NASA JSC Employee Contact Board

NASA Prepares Facilities for Hurricane Rita [full release]

NASA facilities that could be in the path of Hurricane Rita are reassessing necessary preparations. Due to Rita's strength, the original hurricane ride-out crew at NASA's Johnson Space Center, Houston, has now evacuated. The 82-member crew, which included operations, maintenance, security and medical personnel, had been in place after the center officially closed yesterday afternoon. Once conditions are deemed safe, a security team will return to Johnson.

KSC USA Payload Project Office is willing to help coordinate/communicate for our JSC USA Program Integration counterparts. Kevin Berry 321 861-3121, will update voice mail message with info when received

I pray to God to protect all my good friends at JSC-EG and everyone in Houston.

Khaled Abdel-Motagaly
Boeing, Seattle

JSC-USA Flight Management & Integration Department management will attempt to contact all personnel on Sunday morning for a status on their condition. If not reached by noon on Sunday, department employees are asked to please report their status by calling Bill Hollister at (512)255-8863.

Can someone please give me the URL for JSC Webmail access? I forgot to put it on this laptop. Dumb.

URL for JSC webmail is

https://webmail.jsc.nasa.gov

However, I think that the servers have been shut down. I've not be able to get to webmail.

BTW - Jo Ann (EV6) & Bob Hinson (retired NASA) are safe & sound in Nacogdoches w/ Dave & Donna Hinson (ex-NASA, ex-Grumman)

There is no JSC web access for employees to get information; this was announced in advance.

From nasa.gov website:

Employees can check JSC's status by phoning:
(281) 483-3351 or
(877) 283-1947

Employees are asked to check in after the storm by noon Monday at:
877-470-5240

Stephanie and John Stoll from JSC: I hope you're safe. Please contact me if possible by e-mail or phone: (818) 354-6089. Good luck.

Mark

M Zemek and family ok in College Station. Can be reached through STC TAMU.

The T Dillon family is ok and in the Austin area.
I talked to them yesterday.

McZ

For those who left, don't come back unless you have a full tank and extra gas to bring with you. Some Clear Lake neighborhoods have power, some don't. Not much damage that I can see, but we've not left the house.

Good luck too all.

We survived! No real damage, no flooding, still have electricity!!!

The Clear Lake area has survived in great shape. I live in Oak Brook West in Clear Lake, just North of JSC. On Wednesday I covered all my windows and glass doors with plywood. At 9:30 PM my wife and I evacuated. After 12 hours we only got as far as Conroe (normally an 1 hour 15 min drive.) Then the alternator in our car died, leaving us with a dead car on the side of the road. The highway was a very slow moving parking lot - some people were walking outside, along their cars. Many people pulled over to the side, either out of gas, overheated car, or just to conserve gas until traffic started to move.

AAA, wreckers, automotive places, repair shops, rental car agencies, etc. could not be reached. Finally, my son (who lives in Dallas and were we were evacuating to) drove down to get us. After about 8 hours he arrived and we unloaded what we could fit into his car and the wife and I and our dog and son left. Because there was no gas and the fact the hurricane path had moved East, we decided to go back home to Clear Lake. It only took us the 1 hour 15 min to get back home. The Houston freeways were deserted - a ghost town! The same with Clear Lake.

On Friday, the weather was great in the morning. My pickup was full of gas, so my son and I drove back to where we abandoned our car to get the rest of the things we left behind. This time, it only took us the 1 hr 15 min. The scene was totally different. No cars on the highway except police and do-gooders providing gas and drinks to those in need. While unloading our car, three police and 4 folks stopped to offer aid. Unfortunately, none had an alternator..... ;)

During Friday afternoon the cloud cover increased and the wind gradually became more intense. The first rain was about 5-6 PM. Then things got worse, but in spurts as bands passed by. Heavy rain and wind for about 5 min and then calm. Electricity went out across the street about 9 PM but our electricity only flickered a couple of times and remained on through-out the night. We lost cable about 11PM - it is still out. We decided to go to bed.

During the night, things got worse with the winds and rain getting increasingly worse. A branch broke off and hit our roof - but no damage. The winds and rain bands continued to get worse throughout the night as the eye approached land East of here. I have a problem with water accumulating on my patio and have a sump pump to keep the water from flooding my porch. The rain fall was low enough, that the pump was able to keep up and I had no water problems.

I woke up about 7 pm and looked out the peep holes I had put in the plywood. Now the good news. The electricity across the street was back on. I could not see any downed trees or big branches broken. The main thing is the ground is covered with small tree debris - small limbs and leaves. Nothing a rake can't clean up. The cable is still out.

While the storm will be continuing throughout the day, the worse seems to be over. The Clear Lake area is in good shape.

Our main concern is finding gas so my son can return to Dallas so he can go to school on Monday.

I feel for all those that evacuated and now have to face a similar fate returning back to the Clear Lake area.

I continue to pray for those East of us that were less fortunate.

I forgot to take the Jacobs call in number with me.

Can someone post it?

In Waco right now after 24 hours on the road and six hours sleeping in a Walmart Parking lot.

Clear Creek ISD closed through Wednesday.

Jacobs call in number is 1-888-393-6170.

We came back from College Station Saturday morning. Best route is down Hwy 36 and across to Alvin to Friendswood. No traffic. We had a full tank when we left CS and because we had a fierce tail wind we used almost no gas. All of the roads were clear. We saw no gas along the way and there is none down here. Very few stores open. Friendswood is OK as far as I can see. We have power. Most schools will be closed Monday and Tuesday.

Anyone know if Taylor Lake Village near JSC has electricity? Also, any info on gasoline and traffic situation from San Antonio to JSC/Seabrook would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone have information on how Taylor Lake Village fared?

JC Melcher and family doing ok in Brenham. Does anyone know what the re-activation status of the center is? I see on the news that CL area (east of 45) is not even on the list for returning to the city by Tuesday...

I just returned from SAMs club off of El Dorado and I45. They had 8 pumps open and were selling gas. There was a single line with maybe 20 cars, but it moved fairly quickly. HEB says they will be open Sunday morning. My neighbors power is back on and the cable is back up.

Good luck to all those returning.

Returned from Austin today (Saturday). Departed Austin at noon arrived in Clear Lake City at 6:15 p.m. Advice on travel: So as far south as possible and come into Houston from the southwest direction. That was the area Rita was originally scheduled to strike. We left Austin via I-35 toward San Antonio-got off on State 123 at San Marcos and continued south to Stockdale. Took State 119 toward Goliad. Intercepted HWY 59 to Houston. Speeds of 60 to 75 mph entire way to beyond Wharton (except for one area of bridge construction). Took State Road 360 (just beyond Kendleton) to Needville.
South to Farm Road 1462 to Rosharon, Alvin, Friendswood and Home. Great route which avoids the I-10, 290, 71, Alt.90 traffic jams. Found gas along route except about 30 miles out of Houston area.
Hope this advice assists someone. It was an easy drive. No stop and go. Enjoy the trip home.

I returned to Kemah yesterday. Minimal damage here, and power was restored yesterday evening. Drove through El Lago and saw a few trees down but also no major damage. It looked like El Lago and Taylor Lake Village had power, but the easiest way to tell is to call your home answering machine (if you have one). If it answers, you have power! Yesterday, we did not find a single business open, but most grocery stores are supposed to open this morning.

Coming in from the South is the best route. There was no gas Saturday but Sunday things are opening back up. HEB in Friendswood is open. Lowes in Baybrook is open. I will be going to Webster this afternoon and will do some checking around.

JSC will be closed Monday. Most schools don't open until Wednesday or Thursday.

JSC info number is 877-283-1947. Tollfree recording.
Everyone should call in to 877-470-5240 to report their status. A real human will talk to you and ask if you need help.

If you need additional info call me at 281-993-0302 and I will see what I can do.

According to the Jacobs phone line, we have Monday off.

We arrived in Taylor Lake Village (TLV) Saturday afternoon. There appears to be very minimal damage - just some smaller tree limbs. We still have not gotten power back in TLV as of 2pm on Sunday. Most of the JSC area appears to have power, though. Stores are starting to open up again throughout the area.

I made a run from Eagle Lakes in Friendswood up 528 to Bay Area Blvd up to Saturn to JSC and back to Friendswood on NASA Rd 1. Eagle Lakes and 518/528 has no damage that I could see. In fact other than the usual debris after a storm everything look ok. Friendswood only got 1.3in of rain. We are still below normal on rain. Pitiful :-)

I checked with security at the gate and he said only people who have been called will be allowed in. He said JSC should be open Tuesday but check the NASA website.

Diamond Shamrock at 528/Sunset has gas
HEB at 528/Sunset is open and has gas
Shell at BayArea Blvd/hwy 3 has gas
Randalls at Eldorado/hwy 3 is open
Shell at Eldorado/hwy 3 no gas
Chevron at Saturn and Gemini has gas
Conoco at Nasa Rd/hwy 3 has gas
Randalls at 528/BayArea is closed but has gas
Kroger is open but does not appear to have gas

Some restaurants at 518/528 are open like McD's, Taco Bell, Starbuck, and even the Blockbuster.

Mamacitas is closed.
Frenchies was closed.
Wendy's was open.
Lowe's at BayArea is open
Home Depot at Webster is open
Best Buy is open
Fry's is open
Baybrook Mall is closed
Target at Baybrook is open

As I write this, more places are probably getting gas and opening . Things are getting back to normal.

I came in yesterday from the west on 90A and ran into heavy traffic between Rock Island and Altair (both are just east of Hallettsville and west of Eagle Lake). Near Altair, I got on 71 south to FM 950 east, to FM 2614 south, to FM 102 south. In Wharton, I got on 60 south to FM 442 east at Lane City. Followed 442 to 36, went south on 36 to FM 1462, and took 1462 east to 35 in Alvin. Once I got on 71, I never went slower than 60 mph the whole way in. Traffic was very light through Alvin, Friendswood and CLC.

I recommend fully fueling before you leave; I started with a full tank in Wimberley and made it back to Clear Lake with 1/4 tank left in an 8-cylinder Mustang witha 16 gallon tank.

I am in Northfork in Clear Lake City. The power came on around 6 pm Saturday and has been on since. Friendswood also has power. I have not seen any open gas stations around CLC. I have seen very little damage in the area; the lights at CLC Blvd and Hwy 3 were dangling yesterday but are fixed today. The new Gateway church on CLC Blvd had lost some windows, but they had been repaired today when I went by. Other than that, just a few limbs.

NASA Update to Hurricane Rita Aftermath [Full release]

- There were no injuries.
- Employees are on admin leave until Tuesday since they may experience problems getting back into the Houston area.

Having been one of the ones to evacuate even though Houston wasn't under a mandatory evacuation, I will tell you I will never listen to the Governor, Harris County Judge, and Houston Mayor again. Yes I was one of those trapped on Beltway 8 trying to get to 290 to WACO for 10 hours and 15 miles before we decided to turn around and take our chances. I was getting fed up listening to the self adulation and patting on the back of each other and boasting about things ( eg contra lanes ) that never happend. And now, how could anyone plan this as they claimed to have without having a definite plan for the return. It is obvious that this was being done by the seat of the pants with total lack of coordination twith the other outlying counties. I heard reference to the training exercise last year or so for Hurricane Polly ( that even JSC may have been involved with). This simulation must have been self serving or the results of the past few days would have been known. They claim this plan only addressed mandatory evacuations and not for the voluntary ones and at the same time the relevantg Harris County Officials were promoting such events. I can only hope ( and I am going to see if a news media will do this, NASAWatch might want to do this as well , see if they will take a poll of all those people to attempted to evacuate and turned around). Before the Politicians brag on the total number of evacuations that were accomplished, the real metric is with respect to how many were attempted. I do believe I would rather die in my home ( if Houston isn't going to provide a shelter ) than trapped on the highway!

Jerry Bell

Since we knew that our house had power, water and no damage and based on reports of no gas in Houston and resulting light traffic this morning, we decided to hit the road at 1pm. As a precaution, we had an extra 20 gallons of gas with our three car (10 person, 3 dog) caravan.

From Blanco, we took 281 to 46 to I-10 to the Beltway to Clear Lake. It tooks us 4 hours. The slowest point was where we were receiving traffic in Columbus and Sealy. We never slowed below 30 mph. I also looked over at I-45 towards Galveston from the Beltway and it looked clear. This is much better than the 12 hours in the opposite direction of a few days ago!

Upon arrival reports of no/little damage in Northfork confirmed.

Good Luck.

Anybody know where we can live within a reasonable distance from JSC that has the LEAST chance of flooding or highest elevation. I live near the Kemah boardwalk on the lake, and having to pack up my valuables and evacuate knowing that my place with all of my things could be gone when I come back (I evacuated early Wednesday morning when Rita was a catagory 5 headed straight toward us) is not something I would like to repeat. Thinking of moving.

Anybody done the drive on I-10? I haven't left San Antonio yet.

Does the admin leave until Tuesday mean we are on admin leave on Monday and Tuesday?

According to the recorded message in the JSC emergency information line, JSC will be closed on Monday, i.e., adm. leave on Monday, but will open on Tuesday, so those absent then will have that time charged to annual leave.

Isn't this contradicting the local and state policy of discouraging Clear Lake residents from coming back "until further notice"?

Evacuated Houston starting Wednesday night at 8pm. Arrived in San Antonio the next afternoon at 4pm. What is normally a 3-4 hour trip took 20 hours.

JSC Webmail is operational.

One problem with the notices on returning home is that they have divided the area in to quadrants based on I10 and I45. See http://www.chron.com/# Unfortunately, Clear Lake and the adjacent areas are included in the SE quadrant which also includes the counties most impacted by the hurricane (Galveston Is, Chambers, Jefferson, etc.) Many in these areas have no power and the clean up efforts are massive. Thus they don't want folks returning to those areas until further notice. However Clear Lake and the adjacent areas do have power (as far as I know), stores are opening, people are returning, and life is getting back to normal. I think they made a big mistake including Clear Lake and the adjacent ares in with those areas further East that were impacted by the hurricane the most.

If one looks at the 'return map' at the Houston
Chronicle:

http://www.chron.com/#

JSC is located in the Sate mandated
'Pending' area, so what is
JSC's policy about this?

For those with the questions about Tuesday: The JSC info line states that the Center will return to normal operations on Tue. But it also says that "Liberal Leave" is available for Tue. for Civil Servants. So, if you're a CS and can't get home before Tue. you should be covered.

Traveling back to Houston via I-45 information. Last night (early Monday Morning) I drove from Dallas to Houston on I-45 and traffic was backed up from Fairfield to Houston. We were moving at about 10 to 20 miles mph. My advice is if I-45 is this show, you may want to take Texas 75 to FM 1314 and then over to US 59 South to Downtown to meet up with I-45 again. Texas 75 was smooth sailing at 2:30am. I-45 outside Madisonville and Huntsville was at a slow crawl.

If you take Texas 75 during the day you will have to deal with traffic lights.

The disconnect between the local authorities and JSC appears to be resolved. The latest TxDOT map for returning home has added areas east of I-45 to Day 2 (today!) for return. The areas below I-10 that are still "pending" are only east of Baytown and Bolivar Peninsula.

I was on site today. There were a lot of small limbs down, a few big ones, and the ducks seemed a little agitated (or plotting their overthrow of the campus, I couldn't tell), but otherwise things are normal. Mission Control has resumed operations of the ISS.

Wed. morning it took us 3.5 hrs to get plywood. It was way too hot (100+) to cut and fit boards, but it got done.

Stayed with brother in law at Meyerland area of Houston. We lost power about 0240 (came back about 1630). Called my parents in Indiana in the morning that I was alive and well. (Cell phones still working.) We cooked breakfast on the BBQ grill. Used car battery adapter to grind & brew coffee (a necessity). :) Friendswood officials said it was OK to come back so we left at noon. When we got home we didn't even lose power judging from the electronics still powered up. We saw on TV that the Galveston Co. sheriffs were letting Galveston residents back in with proper ID. The Galveston mayor said the town was closed, but the county thought otherwise. Called sister in law at the Meyerland house that she and her daughter could likely get back into Galveston to check for damage. She did and her fence was blown down and her rickety garage was still standing. She had no power. (Power back on Sunday.)

Our Clear Lake house still had the sawdust sitting in the driveway from the board cutting. Expected more rain than what we got. No trees blown down which was my major fear. Some traffic lights working, some blinking red, some totally out.

What is it Gen. Howell says? It's great to be alive and in Houston!

I left my home in Seabrook at 2:00 pm and got to Westheimer by 6:30 pm and that was taking the backroads for a shortcut. My stepfather has an apartment there, so my mom and I plus 4 cats decided that would be the best place to go to be safe from the hurricane. Came back Sunday afternoon and was grateful to have power and no damage to my apartment. We truly dodged another bullet. I also am glad that I got paid administrative leave because a lot of folks that I talked to said they weren't getting paid even though their job sites were shut down, so I hope they can get something worked out.