Black Gumbo

Thankfully, hurricane Ike has passed through and left us in good shape. Sadly, many of our neighbors further south in Galveston, and east on the bay are in dire condition. Many of the coastal places I have mentioned in this blog are no longer there. As the news comes in, if one can see beyond the grandstanding of politicians, the picture is pretty bleak in many areas.

That day will be remembered for a long time. 38 miles further inland, we sat through the storm in my in-law's house since my zip code was in a mandatory evacuation zone. We're under curfew here from dusk to dawn, but our power is on after a few surges during the day. The boards are down off the windows and most of the yard is cleaned up. The after-action photo is happily not dramatic, just some downed branches in my tree and a lot of missing leaves on the trees behind us. We lost our fence in the back and on the sides. We also lost a lot of shingles and will probably need a new roof or a fairly extensive repair. We sustained 100 mph winds here with gusts a little more according to the radio that reported official wind speeds at Hobby Airport and Ellington Field. We were in the eye wall for an hour and a half or so since we didn't get the eye directly, it began a dramatic sweep north eastward just as the eye was moving over Clear Lake. It was an anxious night, but compared to what I remember about Hurricane Alicia, a similar strength hurricane but a smaller and more compact storm, Ike was very different. While I recall Alicia being a steady howl and rumble like a freight train, Ike was a more temperamental storm full of pounding gusts that came out of nowhere.

Here's the non-dramatic "after-Ike" photo.

During the day of the storm, we left the house at noon and were at our inlaw's by noon fifteen. We watched the news, ate a fantastic meal, and watched the sky present a marvelous salmon glow as the sun went down. Winds were already high and the storm surge had already overtaken much of Galveston. While we were watching the waves crash into all of our favorite places along the seawall on TV, we witnessed the 61st street fishing pier collapse among the huge waves.

Sadly, Galveston Island is going to be uninhabitable for a while by all but the most dogged self-reliant people, and even then they are risking disease and unsanitary conditions. Bolivar peninsula is said to be 90 percent destroyed and the land itself is greatly reshaped. Rollover pass was scoured and the bridge over the pass washed out. The west end of Galveston Island suffered greatly and all of Galveston proper was flooded by storm surge to withing six blocks of the sea wall. The old landmark piers and old gambling houses over the surf are gone, and rubble and debris are everywhere. We have not heard what has become of Seawolf Park or Pelican Island. We know they were underwater. We saw raw video feed from a flyover of both Bolivar and San Luis Pass - the pass beaches are much reshaped, the pass channels will have certainly been re-cut. The west end of the island, where developers have virtually ruined a pristine barrier island, is a wreck. Galveston Island will be recovering for a very long time.

Currently the news about what is really going on in the hardest hit places is carefully guarded by the authorities who are acting as if the only hope is government management. There is a degree of need for the government here, since the infrastructure is ruined and disease is a real threat. Yet news is scarce. The majority of the information about Galveston and Bolivar are stories about the FEMA efforts to feed and move everyone, the messianic government coming to save people, and politicians speaking promises and saying little of any great value. Real news is parsed out over time as it becomes "necessary" to inform, such as what is going on with the water, natural gas, and sewage systems. The real news is out there if one searches the internet carefully enough, and is bleak. Real news would keep more people away from the island and safe, I believe, than some grandstanding congress person who 'encourages you not to come to the island yet'.