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Carole Hamadey and her dog, Misty.

CRYSTAL BEACH, Texas – During the most frightful moments of Hurricane Ike, 60-year-old Carole Hamadey sat upstairs in her bed and breakfast on the Bolivar Peninsula, desperately trying to hold a window shut.

With the help of one other person, she pressed her fingertips on the window’s locks for two hours to keep the wind and water from rushing in her home.

Hamadey weathered Hurricane Ike from start to finish inside her B&B, called "Out by the Sea." Her community on the Bolivar Peninsula was one of the hardest hit by the Category 2 hurricane, which slammed into the Texas coast Sept. 13.

Bolivar residents were allowed to return to their homes for the first time today, but only on a "look and leave" basis. Hamadey has yet to return. She only made it off the peninsula Sept. 15, despite attempts to evacuate before the storm.

Hamadey tried to evacuate Friday morning before Ike along with two women staying with her. The trio woke up at 6 a.m. to leave, but the roads were so flooded they couldn’t get out.

"I looked at the Gulf (of Mexico), and the water was coming up the Gulf, up the street, before my eyes," Hamadey said. "It was coming up at a speed I could not describe."

She called 911 for help evacuating, but was frustrated when she says the operator told her they couldn't bring their pets. By late afternoon, she says evacuations had stopped. And she was witnessing a transformation in her neighborhood.

"The waters were so high you couldn’t go downstairs anymore," Hamadey said. "Stuff was coming out of garages. Heavy things. I couldn’t count the ice chests, the toilets. My washing machine floated by me in early afternoon."

That evening she and her guests had dinner upstairs.

“We all prayed and they all said they were ready to die because we knew we might not make it out,” she said.

That night she says the winds were "incredible." The house shook. Her wine glasses broke on the rack. Waves crashed on to her deck.

"I crawled outside … then I started seeing the houses in front of me. It wasn’t just the bottom of the houses taken out," she said. “I started seeing the tops of houses come down. And the houses just disintegrated."

By midnight the waters were 20 feet high, she said. They tore off the stairs, her deck, the hurricane covers on her doors.

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Out by the Sea Bed and Breakfast in Crystal Beach, shown before Hurricane Ike.

"The house was shaking like I cannot express," she said.

She says the water seemed to form an eddy around her home. And somehow, gusts started tearing the window out from its frame in the upstairs room where they were taking shelter. That’s when she and her friend started holding the window in place.

“The only way to hold the window in was for our fingers to go on the locks,” she said. “When we could no longer hold the window, I took coat hangers and wound them around the locks on top of the window and tied cords to back of the bed, and moved the bed back to keep the window in.”

"The worst part was when the waves started going back out, the sucking action was so intense," she said.

When it was over, the damage to her property was overwhelming.

"I think my house barely made it," she said. "If I wasn’t able to hold those windows in it would of gone down."

Her deck is gone, her roof is damaged, there’s no evidence her two garages ever existed except for a concrete slab covered with mud. It looks like someone took a hatchet to the honeymoon suite. There’s no sign of her riding lawn mower, which was chained to the ground. She found her car stuck in the sand, end up.

"I had locked the car and for some reason the interior of the car was being sucked through the window," Hamadey said.

Nearby homes look like they were sliced in half. She says it’s like looking into a dollhouse.

AP image

Bolivar Peninsula was wiped out during Hurricane Ike.

Hamadey was evacuated Monday night after the storm. She was taken to San Antonio, where her daughter picked her up. The two weren’t able to communicate during the storm.

"She thought I was dead," Hamadey said.

Hamadey plans to return to the Bolivar Peninsula. She wants to reopen her bed and breakfast, which she’s operated for eight years. In an e-mail to 11 News, she wrote: "I get more caring e-mails from my previous guests stating they will be back. I am planning a grand re-opening for my guests in December!"