Hurricane Ike and my Parents - Update

In my last post I shared that my parents house had about 4 feet of water downstairs but we were not sure about Daddy's office. Well, the news on that is not good. It is a complete loss. The water was about 5 1/2 feet deep. The water line was eye level to my dad. The pictures are just shocking. Out of my respect for my parents I have not included pictures. If at some point they say it is ok I will share a few. It is unbelieveable to see them. Dad and John made the trip to Texas last Tuesday. On Wednesday, John was able to get onto the island with Andrew. They went to the house to take the supplies that dad brought back and they went down to the office to survey the damage. They took lots of pictures of the main part of the office, due to furniture blocking the door they could not get in the side with the storrage room and conference room. They didn't want to break the door down. On Thursday, dad was able to get on the island for a few hours. It was good for him to go. He needed to see the damage so he could grasp it all. He said the house was not as bad as he thought it would be but the office was very upsetting for him. He has worked all his life to build it up and now it was in ruins. To make it worse, the building owners had people throwing all of dad's stuff out into the street! He was more than pissed!! He told them not to touch anything else. Because of confidentiality he has to be the one to destroy the wet and nasty files. I think he should contact a lawyer because oficcially they were not allowed on the island so they could not get to the building to do anything or photograph for insurance purposes so to me he has some kind of lawsuit since they just started throwing his stuff out before he could legally be there. If he had not gotten on when he did he could have come back to an empty office and confidential informatoin would have been disposed of improperly. It would have been a huge liability for him.

After a lot of thinking and soul searching about what to do about the business he has decided to build it back up. He has all of the data so he just needs to get a few computers and a phone line and he is back in business. He thinks his clients will need him more than ever since they will have to fill out extra parts to tax returns to claim Disaster Tex Relief. There is a whole Disaster Tax kit people will have to deal with and you know as well as I do that that kind of stuff can get very confusing. He really wants to be there for his clients.

I will be heading to Texas at the beginning of October to help in anyway I can off the island. I cannot risk taking Cecelia to Galveston at this point. Not for quite a while. I will go one day without her to Galveston. My aunt Ann is going to keep her for me. I need to go home to see it. Maybe it is morbid curiosity but I have a strong pull there, probably becuase that has been my home most of my life.

On a good note, Grammy's house is ok. Lots of trees down but her house is fine. There is still no power as of today but they are expecting it to be on by Thursday.

Keep Mom, Dad, and Andrew in your prayers as they begin the cleaning and rebuilding process. They need them to help keep them strong through the process.