"I'm not sure what day during my lost week (0538.html) we became aware of Hurricane Rita. As I recall, Les Denham was one of the first to point out to me that this looked like a pretty serious storm. After that warning I was watching to see what happened and how the storm grew and where it went. On Friday a group of men from the ward went to Mississippi and they returned on Sunday evening when Andrea and I were at the church setting up for her seminary class. I was disappointed I was not on the list. I did not know about the list because I was teaching Primary. Oh well! By Sunday evening we had seen enough news that we were pretty sure Houston was in danger from this storm.
On Monday the following note was sent out by our brand new Relief Society Presidency:
There was also a note passed around the ward, which we did not receive, from Jim Siebert, a professional meteorologist in the ward (0537.html), warning that the storm was coming directly towards Houston. We started to do some preparation, buying water, cleaning out the garage enough to get a car in it, etc.
Tuesday I received the following e-mail from George Schultz:
http://www.lds.org/newsroom/extra/0,15505,3881-1---2-916,00.html'
So as we congratulated ourselves on doing a wonderful job, Rita kept coming towards Houston. I was called by our Elder's Quorum President, Wade Hutchings, and asked if I have a map showing where ward members live. I have the Spotfire maps I put together a few years ago, which plot members from longitudes and latitudes derived from Select Phone. I printed maps on the little computer upstairs. It was very slow, and I had several maps printed before Wade showed up. He called later and asked me to be Team Leader #1. They ended up dividing the ward alphabetically, and I had a dozen families to contact. I was to make sure they were prepared, and to find out if there was anything they needed.
Work was not normal on Wednesday. First thing in the morning there were e-mails and then phone calls with Frank Lott, Dave Agarwal, and Don Vossler regarding the Shackelford County wells. Frank has come to the conclusion the Vossler anomaly could be prolific conglomerates. This is an exciting turn, and means the well certainly will get drilled. He needed the synthetics, and I told him were the screen captures are on my web site. About 10:00 Dave Johnson said to close down GDC, and that there would be no work on Thursday or Friday. The building wanted everything important moved from outside offices, like mine, to hallways or internal offices. They provided big sheets of thick plastic. I moved my computers and wrapped my filing cabinets and book cases with plastic. Nicolas and Dave wrapped up Mike Dunn's office, since he was in China. There were several e-mails with Mike, confirming everything was OK, both at the office and when I got home.
Wednesday evening when I got home things really started to get hectic. I had not been able to get hold of three of my assigned people. Since one of them was a divorced lady, I took Andrea with me to visit her, get her new cell phone number, and make sure she and the others were OK. We never did contact one person. Oh well! Then we started to take care of our house. I took my primary lesson over to Chris Schmidt. Since GDC was closed Thursday and Friday, and since there was this giant storm on the television headed straight for Houston, Andrea and I had decided to go to Kim Shirts' wedding in the St. George Temple. We knew we would not get out of the Houston airports, and so we planned to drive over to Austin and do standby to Salt Lake City. As I was walking out to go over to Schmidts, Jennifer Lozier next door flagged me down and we talked. Jackie ended up going over to Schmidt's with me. Then I talked to the Lozier's for a while. Jennifer could not understand why everyone was not a mass evacuation. They had taped some of their windows, and so when I went back, I started taping some of our windows. Then I put the big walls from the Christmas Tree Parade, which have been in the garage for a couple of years, over the bedroom windows, and held them in place with duct tape (this is not best practice, and we need to fix up a way to quickly board up our windows in a way that they will stay boarded up).
Between packing up the house, boarding up and taping windows, there were additional calls and e-mail reports on how well the people on my Team were prepared. It was pretty hectic. I finally sent my e-mail report to Wade Hutchings Wednesday night about 10:00 PM. Shortly after I sent it, Wade called me with the news that the Stake Presidency had decided to issue an evacuation recommendation, and they would appreciate if each of our families could be told before we go to sleep. I was able to contact each of my assigned families between 10:00 and 10:45 PM.
Then Andrea and I went back to work packing up the house and taping the windows. Paintings were taken off of the wall and put under the covers of the bed. http://www.walden3d.com was shut down for the first time in almost a decade, and the computers and disk drives loaded in the the trunk of the silver Saturn. All of my journals and a box of important papers from the office were also loaded in the trunk of the Saturn. The blue Saturn was parked in the garage. It was about 2:30 Thursday morning when we had pretty much got ready to evacuate. I gave a blessing on the house, we packed for a week, and we left. After packing up my office and then the house, I was really tired, and so Andrea drove.
As we drove up to the freeway, it was obvious all of the cars were stopped dead on the freeway and on the frontage road. The Loziers and Nelsons were obviously not the only people evacuating. One of the families I called had told me the freeway was a parking lot. It is interesting to me that even though she is less active, she was the only one to leave Houston and go to San Antonio, as instructed by our Priesthood Leaders. When I talked to her on Saturday, she told me it had turned out to be a good experience, and everything was fine.
So I told Andrea to go straight under the freeway. We went up to the road by the bowling alley, drove until it ended on the far side of Katy, dropped back to Highway-90, and took it to Brookshire. It took us about a half-an-hour to go this far, and some folks on the freeway took 4 or 5 hours to go this far. It took us an hour to go from Brookshire across the Brazos River bridge to the Sealy exit, which is about 10 miles. Then we got off, went out to New Ulm, where Ken Turner lives, then to Industry, then to La Grange. There was quite a bit of traffic on into Austin, and it was not stopped. We filled up with gas when we got to Austin, and were at the new Austin airport about 4 1/2 hours after we left, with what was normally a 2 1/2 hour drive. Most friends we talked to that made the same drive took between 8 and 12 hours to make the same drive. So Ben and Sarah, have several evacuation routes mapped out for when the big earthquake hits L.A., and do not count on being able to use the normal freeways.
I slept when I could, and when I wasn't asleep, I couldn't help but think about the forced evacuations of early church members. Members were forced to leave Jackson, Clay, Davies, DeWitt, and Carroll Counties in Missouri in 1838. Governor Boggs ordered the Saints exterminated or driven from the state for the public good. Seventeen people were killed and thirteen wounded at the Haun's Mill massacre on October 30th. Whole communities were forced to leave their homes with nothing but the clothes on their back in the middle of the winter and march across Missouri. This led to the settlement of Nauvoo, and less than 10 years later the church members were forced to evacuate Nauvoo in the middle of a mini-ice age, crossing the Mississippi River with their wagons on the ice starting on February 4th of 1846. Grandma Hafen's maternal Great-Grandfather (note that for you kids this is the same as my Grandpa Hafen or Andrea's Grandpa Baird) died in September of 1846 as part of this evacuation/ He died near Bonaport, Iowa striving to provide you kids and me with an opportunity to live the true restored gospel of Jesus Christ. His death was the same month Winter Quarters was established in Iowa. These evacuations were certainly much harder than Andrea and my evacuation from Houston for Hurricane Rita.
When we got to the airport, we parked in the parking lot, to provide some protection for the computers, family photos, diaries, and other papers from the 95+ degree heat wave. Andrea is getting pretty good at the fly stand-by stuff. We went inside, and within a couple of hours we were on a flight to San Francisco. Certainly different than dying in an unusual early snow storm in Iowa. From San Francisco we flew to Salt Lake City, then to Cedar City. Here we watched the ongoing evacuation of Houston and surrounding areas in the safety of Grandma Shirts' home. I had written a possible stanza for Prime Words on one of the plane rides, from a Time Article (a) called "Moon Struck" about Tom Hanks Lunar IMAX movie (26 Sep 2005, p. 70):
It was interesting that the first call of concern came from Uncle Tony in St. George. He was glad to hear from me, and wanted to make sure I stopped and visited. Saturday I slipped out to visit after the wedding photos at the temple and the dinner and reception on Saturday evening at the St. George Opera House where Andrea and I had our reception. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
On Friday I went for a hike on mountain in back of Walmart and Home Depot to the south of Leigh Hill and to the southwest of Cedar City. It was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed the walk. I took some nice photos of Shirts' Canyon, showing it's spatial relationship to Cedar City and Red Cove. However, the sage brush was in bloom, and by the time I made it back to Grandma Shirts' house, my eyes were literally swollen shut with large bags of water under and above my eyes because of an allergic reaction. And I tell myself regularly that I am ready to move back home to Cedar City?
The previous Saturday I had spent several hours fixing the Cedar Valley water well data base and displays, and had hoped to show the results to Eldon Schmutz while in Cedar. It didn't work out. Oh well! Mayby he was involved in an evacuation. Andrea and I met Matt and Rachel just before lunch at the student center and took them to lunch at the nice restaurant in on 1st west in back of Ray Gardner's office. Then I went to see the County Engineer, who wasn't in, to the bookstore, to visit Ray, to visit Sara and Des, and back up to the house. In the evening Andrea and I joined with Sara and Des at an Orchestra Patron's dinner at a neat house in Cedar Valley. Took a bunch of digital photos of a beautiful sunset (see ../../photos/SouthernUtah/Cedar/050923_Cedar_Sunset). It was especially nice to see Gen Gardner and Carmen Jones. It was a very nice evening, and even though my eyes were still swollen, it reminded me why I want to move home to Cedar City.
Saturday morning I did not want to go for a walk. So I read and waited at the house until it was time to go to St. George for Kim Shirts' wedding. For those who do not know, Kim is Russell Shirts' daughter, Andrea's oldest brother, and she looks a lot like Heather. It was a beautiful wedding in the St. George Temple. The Temple Worker that ushered us all into the sealing room, after we had put on our white temple clothes, was Jerry Tousa (../9711.html, ../9848.html, ../9951.html, and 0315.html). It was so good to see him. He looks just like a football coach. The service was very nice, and there was a very good spirit there. After the wedding, and after changing clothes, I saw Jerry and went to say hi. He was talking to someone, and saw me and said, `I talk about you regularly. Do you remember that Muslim guy you worked with at Mobil? Remember when you told him about our Bishopric meetings at 6:30 Sunday mornings, and he said to you, `Roice, even God doesn't get up that early on a Sunday morning!'' It was good to catch up on what is happening with each of his kids. And he asked about each of you, including my new kids whom he only met when he came to Andrea and my wedding. Kim's wedding was nice, and it was a real highlight for me to see Jerry Tousa.
After the ceremony we went to the back of the church, where the families were gathering for photos. I took a bunch of photos, which are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/MorrisShirtsFamily/050924_Kim_Shirts_Wedding. It was fun to watch everyone interact. Especially Matt. The professional photographer did not like me requesting she take a photo with my digital camera of the entire wedding party. Oh well! It was hot and I was still stuffed up from the rabbit brush. After the photos I took Matt back to Cedar City so he could ride on the tank in the parade in Cedar City. We had a pretty good talk on the way back. He asked me questions about geology, and I answered to the best of my ability. He asked for advice, and I told him to work hard, play hard, and avoid any kind of addictive activities, including anything even suggestive of being pornographic. He is a good young man, and I love him.
On the way back to St. George, when I checked voice mail, there were calls from both Quentin Reed in New York, and Riley Skeen in Casper, Wyoming, making sure we were OK. A hurricane and an evacuation is certainly one way to find out who your friends are. I went out and ate some excellent salsa at Uncle Tony's, which Buela had made. It was good to see them. They are very nice to me. They found a pendant with my name and birthday and Sara's name and birthday on it, which I lost there. I put it someplace save, and have not found it since we returned. Oh well! We talked about a Hafen Cousin Reunion. He will come, but the DDD reunion did him in on organizing another one.
I got back to Kim's wedding reception just in time for the dinner, and just after the ring ceremony. In fact, I got lost and called Andrea during the middle of the ring ceremony. Opps! Oh well! Heather came by the reception. She was dressed to be noticed. We didn't talk. I wish I knew how to be of help to her. Rachel was the first bridesmaid, and was even more beautiful as ever. Audrey was working and could not be there. Randy and Katherine, and Steve and Jill were there. Good people! Wonderful family! I wish you all knew them as well as I do.
We were going to go to an annual concert Sara organizes when we got back, but we were late. Andrea had called our neighbors to see if there was any damage. They said there was so little rain, that they had just turned on their sprinklers to water the lawn. Oh well! There was some wash to do, talking with Grandma Shirts, and it was almost 10:00 before we made it over to Sara and Des's to stay Saturday night. Randy and Katherine stayed at Grandma's house.
We got up early on Sunday, Aunt Sara took us to the airport. Karl and Kathy Nelson were there dropping off their son Carl, who works for Sky West in Salt Lake, and was flying home on stand-by. There were not seats for us, but a group of 5 scheduled to go to New Orleans did not show up, and so all three Nelson's got on. When we got to Salt Lake it seemed touchy as to whether we would be able to get on a flight. However, Andrea found a direct flight on a smaller plane, and we were home from our evacuation by 4:00 PM. I could not help but compare the ease of our evacuation, to the trials and problems and death that accompanied the early Saints in their evacuation."