An HP Midmarket Executive's Ike Nightmare

Renggli and his family faced a complete blackout situation about 3 a.m. Saturday with all power, Internet access and cellphone coverage eliminated. All he had to communicate with the outside world was text messaging, which Renggli used to tell his parents in Europe and his colleagues that he and his family were holding up well. Renggli's parents were watching the storm ravage the Houston area on TV. "They had a visual and saw what was happening," he said. "We didn't see anything. You could only imagine how things were."

The storm blasted Renggli's house for about eight hours, he said. "Water was coming in through all the windows and doors. The doors and windows didn't break but just couldn't withhold the storm wind."

Renggli and his family stayed in a master bedroom where he had made sure the windows were buttressed with furniture so if glass shattered it wouldn't harm his family. "We prayed and hoped for the best," he said. "It was very clear listening to the sound that it was really, really bad."

When daylight broke on through, Renggli said his house held up well, but he saw trees down and debris everywhere.

Renggli, the director of small and midmarket for HP's Technology Solutions Group, based in Houston, is one of thousands of HP employees in the Houston area that are now literally trying to pick up the pieces after Ike ravaged the Houston area. HP's Houston facilities, which the company acquired when it purchased Compaq Computer, a PC pioneer, form the foundation for HP's position as the number one PC and server maker in the world.

Renggli expressed his relief at making it through the Ike disaster on Monday morning before 340 midmarket CIOs at the Midsize Enterprise Summit, which is being held this week at the Gaylord Texas in Grapevine Texas. About 15 CIOs could not make the trip to the conference because of Ike.

"I couldn't be more pleased to be here," Renggli told CIOs before he spoke about the challenges faced by midmarket CIOs. "Obviously my thoughts are going to be with my colleagues and friends still in Houston suffering through what Hurricane Ike actually did to us."

Renggli decided to make the the six-hour drive from the Houston area to the Midsize Summit on Sunday given that his colleague, Paul Gottsegen, vice president of industry standard servers, who was scheduled to speak at the Summit, could not get to the event. Gottsegen and his family were okay but he could not make it out of his neighborhood. "All the major roads leading to the freeway where he lived were flooded," said Renggli.

Given the uncertainty he faced making the trip to Grapevine with his wife and children, Renggli said he was more than a little afraid as he undertook what could very well be a treacherous drive given the down power lines and traffic lights. "The first two hours were hard because we had to actually try to find our way to the freeway from our suburb," he said. "The streets were flooded. Trees were down and all the signal lights were out."

"Five minutes before we left with the car packed, I felt for a few minutes it might be too dangerous," he said. "I asked: Are we really going to do this? It (the trip) was actually not as bad as it could have been."

Driving to the freeway seeing trees down everywhere and roofs ripped from homes was "pretty horrible," said Renggli.

The ride from the metropolitan Houston area to Grapevine was "surreal" given the magnitude of the Hurricane that he and his family had just braved contrasted with the sunny mild weather. "It was sunshine, the perfect weather," he said. "You couldn't imagine what was happening in Houston."

HP now faces the difficult task of trying to make sure that all employees in the Houston area are safe. "Employee safety is most important," Renggli said. "We are telling people stay home, stay safe and take care of your family."

Renggli said he has been in Houston for eight years and has faced a number of power outages and crises, but nothing like Ike.

For now, he and his family plan to spend the next several days at the Enterprise Summit and then decide what to do next given that there is no indication on when power will be back on at his home. "It could take weeks before we get power back," he said. "We have to see what the situation is and then find a solution."

Scott Campbell contributed to this article