My husband housed my inlaws for Rita (subsequently setting back our first date), and then we had them for Ike. They live on the northern part of the Trinity Bay.
Now, even with Katrina still very fresh on everyone's minds, when Rita came barreling in, many, many people, including my now inlaws, (who had lived through Allison in 2001, and even Alica back in 1983) weren't really "concerned" about Rita until it was too late for easy evacuation.
My husband tells me it took them about 20 hours to go the (approximately) 150 miles between their house and his apartment, normally a 2 and a half hour drive.
Their house wound up being fine, fortunately. But I'm told they lost a lot of trees on their few acre property.
I still remember going out there the first time and being amazed at their trees. You could barely see the sky through the canopy.
Now, when Ike came, they left well ahead of mandatory evacuation. They brought their dog and cats, their photos and documents, and everything deemed too important to live without. We honestly were prepared to have them just live with us from then on out.
Ike was nasty. We watched the news for days. My mother in law was calling friends and family that stayed behind. We sat silent as the waters rose and rose and rose, leaving nothing behind as they receded.
It was scary, and we weren't even living through it.
When it was safe to go back, we all drove in to check on the damage, and as we started moving on to the back country roads the landscape was so eerie. Huge trees just toppled, and houses and people's belongings strewn across the new fields that weren't there before. The worst was seeing the crash of nature and human life, things like...what was left of a mattress crumbled in with steel and bark and vines.
I'd never seen, let alone lived through, nature's destruction like that.
They live in a very small "neighborhood" of maybe 5-6 houses on a dead end county road. After hours of navigating, we made it to their road, but couldn't get around the trees in the road, so we parked and walked in.
My husband's first words upon coming to their street was, "you can barely tell where the road's supposed to be," and he started welling up with tears.
We walked further down the road, and to our absolute amazement....there was their house.
Every single tree that fell had fallen in such a way to be parallel to that side of the house.
Their barn sustained the most structural damage with a tree propped up against it, but hadn't collapsed.
Fortunately, my father in law kept a chainsaw and some other tree care tools in the unscathed garage, and we slowly got to work. He has two generators, so the house was easily cooled while we cleaned up food and dust and some flood damage inside.
That night we sat outside drinking some cocktails. We looked up and saw something we'd only ever catch glimpses of before Ike.....a blanket of stars.