The national media has spent the week covering storm torn Texas' damage from Hurricane Ike. Something that appeared to fall off the radar though was the damage Ike left in other parts of the Midwest. Here in the Greater Cincinnati area, we were hit with high winds last Sunday, gusting upwards of 80 mph. These near hurricane force winds wreaked havoc on an area that isn't used to such weather systems.
By the time the winds died down on Sunday night, our area saw close to a million people without power. Ohio overall saw close to 2 million in the dark, and as of today there are still about ΒΌ million people without power in the state.
Luckily, I escaped damage to my home. I was without power for about 12 hours, phone for 4 days and internet for 6 days. There are others who weren't so lucky. The picture above is a couple miles from me where a tree ended up crushing a car. This was a common scene around Ohio, and cars weren't the only casualties. Four deaths were caused by the storm in the Greater Cincinnati area and numerous houses sustained massive damage from down trees and limbs.
However the story doesn't stop there. People ended up losing refrigerators full of food. Gas stations had hour long lines, what restaurants that were open were running out of food, and grocery stores had to throw away millions in stock (including Kroger, which is based out of Cincinnati). The saddest part is all the people on fixed income who had to toss away their food. Luckily, state and local officials are working to issue food stamps to these people so they can restock.
At least normalcy seems to be trumping the frantic week we saw. They are hoping to have power back on to all those affected by this Sunday and we might see a normal week of school and work around here. It did take me by surprise that the media was rather silent on this aftermath of Ike. I saw a blurb about it on the crawl of MSNBC in the middle of the week, but that was it. If you have any stories to share about this massive storm, please do so in the comments. It will be interesting to hear how other people weathered this past week in the area.
(Additional photos and video of the damage Ike left in the Greater Cincinnati area can be found here.)
