Hurricane Ike doesn't scare 'Husker Power'

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BY CARA PESEK / Lincoln Journal Star

Thursday afternoon, Jason Lorenz finished boarding up the windows and doors of the new Texas Gulf Coast home he shares with his girlfriend, Jessica Sand.

Attached to a piece of protective plywood is a Husker Blackshirt banner. On the plywood, Lorenz has spraypainted: “Husker Power. Ain’t Scared.”

Earlier, the Nebraska natives and big Husker fans — her car and his truck are both bright red —brought their grill and wind chimes in from outside. They bought water and 15 gallons of gas. They bought a generator to power their refrigerator and deep freeze in the likely event that the power goes out.

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Nebraska natives and Husker fans Jessica Sand and Jason Lorenz own a home five minutes from the Gulf Coast, not far from Galveston. Hurricane Ike is headed their way. But as of Thursday afternoon, they were planning to ride out the storm. Their defense: Husker Power, as displayed proudly on a sign attached to the plywood covering a window of their home. In this photo, Jason is shown spray-painting the words. (Courtesy photo)

They still had to pack up all of their photographs and scrapbooks, the things they couldn’t replace, said Sand, who is studying accounting at the University of Houston - Clear Lake.

As of Thursday afternoon, the couple still planned to hunker down inside their home in Richwood, waiting for Hurricane Ike to hit.

Richwood is in Brazoria County, close to Galveston and about 50 miles from Houston.

Ike was steering straight for Galveston and, beyond that, Houston.

The storm is expected to strike the Gulf Coast late tonight or Saturday morning. 

Sand, 21, and Lorenz, 24, are from Crete and Friend, respectively. Lorenz moved to Texas about five years ago, after accepting a job with Dow Chemical Co. Sand followed him there about a year and a half ago.

On Wednesday night, the 3,400 residents of Richwood were ordered to evacuate. But Sand and Lorenz, with their nearest family back in Nebraska, hesitated.

“Our chances were a hotel, but all our hotels are full,” Sand said.

A second cousin whom she’s met just once called Sand’s mother and told her the couple was welcome to stay with her in Corpus Christi.

Sand and Lorenz have a friend  — also originally from Nebraska — who has an aunt in Katy.

But now that woman has evacuated, too.

So Sand and Lorenz think they’ll stay put.

Their home is brick and was built with hurricane straps — metal joints that secure the roof to the house itself. And when they bought their home in February, it came with boards pre-cut to the sizes they’d need to cover each window and door, Lorenz said.

“All you’ve got to do is screw them on,” he said.

Lorenz evacuated during Hurricane Rita, an event he described as a disaster. He got on the Interstate, he said, where traffic basically stood still.

“I didn’t want to go through the same stuff,” he said.

Lorenz talked to his parents on Thursday. They were worried, he said, but they trusted him to make the right decision, to be safe.

This is Sand’s first hurricane, and her family is worried.

They’ve been telling her to evacuate — which, she says, makes sense, living where they do. 

“We have tornadoes and you can’t predict those,” Sand said. “A hurricane is different because you worry about it for a week before.”

Reach Cara Pesek at 473-7361 or cpesek@journalstar.com.