The 65-member team that rode out Hurricane Ike at Johnson has begun to transition to recovery operations, cleaning up debris, restoring power and other center facilities and infrastructure.

A damage assessment team determined that the Sonny Carter Training Facility near Johnson appears to be undamaged.

The International Space Station continues to be controlled by NASA flight controllers who were dispatched to the Austin, Texas, area and Huntsville, Ala., prior to the onset of the storm.

It is too early to know what effect, if any, the hurricane will have on upcoming space shuttle launches.

Johnson employees are encouraged to call the JSC Emergency Information Line locally at 281-483-3351, or remotely, toll-free, at 1-877-283-1947, for updated information, including when they should return to work.

In the meantime, employees will continue in an excused leave status until the Center reopens. Please call the Marshall Hotline at 877-470-5240 to check-in and give your location. We want to account for all employees as quickly as possible. In the event employees may require additional time off to secure their homes (e.g. regain utilities) , supervisors will have the ability to grant additional excused leave. We’ll provide more guidance later in the week. ]]> http://mojo37.com/2008/09/breaking-news-jsc-vs-ike/feed/ 2 http://mojo37.com/2008/09/hurricane-ike-day-3/ http://mojo37.com/2008/09/hurricane-ike-day-3/#comments Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:03:12 +0000 mjaramillo http://mojo37.com/?p=91

Ike came ashore at 2:10 this morning and slammed Galveston, completely flooding the entire island.  I have been glued to the weather channel for updates to see how much damaged Clear Lake and the  Johnson Space Center received as Ike passed over.  It’s a weird feeling to watch the weather on tv and see this hurricane completely destroy places that you have been to before with 100+ mph wind while dumping a foot of water every hour.

I’ve been checking my email to see when I can go back home but all the emergency websites that I am supposed to check are down because the power is down across most of Houston.  I have to depend on my friends in north Houston to let me know when they get power so that I can have an idea on when I can come home so that I can assess how much damage there is to my stuff and then worry about getting back to work.

Kemah

Car trapped in water.

Downtown Houston

Debris on 45

I feel bad for the people that decided to stay home and ride the storm out because that was exactly what I was gonna do because I just got tired of leaving every weekend.  Oh well…  I guess I am officially an Ike refugee and at least I get to stay at a kick ass.  La casa de Hernandez is in the Domain which is no other way to say but an awesome place for young professionals to live.

The Domain view

Here is a zoomed in view…

The Domain from the street

Oh man for dinner I got to go to CPK…  Last time I was in Austin I mentioned that I really liked the pizza at California Pizza Kitchen but the one in Houston is a major trek.  So we went and I had the Santa Fe pizza, that pizza was awesome but I have yet to be disappoint with a pizza selection there.

After we ate all the pizza we could we started walking around The Domain just window shopping to see what new stuff the shops were selling.  I don’t think I told you that the bottom layer is shops and resaruants with the second and the other floors being the apartments.  We walked past this wine bar called Crú.  I have to let you know that I am by far anykind of vino conisouer but I do know what I like.  I’m not a huge red wine kind of guy unless I am eating pasta (which I already ate earlier so I couldn’t eat anymore) I wanted to try a new white wine.   The weather wasn’t too hot so we decided to sit outside and enjoy the band that was plaing out in the courtyard.  When it was time to order I had no clue what I wanted to try since there were too many options.  So I used a trick that I learned from a lady whose name is J-lo [true story] when i went to my buddy Dennis’s birthday party at a wine bar in Houston.  Jennifer used to be a wine rep so she was making recommendations for everybody on what they should try and everyone loved her recommendations.  I was amazed by this so I asked her what her secret was.  Basically she knows what regions of the world produced the best tasting grapes for a specific type of wine.  I knew that Italy makes good wine so I tried two flights of wine from the predetermined categories that Crú groups together for you.  I found out that I really like the Gewürztraminer (guh-VURTS-trah-MEE-ner) which this particular bottle came from New Zealand but hey whatever.

From all the reports I’m getting back from friends and the weatherman it was a good thing I left when I did because this hurricane is a lot worse then I had expected.  I don’t think the damage to Clear Lake will be as bad as everyone predicts but I just would rather not be stuck in my apartment without any electricity.  I’m safe and living it up while exploring Austin.

After the conference we met up with Doan to grab some dinner then we headed over to Blockbuster to rent Baby Momma and the new Madden 09 game.  I’m so exhausted I’m gonna just crash tonight.

Alright so I woke up this morning with a phone call from my buddy Kurt telling me to check the news because Houston just issued a mandatory evacuation for Galveston and several zip codes of southeast Houston which of course my zip code was included in the mandatory evac.  I’m trying to hurricane proof my apartment as fast as possible and pack enough clothes to last the duration of my exile from home.

I will give some more updates when I finally get to Austin.

Coming to a city near you…

(MJ) out