We have now taken shelter in the condo and secured the chase vehicle on the 5th floor in a well protected concrete parking garage, so it won’t be damaged or endure any storm surge. We’re up on the 6th floor in the huge lobby. There is a large deck out in front of it with 3 swimming pools that overlooks the beach and it’s all glassed in with hurricane proof glass, 1.5 inches thick.
Nearly midnight now and the winds are hitting over 100 mph outside, but we can barely hear them. I don’t think we could have had a safer place to ride it out on the island to be honest. We are so appreciative of the staff here for welcoming us in and making us feel at home.
Power went out across Galveston right after sunset, all at once. The only places with power are like here and the hospital, etc that have their own generators. The Sprint tower is on the roof of this condo and we actually still have high speed internet here as well. Amazing!
One thing is for sure. We will have one heck of a view of the damage come first light, and a great place to experience the eye when it comes over.
We’ve been quite busy doing shoots for FOX and there was a huge fire at some sort of yacht facility that the firefighters couldn’t get to because of the storm surge. Evidently KHOU in Houston stole my video feed and aired it live as well. Been quite busy though and night will be setting in soon, so we will be taking shelter very soon.
We have had quite a few hours of sleep and are feeling MUCH better physically than we were at this point chasing Gustav. We got up early, grabbed some breakfast at Whataburger and headed out. After much debate, we decided to give up our initial area to ride out the hurricane, at the parking garage at NASA, southeast of Houston, and decided we could ride it out in one of the many parking garages at the hospital on Galveston Island. We shall be in for one heck of a ride, and are apprehensive at this point about when we may be able to get off the island. We have supplies for at least a week however.
However once there, we lucked in to a place to stay at a high rise condo called Emerald by the Sea. While scouting out their parking garage, we ran in to the Realtor for the building who invited us to come back and ride it out on their 6th floor lobby! This building was built to withstand a CAT5 hurricane. So we are good for shelter.
Now to spend the day running around the island documenting things and shooting ENG footage.
Sorry about the audio on me at first, it gets corrected a few seconds later.
