Living in the afterbirth of Hurricane Ike

After an amazing Sunday morning at church (where we saw our largest numbers ever, with 913 people) the city of Cincinnati welcomed in the greatly weakened Ike storm front. Little did any of us know that the predicted (at most) 35mph would mix with a cold front and produce a category 1 hurricane, with 85mph winds. We got swept in Ike's afterbirth. The city is uprooted. 850,000 people lost power (as of today, there are still around 500,000 without power), causing gas stations, grocery stores, business/offices and schools to close. Duke Energy (who is effectively the only power company in the area) had already sent workers to the gulf region to help them out, leaving this area depleted of workers to effectively combat the outages.

People scrambled to the few open gas stations and grocery stores, forming long lines and depleting all the shelves of food, emptying the tanks of the stations. Its chaos. We're on day 2 of no school, closed grocery stores, no cable or internet (which means I can't work), and the city itself is shut down. I can't imagine the economic impact this will have on the city (in an already difficult time), with more than half of all businesses shut down. Thankfully we have power, and are praying for anyone who doesn't (if you need a hot meal, a shower, etc and live in the area, please don't hesitate to call us up). Just crazy.