Knowles Family Update

Friends,

First, thanks to all of you for your prayers and encouragement over the past week. The chaos should be over now. To review:

I had a work trip to Chihuahua, Mexico and Cebu, Philippines scheduled September 11-26. Rather than leave Kristin and the boys at home, we scheduled a trip to Houston September 10-18 where Kristin's sister and family live (Tim, Jennifer, Zachary, and Jacob Roth). I was on the same flight as Kristin, Nate, and Nick, but they were scheudled to come home alone. I purchased the tickets on Priceline, so the flight was routed through Chicago as opposed to direct as we had hoped.

Watching the weather days before we left, we observed Hurricane Ike cross the Carribean into the Gulf of Mexico. First, some brief hurricane background: Hurricane Rita hit the Texas / Louisiana coast in 2005, less than 2 weeks after Katrina hit New Orleans. People feared the worst after what happened to New Orleans, so all of Houston evacuated. Interstates were jammed, people ran out of gas just sitting in traffic. At the last moment, Rita turned north. Houston recieved about 1/2 inch of rain.

The day we left Lexington, Ike was forecasted to make landfall near the Texas / Mexico border, so we saw no reason to alter our plans. However, the next day, Ike was forecasted to hit just south of Houston. Fearing the airports would be closed on my scheduled return day, I postponed my trip to Chihuahua (sorry Lexmark). That decision turned out to be a good one, as Ike made a direct hit on Houston and I would have been stuck in Chihuahua for at least 3 more days and would have missed my flight to the Philippines.

The day before Ike hit Houston, we boarded up the Roth's house and move to Tim's church which turned out to be an ideal location. Ike made a direct hit on Houston. Winds reached 112 mph downtown which is about 30 miles inland from Glaveston. 2.4 of Houston's 2.5 million households lost power. Power wa not expected for up to 4 weeks, so we relocated to Kristin's cousin's home in San Antonio, about 3 hours west.

I rearranged my trip to the Philippines to depart from San Antonio on Monday.\

I'm in the Philippines now and Kristin should be in Lexington any moment.


Nate and his cousin Zachary observe Ike's devastation on their playground.