There’s nothing to do but wait.

My parents and I have done everything we can to batten down the hatches, so to speak. Now there’s nothing for us to do but wait for Ike to hit. I’ve got my TV set to the local Fox affiliate, and am keeping an eye on it. Things don’t look good. The storm is still several hours from hitting us, yet Galveston and Kemah are already experiencing flooding. This isn’t confirmed, but there’s word that at a 3 PM CDT press conference, the mayor of Galveston will announce that the island will be underwater for twelve hours or so.

What gets me are the people who are still at Galveston who are gawking and sightseeing. This is going to be a dangerous storm; it’s so bad that the National Weather Service has said that anyone remaining in Galveston will face “certain death”. The one that got me was this one woman late last night on Galveston Beach who was there with her three or four young children (one in a stroller). A Channel 2 reporter asked her point blank why she was there when there was a mandatory evacuation order. Her response was, “I don’t believe that the storm is going to hit here. I have faith in God and He is not going to let it hit us.” The reporter mentioned that meteorologists were saying it would hit, and she just shook her head and said it would keep moving east. I’d admire her faith if she wasn’t risking her children as well as herself.

As for me… I’m going to stay here and keep online until it’s time for me to go to bed or until the power goes out, whichever comes first. If you want to chat, you can find me on the Mortal Kombat Online IRC channel, or if you have my IM information I’ll be on there. Once power goes out I’ll be restricting communications to SMS. We’ll see how it goes.