gets a little old.

[Lantyssa]

Welcome to Texas!

[Yegolev]

Is this where I complain about not having any gasoline?

[Cheddar]

Is this where I complain about not having any gasoline?

Yeah, whats up with that?  We have some friends driving up from SC - they called yesterday and told us they would be a day late because they could not find gas.  WTF?

[Paelos]

Atlanta's been cripppled by the gas shortage. People were calling into the news stations and telling people who had gas. Last weekend I sat in a 45 minute line with my carpool buddies because we saw a gas truck pull up to a Walmart and start pumping. Eight other gas stations were out that night.

[Yegolev]

I don't know about other areas, but from what I have learned it is a combination of Atlanta's complete lack of mass transit coupled with a EPA ban on non-reformulated gasoline (non-RFG).  Basically this area is an environmental hazard and we need special gas, which isn't unusual for cities, but put into that equation the facts that we are in the southeast and everyone drives everywhere, and you end up with a near-total lack of gasoline.

My wife tells me the EPA restrictions were temporarily lifted last week and we are indeed seeing more than 2/3 of stations with fuel now.

[Zar]

It doesn't help that gasoline inventories were at an all time low before the one two punch of Gustav and Ike.  Our energy infrastructure is in a dangerously precarious position, where one good shock (like a hurricane or two) to the system can seriously disrupt normal activities.  A more serious shock (e.g. Iran blockading the Strait of Hormuz) could send this nation into a complete nosedive in a matter of days or weeks.  It's rather frightening to contemplate.