Sunday Sept 3rd-
Our friends with whom I would be staying in Baytown spent Saturday helping another homeowner in Whispering Pines clear out their house. From that experience they gave Mrs. V. a list of things I should buy in San Antonio- plastic boxes of many sizes, bleach, Murphy's Oil Soap, bubble wrap, face masks, gloves, mops, etc.
Sunday morning I found a Home Depot and filled my rental car with as much as it would hold. After a quick breakfast at Whataburger (good burgers, mediocre breakfast sandwiches

)
The evening before my GPS showed the I-10 San Jacinto bridge west of Baytown as closed. On Sunday morning it showed clear so I headed east. The traffic on I 10 going west was surprising heavy, I don't know why. Going east with me I noticed a number of large portable generator units on flatbed trucks. Probably headed to Beaumont.
Highway signs warned that I 10 was flooded east of Beaumont and that thru traffic should take I 69 north in Houston to I 20 in order to head east.

I 20 is about 200 miles north of Houston. That's a 400 mile detour if you were traveling from San Antonio to, say, New Orleans.
All along I 10 between San Antonio and Houston the gas stations had no gas.
Reaching Baytown I chose to head in via Spur 330 which is elevated. To my right was the massive ExxonMobil refinery/petrochemical complex, the largest in the western hemisphere. It was silent, dead, abandoned. No water vapor rose from the cooling towers. No steam vented from the flares or steam traps. Nothing vented from the exhaust stacks of the furnaces or the gas turbines. Only one or two flares were still burning from the shutdown. This plant normally operates 365 days a year. Living in Baytown for 31 years I had never seen it totally shut down before.
I drove to our friends' house and found the wife at home. We made room to squeeze her into the car and drove to my flooded house. There was a police checkpoint where they looked at my license and put a pink sticker on the car which would speed future entries. Cary Bayou had already gone down significantly so there was no problem getting to my house.
My front door had swollen with the moisture and it took all my strength to turn the key and open the door. Our house sitter and her husband had ripped out the den's carpet the day before so the smell was already improving. The high water line was obvious, about 13 inches above the concrete. This was good because it did not reach any electric outlets. The power was on upstairs and downstairs. The 2 central air conditioner units were running pulling moisture out of the house.
Opened the garage door, cleaned up the two folding tables and unloaded the car onto them. We took some before photos and headed back to the friends' house. Dinner was pot roasted elk with potatoes and carrots.
I checked with the people that we were hiring to help clean up, the cleaning woman of a retired music teacher (Mrs. V. being a retired music teacher many of our contacts are also retired music teachers

), her mother, her brother, son, nephew and daughter. They all have regular jobs but were on temporary layoff due to the storm. They will have no work until their employers reopen which could be weeks. This is one way that a storm can really hurt people who suffer no wind or water damage. Also, my younger daughter's father-in-law to be was driving down to help since he was off work on Labor Day. A very strange way for us to meet for the first time.
Some time during the day I reached the insurance adjuster and got him to make an appointment for Tuesday since I had only a short time at home.
Then to bed.