By JULIA SILVERMAN, Associated Press Writer
> John Willy, the top elected official in Brazoria County,
> southwest of Houston, said he would ignore the state's
> staggered return plan.
> "I am not going to wait for our neighbors to the north to get
> home and take a nap, before I ask our good people to come
> home," he said in a statement. "Our people are tired of the
> state's plan! They have a plan too and it's real simple. They
> plan to come home when they want."
I live in Brazoria County. We returned home yesterday after riding out the storm at our daughter's place in northwest Houston. The damage here was minimal -- lots of tree branches on the ground, and some of my wife's flowering plants were blown over, but there was no structural damage. Judging from the status of the digital clocks, there had been a brief power outage. I had boarded up the windows, but that was probably unnecessary.
The storm had little effect in northwest Houston either. At our daughter's place, the power (Reliant) and cable TV/internet (Time Warner) never went out. We all slept through landfall (even my daughter's fiance, who wanted to watch it on TV, but fell asleep on the couch).
The worst part of the whole experience was trying to follow the state's official evacuation plan -- in our case, go to Brenham, Texas. After a five-hour bumper-to-bumper crawl along SH-36 in 100-degree weather, we abandoned the attempt, split off on a side road, and went to Houston. Which, in retrospect, is what we should have done in the first place.
I blogged the entire experience:
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We are all glad to hear that you are safe and sound, Neal. PAT]