Tim. Laura and I went out yesterday around 1:00. Tim wanted to show Laura all of the fences that were down around our block. He took us around the block, which took about 45 minutes. During that time he touched based with some of his stores. Many of the employees had not had any food that day.
You see, we have very limited supplies of food & water in the Houston area. So, from that phone call, Tim was on a mission. His first priority at that point was to find food for his employees. We finally found a Jack In The Box, close to us, that was open. So, we were able to get 60 cheese burgers and 20 tacos to supply his Houston stores with 2 burgers per person along with a few tacos. Next, we had to hit all of his stores before 5:00, which in and of itself created a problem. Tim called Gulf Fwy first and found that they had a "den mother" take care of them and proved them with sandwiches for lunch. However, the other 3 Houston stores had not had breakfast or lunch. So, now it was time to divide everything out and get to the store. The first store was SW Fwy. They had no power to the building. Their staff was limited as well as their customers. It hard to open a store when you have no power, however, they were actually opened. Our next stop was NW Fwy. They also had minimal power (generator provided power) so they did not have much customer base either. Then we made it to the North Freeway store. They were unbelievably busy. The parking lot when we arrived was completely full. When we got inside it was just as bad. They had generator customers wrapped around the perimeter. It was absolutely crazy! I could not believe it. Tim remained at the front, becoming a cashier, and found that most of the customers had been in line for 7 or more hours. He could not believe it and because I do not work in that industry, I couldn't wrap myself around it. I don't know that I could wait in line for 7 or more hours. However, his dedicated customers did.
We helped for several hours in the N. Fwy. store (I don't know how much help we were) and finally around 8:00 the doors were closed to any more customers. Remember the store closes as 6:00 on Sunday's. After we left, it was getting past Laura's bedtime, so our next challenge was finding somewhere to get her something to eat. Surprisingly we could not find anything until we got closer to our home. Most places are closed in our area (fast food, retailers, etc.). While Tim ordered food, I ended up getting in line at the gas station. We got in line around 9:00pm and it was well after 10:00 before we actually got gas. It was unbelievable the number of people that were in line. More than that, it was unbelievable how many people had to be pushed to the gas tanks. I ended up having to get in the driver's seat so that Tim could help people push their cars to the tank.
We finally made it home between 10 and 11:00, and Laura was exhausted! We got her to bed and as soon as our head hit the pillow we were out ourselves.
I can not believe what an impact this has made. It's hard to believe that so much has changes in less than a week. Electricity, Water pressure, food, electricity and phone service has been completely compromised. They say it could take weeks to restore power. We are very lucky in that we have power, water pressure, food and phone service. However, for most of our Houstonian's can't say the same. It's very sad. As one news reporter said, "Power has been cut to nearly 4 million people, and may be a month away from full restoration.". I can't even imagine.
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