12:46p.m. CST

There is really no explicit South Asian American angle to this post other than the fact the Sepia Mutiny’s U.S. Southern Region Bureau is located in Houston. Houston also has the largest desi population in the U.S. outside of NY/NJ, California, and Chicago. I have evacuated all of our staff but, as the bureau chief, have decided to stay behind and blog updates on this thread for as long as I have electrical power. Right now the eye of Ike is on a path to travel almost directly over our bureau.

I was looking for a bucket of food yesterday but the lines at the stores were too long. I was also looking for a shotgun in case I had to protect myself but I don’t know how to use one anyways so that was probably pointless (I’m not as cool as Omar unfortunately). Other than that I am just going to hunker down (Texans like this phrase) with my camera and video camera and document as much as I can (safely of course). When the storm passes I will try and see if there are any volunteer opportunities for people in more need. Luckily SM’s bureau is located on the second floor of a complex and is relatively well protected and just beyond the surge zone, so my mom is way more worried than I am. Here is the view of downtown from the parking garage:

View of Houston skyline: 12:30 p.m. CST, 9/12/08

I’ve been checking out StormPulse.com and the SciGuy at the Houston Chronicle for the best technical information on Ike. Stay tuned for more updates on this thread.

7:10p.m.

The wind is beginning to pick up outside. I cooked Indian style palak chicken and some rice. I’m going to sit down to perhaps my last hot meal for a few days given that the authorities are saying the power is definitely going to be out. In the mean time I read this funny article on Slate about the 5 stages of Hurricane Anxiety:

For much of the recent past, Texans in general and Houstonians in particular have viewed hurricanes with a degree of machismo. No one was still around to testify to the power of the Great Hurricane of 1900, the one that destroyed Galveston Island and paved the way for Houston to replace it as a boomtown, and few storms that followed were anywhere near as devastating. Over time, in fact, Texans got used to staring down their storms; they committed to staying put, to covering their windows with plywood or marking them with menacing masking-tape Xs, and to hosting foolish if festive hurricane parties. Storms still wreaked havoc—upending trailers, creating widespread flooding, paving downtown Houston in skyscraper glass—but most people accepted them as a normal if problematic part of life here, like mosquitoes, humidity, and the Bush family.

Then came the 2005 hurricane season, with Katrina in August and, not quite a month later, Rita. Within a few weeks, Houston was overwhelmed with evacuees from one angry storm and then dodged another one that ravaged the state’s southeast coastline, costing billions of dollars in damage and inspiring widespread nuttiness and worse as tens of thousands of Houstonians tried to flee at once with no discernable plan other than to “git…” [Link]

I’m totally in stage 3 right now:

3. Denial. Sets in as soon as the storm does not take the hoped-for turn to the north, south, east, or west—that is, doesn’t go elsewhere. In this phase, locals note the clearness of the sky and ignore the stillness in the air. They also avoid well-meaning but anxiety-producing phone calls from faraway family and friends who want to know “how you are doing down there.” Typical responses include “They always turn in another direction” and “I left last time, and nothing happened.” Or, as one stubborn resident of Galveston told Eric Berger after the mayor declared a mandatory evacuation, “I ain’t goin’ nowhere. I’m not goin’ to let them move me like they did for the last one.” (The “last one” being Hurricane Rita, which left more than 100 people dead in Texas.) These days, deniers make theirs virtual by cracking Ike jokes on Facebook, e.g., “Y(Ike)s!” [Link]

9/14/08, 10:30 am

I’m back on the air folks. My apartment isn’t liveable right now because I have no running water. Getting by without power is very do-able but when the water stops things begin to turn unhygienic pretty fast. I went down to get a bucket full of water from the pool (I jumped the locked fence) in order to fill my toliet tank but it took more than one bucket full (wasteful toilet design) so it wasn’t very efficient. Luckily a friend that lives only 2 miles away is one of few people who got back both water and power. I have no idea why her apartment building among all the other ones got back on line so fast but I got a hot shower this morning so I am not complaining. If I had to stay in my apartment (which I went to check on this morning) I think I would have begun to feel like Will Smith in I am Legend.

As soon as I got to an internet connection I switched up my fantasy football lineup. They canceled the Texans-Ravens game so I had to bench Andre Johnson.

I also emailed back a lot of people who were kind enough to check up on me. Thanks y’all.