POD’s

GovSpeak for Point Of Distribution. There are six in Harris County now, none anywhere near H-Town.

I saw video of one over breakfast, and someone drove up in a car, volunteers tossed a bag of ice, MRE’s and water into the trunk and the car sped off. Turns out officials decided only to give these items to people who drove to the POD. Dumb move. To their credit, when they saw lines of individuals who walked to the site because they don’t own a car or can’t find gasoline to fuel theirs, they changed the rules.

A two hour journey was spent today on streets with no traffic lights (many not just powerless, but gone with the wind, wasn’t that a movie?) while dodging trees and bicycles and pedestrians. I went to one grocery store I read was open, but people were lined up at least 100 yards to get in. Then I tried the drycleaner just up the street to pick up Jim’s shirts and couldn’t even get into the parking lot. Only the cleaner and Domino’s are in that mini-strip and I hardly think the rush was for the cleaner’s (sorry guys, you know I love ya).

Then I headed to midtown to see if a better grocery store was open, even though they didn’t answer the phone yesterday. En route I passed my favorite specialty store with a big hand-written sign that made my heart go pitter-pat: WE HAVE WATER! They had no power but staff had placed tables in the parking lot with cases of bottled water, paper products and some bargain-priced fruit that would have gone bad left inside. They only took cash and my husband pulled a good deal in case ATM’s didn’t work but I only had $2 on me – that must be why I was only a girl scout for a few months.

So I went to my regular grocery where I love the produce and meat people, and it was open. No parking spaces in small lot (fits maybe 40 cars) and downstairs garage was flooded. They had no power and it was eerie walking down the aisles that were less than fully-stocked. I picked up Diet Coke, tortilla chips, goldfish, spaghetti sauce and applesauce. Strange times, strange things. Everything will keep!

At checkout I got cash back and went back to the specialty store lot and bought water and fruit and they even ran inside to get me a bottle of wine! Picked up Jim (the windows on his floor at work blew in and they have to find office space for 60 and relocate so he’s working from home) and we went to lunch at a local Mexican place.

Still no gas. There’s a station nearby but it had at least 60 cars in line. Trucks are now filling stations that are getting their power restored so hopefully over the next day or two the crush will ease.

Our bayou has gone down considerably. We did get our water back but don’t know if it’s safe to drink. Crews were on site today putting everything back to normal, and downtown is being cleaned up as well.

There’s still a long road to recovery. People think that this only happened to Galveston. Not true. Sure it hit southeast Texas something fierce but continued to the midwest and onward. Thirty dead so far. Millions without power or water or gasoline or ice or food. And until now, there isn’t good printed or “official” information on what is open for business so we can try to resume a semblance of a normal life.

News is on with new POD sites and I should check them out. Oh, I’ve some more photos to upload so may have more later. Cheers! Dee