Houston's urban campers

NY Times:

Kimberly Sykes finally threw out the gumbo she made the night Hurricane Ike slammed this city. For a week, she and seven others in her family ate it by candlelight, trying to keep it cool during the day with what ice they could scrounge up.

But when a fetid smell arose from the stew on Thursday, she pitched it into the street, scrubbed the pot, and braced herself for another day of foraging for an open grocery store, for ice, for bottled water.

“Every other day we have to find a store, because we have to re-up the food,” she said, as the three children in the household wandered aimlessly through the kitchen with bored expressions.

For almost everyone in Houston, last week was a lost one. With winds of 110 miles per hour and a high flood of seawater along the coast, the storm paralyzed the nation’s fourth-largest city. Millions of people were without electricity, even a week after it hit. Sewers failed in scores of neighborhoods; a few communities lost running water as well.

Most people spent the days after the storm in a mad scramble to find ice, gasoline and food.

With schools closed, children have struggled to entertain themselves. The office towers that teem with oil company executives were shut down until midweek, and small businesses had difficulty reopening because their employees were busy patching up homes or caring for children.

In hard-hit neighborhoods, people banded together to barbecue what fresh meat they could find and to sit outside under the stars and talk. For some it was an eerie but welcome change from the glow of streetlights and the endless chatter of television sets.

“These storms have their pluses and their minuses,” said John Frazier, a construction worker from the wrecked suburb of Seabrook, as he popped open a beer with neighbors sitting in plastic chairs outside his flooded house. “The plus is it drew all the neighbors together.”

Like an accident victim coming out of a coma, the city has been returning to life. The downtown glitters with lights, despite boarded-up windows and doors. More and more gas stations and groceries are opening.

...

In Pasadena, just east of Houston, the Soria family home was the only one in the neighborhood with a generator, and there seemed to be a party going on. The smell of carne asada rose from a barbecue.

The dining table was surrounded with members of the extended Soria clan — more than 20 people — many of whom had been sleeping on the floor of the house since the hurricane hit.

...

There are more stories of people coping with the storm. I mentioned before that several people from Houston have been driving to Brenham to shop at the Super Wal-Mart. The store has been struggling to keep it shelves stocked and is using generic bags now. Its sales for the month of September may set a record.

The Home Depot in Brenham has a sign on the door saying they are sold out of generators. Some entrepreneurs are filling in the gap. When I made a trip to the Woodlands on Wednesday, I saw a flatbed truck in a parking lot staked with De Walt generators for sale and they had sold about half their load already.

There are not too many whiners in Houston. The city and area have always had a can do attitude and it is certainly needed now.