Hurricane Update

So.... the reason it has taken awhile for me to post any updates is that Ike came and hit Ohio with Category One Hurricane Force winds. I have had no power myself since Sunday afternoon. Thank goodness mom has as I have been camping out there. :) Here is an email from Kyle. He and Ashley are fine given what could have happened and now it's just more of a pain in the butt. Locally they are saying it may be Sunday before everyone here in Ohio gets power. Nice thing is I haven't had to go to work, just check email from home. It has been a totall bizzare few days.....

"I'm emailing from ashley's cousins house because we still do not have power or water. We are both fine, the house is essentially fine also. We lost power before the storm on Friday because they wanted to bring down the power in an orderly manner because they knew they were going to lose power. We lost the entire fence, part of it hit the house and smashed up the gutter. Lost a few shingles but not too bad of damage of the roof. We basically had all of our landscaping uprooted a little but I think we can replant it decently enough. We got a generator from a coworker of mine that evacuated to Arkansas and he brought one back for us. We have enough water for
probably 3-4 more days and have turned into the neighborhood refrigerator freezer because we have the generator. The storm itself was incredibly loud. People say it sounds like a freight train but I think they say that because they don't know what else to say. It basically was the loudest thing i've ever heard. The wind would gust and you could feel the house shift and creak, I was convinced the roof was gone but the house was rated for a Cat 3 so it held together nicely. We boarded up all the windows but the storm ripped one of them off even though we fastened them with 2" woodscrews. We're both going to work tomorrow and the plant is still shutdown because a nitrogen plant was damaged and none of the plants around here can come up fully without the nitrogen supply. Cell service is terrible and comes in and out. Even though we have the generator our e-mail isn't working. They say we should have water this week but power could be 3-4 weeks but I can't believe that. We have a lot of gas for the generator and we're more or less just camping in the house which really isn't too bad. It sounds like a lot of you ha more damage than we did. A lot of our neighbors lost roofs and the coast line is essentially gone as I'm sure you've seen on tv. I appreciate all the phone calls and e-mails but I just couldn't respond to any of them, and some of them I answered with incredibly brief txt messages to try to get them out. Pretty nuts but the bottom line is we are fine and our lifestyle is
fine too. Just kinda a hassle at this point. I'll try to call and keep touch with everyone but I can't make any promises."