Residents scramble for supplies
By BRENDA SOMMER bsommer@leader-news.com

L-N Photo by Brenda Sommer Keep It Coming Kelly Janik watches as Manual Hinojosa, at right, and Thomas Castro load up sheets of plywood for her Wednesday morning at Sutherland's. She and her husband have a construction business and were booked solid with window-covering work ahead of Hurricane Ike's arrival along the Texas coast.

Preparations of all sorts were in high gear Wednesday afternoon as coastal Texans battened the hatches in anticipation of the landfall of Hurricane Ike.

Bottled water was the only thing in Carolyn Goelzer's shopping cart around lunchtime Wednesday.

"We're ready," she said. "We're watching today, and if it looks like it's coming to Matagorda, then we'll go to my son's house in New Braunfels."

Tim Baber and his teenaged son, both of Austin, were loading up some large coolers in the bed of their pickup, which was parked in the H-E-B parking lot. They were headed to a house they own on the San Bernard River in Brazoria County, an area already under evacuation.

"My son's playing hooky from Bowie High School," he said. The bed of their truck contained several large coolers, a ladder and numerous power tools. Memories of their 11-hour flight from their second home to Austin during 2005's Hurricane Rita were fresh on their minds.

"I've got boards pre-cut from Rita," Baber said. "We'll probably make the call tomorrow by lunch. We're definitely getting out by Thursday evening."

They weren't the only out-of-towners doing their shopping in El Campo Wednesday.

Armando "Trey" Torres, a supervisor for the city of Victoria, was loading a cart full of bottled water into the bed of his pickup. He'd come to town to take his mother to the dentist, an appointment made long before Ike formed in the Atlantic.

"I thought I'd get my shopping done here," he said between cell phone calls to his co-workers, who were busy securing that city from the storm.

Larry Wagenbach of Richmond was tying up his load of plywood, headed to secure his second home in Caranchua Bay. He said his wife had warned him to buy plywood in Richmond, but he told her he knew it would be available in El Campo.

"Now I get to go home and say, 'I told you so,'" Wagenbach said with a chuckle.

Raul Flores was seeing to it that his home was secured, having Vincent Juarez install freshly cut plywood over the windows of his home.

"We bought the plywood this morning," he said, as his guard poodle Coco kept a close eye on the goings-on.

Mike Prasek of smokehouse fame was helping load 22 sheets of plywood into his pickup, enough to take care of his home and his store on U.S. 59 in Hillje.

"Once we're done, we can sit back and have a party," he said.

Dusky Lane, who works in the garden at Sutherland's, was loading plywood side-by-side with retired DPS trooper Bill Sulak, who's normally found in the hardware division of the store.

"I came in at 6:30 to move all the dirt stuff and pallets out of the way," Lane said. "I can't wait to get to my bath tub!"

Sulak said he was not used to working in the lumber section of the store.

"But we're short-handed, so I'm here," he said.

Kelly Janik, of Dreammaker Construction, was trying to figure out where to position her truck to pick up a big load of 5/8-inch plywood.

"I guess I'll get in the line," she said. She had a list of 10 homes the company was to cover, and "the phone is going crazy," she said.

As for covering her own windows, Janik just chuckled.

"I'm so low on the list," she said. "We're (meaning husband Jim) doing everyone else's house first."