Used Pontoon Boats - Hurricane Ike Causes heavy damage at Lake O’ the Pines
Monday, September 15th, 2008
Pontoon boats and a two-story houseboat competed for a place onshore when winds loosed them from moorings at Johnson Creek Marina. Boat owners were at the marina Sunday cleaning up.
Hi gang, Rick Ostler here from North American Waterway bringing you Used Pontoon Boats along with news and views from the boating industry. Clean up underway along Texas waterways after Hurrican Ike rips through area.
Relentless winds bounced a marina and shoved two-story houseboats into the north shore of Lake O’ the Pines on Saturday.”Today, I’m trying to find other places for those houseboats to go,” slip owner Heide Elwood said.
Jamie Walker rode out the high winds and invading waves on his houseboat at Johnson Creek Marina, rescued Sunday by friends who brought a pontoon boat to his stranded vessel.
“There were no docks — the docks were blown away,” Walker said, after quipping, “My thought was that I was getting dangerously low on cold beer.”
Elwood’s husband, Jerry, estimated damage at $750,000 including a $169,000 houseboat that was more than half submerged by overpowering waves. No injuries were reported at the lake.
The Elwoods sold the marina store in 2005 to Sam and Lyda Edwards, who survived two years of lake drought but saw the other side of drought Saturday.
“It was not fun around here yesterday,” Lyda said. Her husband described the fate of plastic docks that jutted from the marina store until wind began to lift the store and bounce it on the water surface.
Pieces of those docks crowded the shoreline in a competition with pontoon boats and a houseboat that lost its moorings.
“When it picked the store up and shot it down, that’s when those pieces flew over there,” Sam Edwards said. “It actually crashed down and shot (the docks) out.”
Bubba Romine, a fishing guide who lives at nearby Bullfrog Marina, said waves topped seven feet at Johnson Creek. He also said it was the worst storm damage he’d seen in decades at the lake.
“I still had 67 mph winds,” Romine said of his slip at Bullfrog Marina, which is north of Johnson Creek and protected by a road and tree line. “They clocked them at 100 to 110 mph right here (at Johnson Creek). Waves were going over the tops of these boats.”
Romine, a past president of the Lake O’ the Pines Chamber of Commerce, had weathered the storm, which blew across the lake around 6 p.m. Saturday, on his houseboat with his cat, Missy. “She’s fine,” he said of the calico. “She stayed close to her daddy, in my arms, and we ran the generator.”
To the south, the Harelton Cafe was filled by lunch, largely by residents who were without power Sunday. “We’ve been slammed all morning,” cafe owner Tracy Kelley said. The cafe, at Texas 154 and FM 450, was without power until about 8:30 a.m. Sunday. “I made cowboy coffee on the stovetop,” she said. “By the time I got the first pot done, the power came back on.”
Harleton volunteer firefighter Kody Corrin sat at a nearby table, recalling the previous night spent clearing trees from rural highways. “We started out at Morgan Church on (Texas) 154,” he said. “We cut about seven or eight trees. Then we made our way up to (FM) 450 and cut trees off 450, and then we cut two off Ferguson Road. That started about 5 p.m., and we didn’t get through until around 11 o’clock. We had plenty of help.” The volunteers also brought generators to a man living on a ventilator and to a Harrison County radio tower, Corrin said.
Tamara Olivares had been in her mobile home on Wells Road off FM 450 about a week when Ike took her roof. Her family had helped place her in the home after her house burned in February. “Me and my son (Joseph Whitespeare) barely got out of there alive,” she said. “We had to squeeze through a little crawl space.”
The owners of a new restaurant in Diana are promising to rebuild after a tree fell into their building, destroying the kitchen. The Crackerjack’s Cafe, at U.S. 259 and Dogwood Road, opened in April, owner Brenda Cecil said. “Everything has been lost,” Cecil said. “The building’s completely destroyed.”
A neighbor’s tree fell into the business around 5:15 p.m. Saturday, Cecil said. She discovered it around 5:30 p.m. Saturday. Volunteer firefighters went out Saturday and began clearing the tree, she said.
“We’ve been out all morning just sawing the tree, trying to get it out of the way,” Cecil said. The building was insured, Cecil said.
Further south, a mobile home in the Tall Pines park east of Hallsville was split by a falling pine. The tree, at least 2 feet in diameter, sliced clean through the unoccupied home and missed its next-door neighbor by a foot.
Larry Blackwell, 25, was cleaning that next-door mobile home around 4 p.m. Saturday when neighbors warned him to flee his newly purchased home. “I heard this banging at the door, and there were two guys telling me I need to get out of the trailer because the tree might fall,” Blackwell said. “So I got out of there, and here it goes.” A roofer, Blackwell had been scheduled to work in Louisiana today. “But they want me to stay here,” he said of his employers. Thanks to Christina Lane for this report; Storm causes heavy damage to property at Lake O’ the Pines
Tags: usedpontoon boats, hurricane ike, north american waterway, Johnson Creek Marina, Bullfrog Marina, texas boating
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