hurricane ike.

Items i took with me during the evacuation:
computer, some t-shirts, three pairs of blue jeans, a pair of dress shoes, a pair of vans, two pairs of flip-flops, one dress, two pairs of shorts, a number of books (Anna Karenina, Perrine Book of Literature, scriptures, Discourses of President Hinckley, Not my Will But Thine, The Turn of the Screw, +more), a few dvds (Stranger than Fiction, Dead Poets Society, 10 Things I Hate About You, The Testaments), ipod, and the few journals i still have here. I'm lucky. I have most of my things in storage in Utah.
My friend, Summer, stayed on the island during the hurricane because she's INSANE. Thankfully she's safe and I've been able to talk to her rather regularly since Sunday evening. She's been by my house and seen the water level. It's about halfway up our front door so I'm pretty sure most of our things have been either damaged or destroyed. She also said there's a small dumpster on our front porch.
My family is all safe here in Forney, a small suburb outside of Dallas. There are 14 people staying in a small 3 bedroom home. The family of four that lives here has taken in my whole family (6 people) and my aunt and uncle's family (4 people). It's a bit crowded but I am incredibly grateful to have people so willing to take us in at a moment's notice. They've been feeding us like crazy and treating us like royalty. We went to church here on Sunday and Stef has started going to seminary. She might start going to classes up here too. My parents and aunt and uncle are considering finding a house we can rent together for a month. We are just trying to decide whether we want to do this in Dallas or Houston which is a lot closer to Galveston. All TAMUG classes are being moved to College Station. We can't afford Chris to go up there so he's most likely withdrawing from all of his classes this semester.
I just read on the Galveston Daily News website that the mayor of Galveston has ordered all city employees not to talk to news media. (The editorial also on the Daily New website was interesting.) It's been obvious that the media hasn't been focusing on Galveston at all. Now there's this from the mayor. Only the mayor and city manager are allowed to speak to the media. The last press conference they held was less than half an hour and they only answered five questions. I noticed something that might be a discrepancy in what news was available yesterday. They said that 90% of Galveston has been searched and that 1500 people were accounted for. If they estimated that 20,000 people stayed, with only 10% of the island left to search are they expecting to find all the other 18,500 people there? I mean, seriously. How are they planning finally to tell us everything they've been keeping from us? You can't change a Texas death toll from 5 people to 5000 overnight without there being questions and many many angry people.
I am so angry. I've probably lost most of my possessions from since I was born. I am sad, distraught, confused and frustrated and now the city officials are only exacerbating the situation by giving us so little information about my hometown. I understand that they really cannot know when things will be back up and running in Galveston but not knowing ANYTHING about what's going on is really freaking frustrating. Every evacuee has his/her life on pause and there is no telling when we can press play again. There are people out of work. My parents are lucky enough to work for UTMB who is giving them paid leave but there are so many others that do not even have buildings they can return to work in. There are children out of school and we don't know when they could go back.
I don't know what to do. I'm so annoyed. I am so frustrated. I am so angry. I can't think of any other adjectives to use; that is in itself an example of how crazy I am going.
Even the President has nothing to say: "Bush, who later took an aerial tour of the area, declined to issue a statement to the press or answer any questions while in Galveston." (Galveston Daily News)