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Directron.com Recovers from Hurricane IkeHere is our blog coverage on our experience during Ike. Original blog was published on our user forum. You are welcome to leave comments, pictures, and info there.Hurricane Ike Blog / Watch: | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8 |
Boats piled up on the causeway to Galveston
Some people's houses were not so lucky
And this one...
Now I feel we have been so lucky...
Things could have been 10x worse
Hello Michael and Directron team. I was reading on some forums and noticed you were located in Houston. I came to your website to see if you guys were even online, and to my surprise you were! I'm very happy to have found this post. It really amazes me how you guys came together like family during these hard times. You just don't see these kinds of things from other online retailers. You guys even went as far as moving your shipping operations into someones home! That's fantastic customer service right there! Your dedication to shipping orders just a couple of days after the Hurricane really shows your love and dedication to your customers. This it what will keep people coming back to Directron! Thanks for posting your Ike experiences. It really goes to show what a great company you guys are. Big Grin -Derek
Here is some more interesting observations: 1) Fences that were weak or rotten have collapsed all over neighborhoods. 2) Trees have fallen, I have a fallen tree in my front yard, already cut to pieces. When trees fall, they rip a big hole in the lawn with their roots. Many trees have fallen on road dividers since the soil is not deep enough there. In old wooden areas many houses caught a tree or two. 3) Similarly, many people find other uses for their garages and cars are being parked outside even during such a hurricane. 4) The next day after the major stores appeared to have electricity and were open but didn't take cash in fear of being robbed in all the chaos, debit or credit only. The lines formed, stores tried to control amount of people present in the stores and to prevent looting. The lines were long, for hours, but the stores didn't have much to offer inside. All the "good things" were already gone. No store would give a "cash back." 5) Traffic lights were out everywhere but it didn't stop people to drive around. On each intersection the cars orderly take turns at passing. Now the lights are functional on major intersections only. On some smaller ones the power is still out, others have a red light blinking - which is the same thing as no light at all. Highways are a preferable means of transportation. Not sure if my local toll road was charging tolls when the power was out. 6) Still, no electricity in my house. Just cell phones, phone landline, natural gas, water and that is it. Neighbor's generator is really getting on my nerves each night about 1am. It gets dark after 8pm, becomes really boring. At times I find myself in the car listening to music. Some "entertainment" places are open but packed, it is rather dangerous to drive in the dark without traffic lights too. 7) Cell phones and landline phone were operational at all times. In the city it is common to see chained generators to different utility cabinets. 8) Now it is dangerous to eat out. Coffee might be made of contaminated city supply water. Meat and other foods might be served spoiled, half spoiled. It is like a Russian Roulette at ordering food this week. Home food is a must until all the food places get a delivery. 9) Don't know much about police protecting neighborhoods from looting, one could hear police sirens now and then but in the city without fully functional traffic lights our police is not shy at giving speeding tickets still. 10) I was surprised that the gas stations did not raise their gas prices when the gas was the most wanted in Houston right after drinking water. Lines are still formed around those stations that still have gas. 11) In many places the sewers ruptured, it can be easily detected if you drive with windows down. Some say sewers and city water mix here and there. Drinking city water now is unnecessary risk. 12) It is kind of funny but true, on one side of the street the houses may have electricity and the other side is dark. You can see extension cords crossing the streets from one house into another. 13) Food. Well, most of it is in the garbage, refrigerator has not worked for almost a week. Short trips to the store to grab some food for now and hope that electricity will be finally bestowed upon the customers. With natural gas uninterrupted, home hot cooked food and hot water is almost a blessing. Water pressure was a bit low first few days but now it is back to normal. At least showers in candle light are possible. 14) There is a certain lack of information when you have no electricity. The only source is the radio in the car but I found that most stations played music and provided no information about what is going on, that is ridiculous. I had a full working FM, AM radio and couldn't pick up any station that could give some pointers at what is going out around us. As usually, the media trying to bring some drama was showing the worst stricken areas and reporting them as "Houston." I had many people calling me locally and internationally thinking the Houston now is one big swamp. 15) Winds reaching 75mph still kept all the mosquitoes in place, now they are even more plentiful. With no electricity for air conditioners we have to keep windows and doors open to create some draft. These buzzing creatures fly in and little loud devils ruin the good night's sleep, not that neighbors with their generator are helping to catch some zzz's. Thankfully the weather changed to a cooler season after the hurricane passed, helps to be without air conditioning and catching a heat stoke. 16) The birds are back, they were gone 1-2 days before the hurricane. Not sure if they flew away or found some local safe harbor. 17) The branches are all over, some lawns are still uncleaned while others (because of nothing to do anyway) cleaned the lawns and now they carry no signs of Ike. Others who left are probably still en route and their front yards are a mess. My neighbors put like 20 garbage bags on their front yard for garbage men to pick up. The garbage men came Monday but took only "food trash" and left any yard leavings. I am thinking that the bags will probably kill the grass they are placed on when left for many days. I don't have garbage bags similarly to my local Lowes store. All I have is neat piles of branches and leaves. Not sure if the yard people will come today as scheduled to mow the lawn.
Derek: Thank you so much for your encouraging words. I shared your comments with all of our associates. Things are getting better every day. I am now typing this message in my office where I have my desktop computer working but not the ceiling lights. Some of the restrooms are missing lights too; but it's allot better to have no lights than having no running water.:) Still about half of our people do not have electricity at their houses or apartments. That is probably down from about 70-80% on Monday. I am sure CenterPoint is working as hard as they can. It does not help them at all if their customers do not have their products. Lenovo's Neal called and told me that they located three Thinkpads with built-in WAN. They have shipped them to us by overnight through FedEx. Thank you, Neal and Lenovo.
Our company emails are now back working We are now close to 98% recovered from Ike operationwise. Receiving is back online. Our regular company emails are finally working again, although we did lose the emails in the last 3-4 days. A few of them did magically pop up as new email probably because they were qued in the cyber space for a few days. Our IT department is doing a fantastic job. Water damaged computers We brought back about 65 water-damaged computers from a customer site. When our people picked these up, water flowed or dripped out of them. We'll have to dry them up before testing them. Hopefully, the contents in some of the hard drives are still recoverable. We are asking some coworkers to bring their hair dryers to work tomorrow. Update: All 65 computers were tested OK yesterday afternoon. Isn't that amazing? Wow, our computers are so good that they are water-proof!!!
More damage pictures of our warehouse Despite damages to our warehouse and some products, we were extremely lucky that most of the leaks were in an open area in the receiving/shipping department adjacent to the docks where we kept a large quantity of empty boxes and shipping supplies. Otherwise the damage would be much worse. This picture, taken on Saturday, shows the damage to the insulation layer of the roof. You can see the water flowing in.
One lesson we learned is to make sure all products are placed on pallets if not on racks. Like this one. You can tell why. The boxes on this picture taken on Saturday were all empty ones. Yes, we had allot of empty boxes because we always want to reuse or recycle them.
We used very modern technologies to remove the water on Saturday...and then again on Sunday
Recycling all these empty boxes was out of question. The trash collection companies can't catch up with the demand right now. We have to call in for extra services quickly. Otherwise, the water damaged cardboards actually make some distinct smell, which you don't want me to describe. This picture was taken on Sunday. Most of the trash is now gone.
This is an interesting picture. It shows the rippling rings formed from the dripping water droplets. No, this is not a fish tank or swimming pool. This was part of the floor in our warehouse on Saturday.
Strange thing about emails Our office email service has finally been resumed. Part of the problem was that we lost Airband service. However, we noticed something strange about the emails. After the service is re-started, we started to receive a few emails today that were sent back on Monday and Tuesday. This means that the email server for the original email has been trying to deliver these emails for such a long time. I didn't realize that the email delivery services would try for that long time. The problem is that these emails all came in at different times and mixed with new emails. It's hard to tell when these emails were originally sent.
To Our Extended Directron.com/Prime Systems Family: The last several days have been one of the most stressful of our times. We are pleased to know that all of us have made it safely. Our foremost priority is your safety and getting the business back running. At this time, we still have the following people who do not have power at their homes: Jeff, Anita, Kevin, Stella, Minfan, Khai, Tony, Oscar (no water), Dennis, Erasmo, Many, Richard, Benson, Ronny, Julio, Andew, Peter, Julio C, Sam, Fred, and Juan We may have missed a few names. Please add your name to the list if you still do not have power at home and remove yours once you do. Our company will buy lunch for those who does not have power at home during the workdays until they get power back at home. You are welcome to use company refrigerators to store food and drinks or use company microwaves to cook dinner if you like. We have bought ice and bottled water kept in the lunchroom. You are welcome to use them and take them home. We also encourage other employees who do have power and water to share with those co-workers who don’t. We are sure that we’ll have a speedy recovery from Ike.
Translation by BabelFish.com into Chinese (simplified) 最近几天是一个最紧张我们的时期。 我们高兴地知道我们大家安全地做了它。 我们的首要优先权是您的安全和得到跑的事务。此时，我们仍然有没在他们的家有力量的以下人民： 杰夫、安尼塔、凯文、史特拉、Minfan、Khai、托尼、奥斯卡(没有水)，丹尼斯， Erasmo，许多，理查、Benson、Ronny、朱利奥、Andew、彼得、朱利奥C，山姆、弗雷德和胡安 我们也许错过了一些个名字。请增加您的名字到名单，如果您在家仍然没有力量，并且去除你的您一次。我们的公司将买在家没有力量在工作日期间那些人的午餐，直到他们在家得到力量后面。如果您喜欢，您是受欢迎的使用公司冰箱存放食物和饮料或者使用公司微波烹调晚餐。 我们买了在餐厅和被装瓶的水保留的冰。您是受欢迎的使用他们和采取他们家庭。 我们也鼓励有能力和水与那些工友分享不的其他雇员。 我们肯定我们将有从Ike的迅速恢复。
Translation by BabelFish.com into Chinese (traditional) 最近幾天是一个最緊張我們的时期。 我們高兴地知道我們大家安全地做了它。 我們的首要優先權是您的安全和得到跑的事務。此时，我們仍然有沒在他們的家有力量的以下人民： 傑夫、安尼塔、凱文、史特拉、Minfan、Khai、托尼、奧斯卡(沒有水)，丹尼斯， Erasmo，許多，理查、Benson、Ronny、朱利奧、Andew、彼得、朱利奧C，山姆、弗雷德和胡安 我們也许錯過了一些個名字。請增加您的名字到名單，如果您在家仍然沒有力量，并且去除你的您一次。我們的公司將買在家沒有力量在工作日期間那些人的午餐，直到他們在家得到力量後面。如果您喜歡，您是受歡迎的使用公司冰箱存放食物和飲料或者使用公司微波烹調晚餐。 我們買了在餐廳和被裝瓶的水保留的冰。您是受歡迎的使用他們和採取他們家庭。 我們也鼓勵有能力和水與那些工友分享不的其他雇員。 我們肯定我們將有從Ike的迅速恢复。
Translation by BabelFish.com into Spanish El último varios días ha sido uno del más agotadora de nuestras épocas. Estamos satisfechos saber que todos nosotros lo han hecho con seguridad. Nuestra primera prioridad es su seguridad y conseguir el negocio detrás que funciona. En este tiempo, todavía tenemos la gente siguiente que no tiene energía en sus hogares: Jeff, Anita, Kevin, Stella, Minfan, Khai, Tony, Óscar (ninguna agua), Dennis, Erasmo, muchos, Richard, Benson, Ronny, Julio, Andew, Peter, Julio C, Sam, Fred, y Juan Pudimos haber faltado algunos nombres. Agregue por favor su nombre a la lista si usted todavía no tiene energía en el país y quitar el suyo usted lo hace una vez. Nuestra compañía comprar el almuerzo para ésos que no tiene energía en el país durante los días laborables hasta que consigan la parte posterior de la energía en el país. Usted es agradable utilizar los refrigeradores de la compañía para almacenar el alimento y bebidas o para utilizar microondas de la compañía para cocinar la cena si usted tiene gusto. Hemos comprado el hielo y el agua embotellada mantenidos el lunchroom. Usted es agradable utilizarlos y tomarlos caseros. También animamos a otros empleados que tengan energía y agua de compartir con esos compañeros de trabajo que no lo hagan. Estamos seguros que tendremos una recuperación rápida de Ike.
The above Chinese translation is extremely funny. It just shows how difficult for a machine to replace a human being. Our Spanish-speaking workers told me that the Spanish translation is okay. For the fun of it, here is the translation in Korean: 지 난 몇일 간은 계속 우리의 시간의 가장 스트레스가 많은 것의 하나이다. 우리는 우리 모두가 그것을 안전하게 만들었다는 것을 아는 만족된다. 우리의 최초 우선권은 당신의 안전 및 후에 달리는 사업을 얻는이다. 현재로서는, 우리는 아직도 그들의 가정에 힘이 없는 뒤에 오는 사람들이 있다: Jeff, Anita, Kevin, Stella, Minfan, Khai, Tony, Oscar (물 없음), 데니스, Erasmo, 많은 것, 리처드, Benson, Ronny, Julio, Andew, 피터, Julio C, Sam, Fred 및 Juan 우리는 약간 이름을 놓칠지도 모른다. 당신은 지금도 힘이 집에서 없 너의 것을 제거하기 위하여 한 번 경우에 명부에 당신의 이름을 추가하십시오. 우리의 회사는 그들이 힘 뒤를 집에서 얻을 때까지 평일 도중 힘이 집에서 없는 사람들을 위한 점심에는 살 것이다. 당신은 당신이 좋아하는 경우에 환영받다 회사 음식과 음료를 저장하거나 저녁식사를 요리하기 위하여 회사 마이크로파를 이용하도록 냉장고를 사용하도록. 우리는 lunchroom에서 지켜진 얼음과 병에 넣어진 물을 샀다. 당신은 환영받다 그(것)들을 이용하고 가정 가지고 가기 위하여. 우리는 또한 그 협력자로 공유하는 힘과 물이 있는 다른 직원은 격려한다. 우리는 우리는 Ike에서 빠른 회복이 있을 확실하다. Hurricane Ike Blog / Watch: | Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 | Page 4 | Page 5 | Page 6 | Page 7 | Page 8 | Original blog was published on our user forum. You are welcome to leave comments, pictures, and info there. |
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