Hurricane Ike

Hurrican Ike effected each family in a very personal way. This is our story, our personal Ike. Friday night, September 12th we watched the news while the hurricane force winds pounded the house at 70 to 80 miles an hour. The power went out at 1:50 a.m. We went to bed. The wind and horizontal rain pounded the back of our house. We could hear the screens on our bedroom windows banging against the frames. It was so loud I went upstairs to the guest room.
Matt woke me up at three. He was hearing an alarm or buzzer. We went downstairs and the wind was blowing the back door so forcefully that the door rattled fast enough to sound like an alarm. We found some packing foam in the garage, by flashlight of course, and wedged it into the door seams. Then we checked the windows. Every window on the back side of the house, all fifteen of them, were letting water in at the bottom seam. Though they were closed and latched, the force of the wind was pushing the water down around the seal and up onto the ledge. We put towels at each window and tried to sleep again.
Samantha came into our room at seven a.m. She wanted some Tylenol. As she walked into our bathroom she felt water on our hardwood floor. There was a sizable puddle around the door frame to the bathroom. Water was dripping from the bathroom door frame onto the wood floor. This was surprising because this is an inside wall. We rushed upstairs to check the craft room. A water mark on the slanted ceiling indicated that the roof must have lost some shingles. Water was getting in, sliding down the pitched ceiling drywall board, saturating the insulation, running down the wall and coming out of the top door frame downstairs in our master bedroom/bathroom.
More towels. More worry. No more sleep.
The hurricane force winds lasted about five hours and then slowed to tropical storm force winds as the eye moved further inland.