CowboyFan74;3449179 said:
Man that is one awesome interactive map, amazing footage...
Ike was a monster. No two ways about it. A big problem was that people went to bed after the 10 pm news and Ike was slowing down and dropping in wind speed to a Cat 2. If you slept in that Saturday, I think it was Saturday, you woke up and Ike was a mid range Cat 4 with a Cat 5 storm surge.
I was on the HardcoreWeather.com chat room that entire night as Ike came on shore. There were literally hundreds of folks who were putting their phone numbers up so we could send them text messages as things got nasty. Phone service went out, but you could still send and receive SMS. My count personally was in the low 100's.
That morning, a kid pops on the chat room. He was 13-15 years old I want to say. Lived somewhere on Bolivar. His parents were sleeping in after a party the night before and wouldn't wake up. Well, they did, got high, and went back to sleep. He was waking them up and trying to convince them that they were in danger through the members who were giving him information via the chat.
Finally we get the father online and got a phone number. One of the moderators talked to him directly. They were out the door within the hour and driving in water to get out. I had to go to work before the phone call took place, but when I got home that night, one of the members had the family at their house in Houston. They admitted they weren't going to leave because they thought it was still a Cat 2 and downgrading as it came on shore. The house they were renting was reduced to pilings.
A member somehow put all major TV stations in Houston broadcasting out of one single web page that night. You could mute the ones you needed to an listen to the on site reporters. It was amazing to see the power of that storm as it came in.
One thing I won't forget was a woman trapped in a house on one of the peninsulas with her husband. They called one of the TV stations because that's all they could connect to and they were hoping that the Sheriff's or someone could come get them. They were in the rafters of their house and the first floor had washed away. Another guy had swam over before things got real bad as his house was already gone.
The desperation in her voice was unmistakable. She wanted to know when the eye was going to pass so they could get out to a better structure because the one they were in was falling apart. They didn't think they were going to be able to wait another hour.
The meteorologist looked like he was going to vomit on live TV. He stammered out that the eye was going to miss them.
She asked him would they get any drop off inbetween the bands then.
He has to tell them that they were going to get hit with the eye wall in a matter of minutes.
Her scream would have shattered a heart of stone. It was the worst sound I've ever heard.
Her sobbing and wailing, knowing in the next half hour or so she was going to die.
