Here is a photo of Buffalo Bayou taken from the overpass of Sheperd between Memorial Drive and Allen Parkway.  This 2X zoom photo faces downtown with a new high rise development there and downtown’s buildings are on the right.  Normally this is a small Bayou unless we get heavy rains.  Today it is large enough to be called Buffalo Lake.  There won’t be any joggers or people riding bikes down there for quite a bit of time.

This is a second photo of the same, just a bit more centered.  Again from the overpass of Sheperd between Memorial Drive and Allen Parkway facing downtown.

This Buffalo Bayou photo should show you the context of just how high it is.  This one faces away from Downtown Houston on Waugh Drive facing west to Sheperd.  It truly is Buffalo Lake today.

This one pretty much says it all. "IKE B GONE!"

This was taken right by West University.  Those aren’t branches next to the house.  Those are upturned tree roots.

If you hate oil companies or if you feel gouged, this one won’t exactly break your heart.  They’ll probably miss a couple days of high gasoline prices to sell here.  That is a Shell gas station and convenience store located on Richmond between Sheperd and Montrose.

River Oaks, neighborhood of the wealthy….  River Oaks has bigger lots than most neighborhoods and because it is an older area it has very large and very old trees.  Many trees didn’t make it and this will give you an idea for the size of it.

Another big tree to show the size, with this one also in River Oaks.  Here is the real sad thing about what happened in River Oaks.  These images only capture a fraction of the destruction that occurred to the neighborhood.  Perhaps the only good news is that most homes were not seriously damaged unless it was from a tree falling into them.

Cleveland Park at Memorial and Jackson Hill.  This photo is of another fallen tree in a park right by my house between Memorial Park and Downtown Houston.  The size would not easily stand out except for one thing.  That metal fence it to a tennis court.  That fence is also about 14 feet high.

Here is a stop sign over in Houston’s Heights section.  They are immune from floods for the most part, but winds still took this monster tree down.  We’d tell you which intersection that was, except there was no intersection market anywhere.  That blew away too.

Now here is the funny part of this entire situation.  Actually, it isn’t funny at all but important for the infrastructure.  These are only a handful of the pictures we took and most off of the drive-around smartphone camera pictures just don’t show you the depth or breadth of things.  I have seen total wipe out photos of West Beach in Galveston.  But as far as Houston is concerned, the city is going to recover.  The biggest damage was to the electric system and it is very likely that there may be people without power even in 7 to 10 days.  Most the infrastructure itself "looks" intact, although certain office buildings like the JPMorgan tower may be missing more windows than it isn’t and that is going to take weeks to properly fix.  There are many broken windows and there are many buildings we saw that have tree damage or other issues.  The Houston water supply is now out in most areas or has no pressure as a major water pump station was damaged, leaving questions to whether or not it is safe to drink the water or to use for any cleaning. Telephone landlines and cable lines are down in many places and some traffic lights are non-operational or just destroyed.  But at least the Inner Loop had far less damage than you might have expected.  The major building projects that were not completed weren’t destroyed and for the most part looked unscathed.

We may follow up with some more photos tomorrow, but we like to focus primarily on stocks and economic issues affecting you and your money. Going through this hurricane was not an easy task even if we did have it far easier than many others.

JON C. OGG
September 13, 2008

It was a long rough night as it sounded like howling banshees in between the flying tree branches hitting the house.  Sometimes the wind gusts around 2AM to 5 AM were so strong that you could feel the house slightly shaking.  The good news is that we are among the lucky so far.  The south wall of Hurricane Ike is passing over the city and the clouds have gone from that nasty dark gray of a smoking-cadaver lung to light gray with some white mixed in.  Thw winds are still giving some strong gusts, but the worst looks like it has passed.  Some how we actually still have electricity at our home.  Hopefully that will last but we could always get shut off for emergency systems.

We started getting bad weather early last night and the hurricaneitself hit in the middle of the night.  It was way before the hurricanehad even started when my parents called and said their power was out,which was around 7:30 PM local time.  The rest of the city looks to bewithout power and that may continue for quite some time.  We arenestled in between downtown and Memorial Park, and the grids thatstayed up with power are the downtown grid (us) and around the MedicalCenter.  Some other locations in Houston have power and some haveintermittent power or scattered power. But most of the city is dark.During the night we saw many flashes of bright white light followed bylarge popping noises, so it is likely that many homes in theneighborhood are without power even if the grid here made it fine.

Now for the sad part.  Many residents to the south of Houston did notleave in the mandatory evacuations.  With certain parts of the coastand low-lying areas being completely submerged it is hard to imaginethat many of these people haven’t paid the ultimate price.  During theRita evacuation when everyone was worried about another Katrina, it wasestimated that more people died in the evacuation and return than wouldhave died in the hurricane, so very few people wanted to leave.  It wasa mistake.

The loss is going to be catastrophic in and around Galveston andreports are putting much of the coastal highway and neighborhoods andcities under multiple feet of water.  The surge was said to back up theHouston Ship Channel, which will in turn back up Buffalo Bayou andother small waterways.  The sewers and drains are full and overflowingaccording to some telephone calls and messages I have received.  Theseare from people like us that live on higher ground.  I can only imaginewhat it is like elsewhere.  Oddly enough, there are some parts ofGalveston where reporters said there looked to be no severe damage atall and it looking like wrecking crews had gone to work literally a fewhundred feet away because the damage was so bad.

There are no real reports yet on the oil infrastructure.  While youknow there will have been substantial damage, it so far seems as thoughthe infrastructure hit might be less than some might have thought.Downtown is littered with broken glass that isn’t from car vandals.  Itis from all the skyscrapers getting hit by debris and then getting thewindows literally ripped off the buildings from wind and pressure.

Today and tomorrow and even in the week are going to be someinteresting times.  There have been thousands of distressed emergencyservices calls which were not able to be answered for safety’s sake.Trust me on this when I tell you that if you would have driven aroundlast night around 3AM you would have been insane.  The hope is thatthose who were going to stay put did not and at least went to higherground.  The sad part is that many did not.

There is only one Hope Diamond.  There is only one U.S. Constitution.At the end of the day everything else is just stuff, none of which youcan take with you.  Cemeteries are already full of people that othersthought they couldn’t survive without.  Let’s hope things aren’t as badas they may have been or could have been.  This Houstonian isdefinitely in that camp.

Jon C. Ogg
September 13, 2008