When you live in the Gulf of Mexico, hurricanes are just a fact of life, I guess. Having gone through 2 in the past three years (Katrina and now Ike), I am a pro!
The 2 were very different. Katrina was more powerful, but moved faster. Ike just lingered on and on and would not go! We were West of the eye, so we took an 8-hour beating. Multiply the video below times 8 hours and try to imagine how much rain and wind and noise...It's surreal.
Two days later we can say we were lucky. We are dry, our power came back Saturday night and a cold front blew in and the weather is beautiful and cool. This is important since the crews are out cleaning and repairing and most Houston residents are still without power and the heat here can be unbearable.
I got the most unusual phone call yesterday: a reporter from my hometown's newspaper, Porto Alegre, in Brazil. But that was not the unusual part...he interviewed me three years ago, in the aftermath of Katrina, when we were in New Orleans, with water up to the belly button. The piece ran in today's print edition of Zero Hora.
