An update 9/28/2017

Well I had hoped to have really decent news here.  Alas it was not meant to be.

A reader, who is retired Navy had located 2 of the FEMA trailers for me, which I could purchase.  However the amount was higher than I could afford so he negotiated for me.  And he and I THOUGHT we had a good deal.  Come to find out that we didn't.  I and my kids had our hopes up a bit that we could get out from under my mother's roof and I could start gutting and rebuilding my house.

Well, now that I don't have the trailers to go on site, the help I was promised for gutting my house so I can start to rebuild it was pushed back 2-4 weeks.

I am trying not to get depressed, but you can only keep up your good spirits for so long before the well runs dry.

So I'm still looking for a roof to put over our heads so we can move out of my mom's house/yard and start the process of rebuilding.

I have a line on a 25' RV/Travel Trailer up by Houston, but I won't know until later if I can get it.

I'll post more as I find it.

An update on my family's situation - Hurricane Harvey

Well as you know, Hurricane Harvey wiped me out.  It destroyed my home, my main transportation,most of my belongings and those of my kids, then a week after Hurricane Harvey my daughter was in an accident, rolling her Ford Escape and getting banged up pretty bad.

Well since then many people have donated to help us,and FEMA gave me some money.  Not enough to rebuild and replace everything, but enough to start.

One of the things we HAD to replace was my daughters car.and as of Saturday evening we did that.  Using some of the money donated by family/friends/readers we had enough for the down payment to get her a 2013 Ford F-150 Crew Cab.

The paramedics said that if she had been in a car, she would have died.  And now my daughter knows why I like large vehicles, so she got a new/used truck that she can afford the monthly payments and insurance on.

Me and the rest of the kids are still at my mother's house three streets over from my wrecked house.

FEMA gave me enough money to gut my house but not enough to rebuild it, so I will have to buy a cheap camper for us to live in and a cheap used truck to haul us all around and haul materials in.  That will cost me about 5 grand with tax, title and license.  Then the boys and I will have to gut the house ourselves, walls, ceilings, and floors, and rebuild it ourselves.

I will also have to get the roof replaced first.  I hope I will have enough funds to replace the shingled roof with a metal roof and to install stronger hurricane straps between the roof and the walls.

Then I will have to replace all of the windows and the front and back doors.

I'm going to take a page from some of the other homes in the area and "Ferrocrete/Ferrocement" the exterior walls.  Think of concrete stucco.  Yes my house will look like a concrete block house, but I won't have to worry about any further hurricanes.  And the boys and I could do most of it ourselves.

I'm still not sure how much damage was done to my septic system, nor how much it is going to cost to repair.  The last time I had to have it repaired it cost me almost a thousand dollars.

It's going to be hard, especially as I have a totally screwed up spine and the boys are back in school.  So, I'm going to have to hire some help somehow on less than $1,200.00 a month income from Social Security

I know that I will need an extension ladder and some scaffolding about 20 feet max, where I'll get the money for those and everything else, I'm still not sure.

So if you wish to help out you can always donate to the Go Fund Me my daughter set up: https://www.gofundme.com/help-for-anderson-family

Or you can send me money through PayPal: paypal.me/greylocke

I'll try to post more updates as I can, however I'm still using my cruddy HP Netbook which continually locks up on me, and I'm having to use my cell phone to tether it as we still don't have phone or cable lines back up in my area.  I just switched to the all cable bundle to save myself over $200.00 a month, then a hurricane happens.

So if anyone has an old work station or desktop computer with at least 8 GB of ram and can run Windows Vista 64 Bit or Windows 7 64 Bit, please let me know by e-mailing me.  I can REALLY use a full size computer again.  This netbook is maxed out at 2 GB of RAM and is so slow it's driving me batty.  I also can't use it to edit photos or video, and I have over 28 GB of photos and video of the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey to edit and post.

One VERY good thing that did happen though is the Greener MK III that I ordered and finished paying for in March finally arrived and my FFL took it to his Sooper Sekrit Bunker to sit out the hurricane.  It's now in my safe with all of my other firearms.  It only took me 4 months to pay that shotgun off at $125.00 a month, I'm glad I didn't lose it to the hurricane as well.

When it rains it pours

Well you know from my previous post "Well that was fun"that I'm down my main vehicle.  Today my daughter picked me up and drove me to my pain management Dr's office and to the pharmacy to get my scrips refilled and the hardware store to pick up some things I need to help fix up what I can.

On her way home, she swerved to avoid hitting some cows in the road and rolled her Ford Escape several times.  She is currently in Spohn Hospital in Corpus Christi getting X-rays and her vehicle is totaled.

So now my family is down 4 vehicles.

If anyone has some inexpensive vehicles that run decent please hit my e-mail  GreyLocke@gmail.com

I really need at LEAST 3 decent vehicles.  One for my daughter, one for my Ex-wife and one for myself.

Edited to add: photos of her car at the salvage yard.

According to the report, it rolled over 4 times with my daughter in it.  All because some cows got out and up on the main highway.

Well that was fun

We survived Hurricane Harvey.  My house was basically destroyed.  My Suburban was destroyed.  My main computer was destroyed.  I'm typing this on my netbook that I set up to make KTD drives since it wasn't really good enough or fast enough for anything else.  I doubt my house is repairable, I KNOW my Suburban isn't repairable.  When Salt Water Surge basically buries your car to the roof top, there is nothing salvageable in that.

I was able to recover my firearms.  If you have been watching my twitter feed you'll know that my youngest son and I tried to clean up 3 of my Mossberg 500 barrels.  However that is about impossible.  The salt water did too much damage.

My Beretta 71 also came very close to that state, however I was able to get to it sooner.  My sons didn't bury it in the bottom of the pile of stuff like they did my Mossberg 500 barrels.  It's slide however will need a re-blue in it's future.  Dozens of magazines however may be beyond all help I can give, which is slightly upsetting since Tokarev Magazines are a little hard to find.

I also have to deal with over a thousand 12 ga. shells with corroded bases.  That is going to be fun.

Now on to the pictures.  I won't be able to give proper descriptions as this netbook is acting real goofy about certain HTML coding.

back of the house taken from 1 street over.

see that pile of stuff in the fore ground?  That was my ex-wife's house and it's gone.

according to a neighbor, the flood water were to the top of my suburban

he said the only part of it he saw was the roof rack

the water blew out the back window of the suburban

it took 2 days before I could actually drive on my street.  Between the water still being 3-5 feet and the downed power lines

you can see some of the flood water which was still over my street in places.

I lost windows, siding, parts of the roof.  The ceilings fell down inside raining insulation everywhere.

I was standing in almost a foot of water taking this photo. 

That WAS my bathroom window

and I used to have a walkway and steps in front of my house.

My Rubbermaid shed that held parts of my solar setup is in pieces, 2 of my charge controllers and one inverter is just flat out gone.

So you can see, I'm in bad shape.  I need to replace my suburban and a whole bunch of other stuff.

I'm really concerned because I had to register my sons in the school district almost 25 miles away, and there is no bus service, and I can't have them ride in the bed of the S-10.

If you can help us, any help would be appreciated.

My PayPal quick link is paypal.me/greylocke

If someone has a real inexpensive minivan or a car big enough for 3 big teenagers my 21 year old son who has Aspergers, plus myself, I really really could use it as quickly as possible.

My boys need to get back to school.  For now we have a roof over my head, although sleeping on the couch and air mattresses on the floor isn't exactly comfortable, it's more than some people have.

My oldest daughter, you might know as Sprog #1 has started a Go Fund Me campaign to try to help, if you can help here is the link.  https://www.gofundme.com/help-for-anderson-family

The picture shown there is my Ex-Wife's trailer shoved against my storage shed.  My daughter took it from her car window as she still couldn't get out of her car because of the water in the driveway.

Please if you can help out, anything would be appreciated.

My kids and I and my Ex- Wife Michele, we have lost almost everything.  So if you have it to spare, please consider donating.

Thank you for reading my scribbles.