dallashistory

It has probably been near sixty years since I first heard of the 1900 Galveston huricane and when I mentioned it at dinner my father had some horrific family stories to tell. One of his aunts, a sister of his father, had lived in Galveston, and Dad heard about the storm from his cousins as a child. In the late 1940s then, I was hearing stories with two degrees of separation from the event.

Now, my wifes sister Susan lives in Houston and we are hearing first hand accounts in telephone calls. Really, it would have been just fine with us if there were a few more degrees of separation betwnn Ike and Susan.

I wonder how many on this message bosrd have family and friends near the coast.
[/b]

Many do, Bill--family and friends. We do ourselves--at Aransas Pass (as one example) near Rockport. 230 miles from Galveston but the surge there-- as of about 6 this morning- was 9 to 11 feet. The Corpus mayor is saying they seem to be ok and are now getting evacuees -even though much of that area has been evacuated and Corpus has no shelters.

All waiting for daylight.

I have some extended family down in Fort Bend County, off of HWY 6. Also, my company's main office is in N.W. Houston. Our Fort Worth office, Dallas office, and Arlington Survey office all set up special voice mails on formerly dead phone extensions for our Houston brethern to call and let us know how they're doing. I know some of our IT stayed behind to watch our servers and such. I know our e-mail server is dead. I tried to check it this weekend, and I keep getting one of those "webpage unavailable"deals. I should have swithced my personal e-mail to g-mail or something. So, I have no contact with my Joan Crawford board. I hope my fellow employees are ok, and my friend from the Joan Board is ok. Jack lived on the 16th floor of a condo tower. He remarked he was staying, and hopefully, he'd see Margaret Hamilton fly by as he watched the aftermath of Ike. Hamilton was the wicked with in the Wizard of Oz.

I've been keeping up with the damage down in Galveston, to see how the Moody Mansion faired. I just found out the former Balinese Room is gone with a majority of the other piers on Seawall BLVD.

My niece,her husband and 2 gr-nieces hunkered down in Katy at their house, a suburb just West of downtown Houston. It's on higher ground than most areas around Houston and about 60 miles inland from Galveston. They lost power almost as soon as the outer bands of Ike reached their area, hours before the eye made landfall.

I spent most of Saturday watching TXCN (Texas Cable News) because they had reporters and cameras in many different places, compared to the few places that the major cable TV places were showing.

I'm really saddened to see the Balinese, Pleasure Pier, Murdoch's, etc., gone. My parents took me along on the annual two week vacation to Galveston when I was just a toddler in the 1940s. I posted on the DHS site, I think, about boarding a late night train from Union Station in Dallas with my parents when I was very young. Windows of the train were open for air flow in the cars and it was cooler to travel at night in July-August. Return trip from Galveston was also a night train ride. (My dad worked for T&P, so we had passes. We didn't have a car then.)

Those trips continued until I was about 16 and was able to stay at home (with a grandmother staying over) while they took my little sister with them for the Galveston vacation. ...Of course the reason I was staying home is because of bad grades in the Spring, so I had to attend Summer school to make up some courses!!

I've been to Galveston many times since being married (#2) in 1970; staying in high rise places right on the beach on the East end and also in rented houses up on 15 ft. pilings on the West end. Also flew there on a company pass when working for TTA at Love Field and stayed for a long weekend back in 1964.

I'll really miss the restaurant out on the pier where I went on every trip to Galveston. I always (even when a little kid) got the broiled red snapper and it came with fries and hard crusted bread. The windows were open so I could feed the sea gulls by tossing out little bits of bread.

Wow. I apologize for the brain dump of memories. I'm just sad to see so much that I have experienced in person destroyed. I hope that Moody Gardens and the Bishop's Palace have faired well.

Fred

Susan lost power during the night the storm hit and got it back Sunday, and was therefore more fortunate than many. She lives in a 1920's era cottage north of downrtown Houston. She always has said it is a well built houese and I guess that is so. No flooding where she was.

To have been in Port Aransas sounds rough even at a distance from the center, and Galveston a lot worse.

Guys,

I had one brother in law down in Houston, who came through fine.

Only one customer in Galveston, who lost a roof.

Of course, the entire Dealey family was heavily involved in the 1900 Hurricane, including an Orphanage that GGGrandfather George Dealey founded.

But, we are ALL affected by Ike. Gas prices, of course, but also homeowners insurance and rebuilding costs. Most people do not realize how underinsured they now are. Since katrina and Rita (floods, tsunami's, mid-west tornados, etc.) rebuilding costs have sky-rocketed. Materials manufacturers have not had to offer discounts to anyone in over 2 years! There is such a shortage of materials, they can charge almost what they want, and still sell them. Add to this, the price of oil, and the fact that many of these materials are oil-based.

We are all within one degree of separation from the impacts of Ike. We will all be directly affected.

My sister-in-law was without power over the weekend, in Houston. Thankfully, she is back 'on the grid,' now, and the damage to her home and property was minimal.

I had been very concerned for my great-aunt, who lives in a nursing home in north-west Houston. Again -- very thankfully -- she and the others there came through fine .... although some people had been moved into her home from another which was left without power.

About six years ago, our family was considering moving to Port O'Connor near Matagorda Island. The lighthouse there has stood tall and strong for over 130 years, but the surrounding communities are ever-attuned to the possibility of a hurricane. Many of the houses in the area, of course, are constructed on stilts to prevent flooding.

Jerry, I don't know if you know this, but the Orphanage is/was for sale as a private home recently. It's HUGE!

Moody Gardens made it through fine; but just barely:

http://www.txcn.com/sharedcontent/dws/t ... 2e4d5.html

Not so the Lone Star Flight Museum next door; they flew the B-17, B-25, DC-3, P-47, F6F, F4U, SBD, PT-17, T-7 and F8F out of harms way, but the planes that were left behind sustained extensive water and wind damage:

http://www.lsfm.org/ikephotogallery.html

Galveston was one of our favorite places to visit; it is sad to see so many landmarks are now gone. However; some news reports talk like the island is flattened again; that of course is not the case.

Bolivar Penensula and points east certainly got hit the worst. We stayed at a cabin not far from Gilchrist a few years ago; looks like it is gone now.

We had a trip planned for many months to Branson, MO; and went ahead and left Friday the 12th. We let two couples from the our old church in Port Arthur stay at the house and watch over things while we were gone.

Ike came through Branson on Sunday night the 14th; and even that far north, it sounded bad. Lots of trees were knocked down; but it did not put a damper on our vacation.

The two couples went back last week to their home last week to find it amazingly intact. They still had roof damage from Rita; but no water came in from above or below. Some trees were down; but they needed to come down anyway; Ike saved them some work. Across Sabine Lake, however, Bridge City was flooded; it was so sad to see some of the places we ate at or drove by under 2-3 feet of water. Can only imagine what Sabine Pass looks like; whatever was restored from Rita was probably wiped out by Ike.

Haven't seen the home church yet; but the new church that was built in a day in Nederland just a year or two ago appears to have some roof and wall damage. Am waiting to hear more news from the area from old friends.

When we decided to move north after Rita; I questioned our move many times; but with Gustav and Ike, have no regrets.

JOHN FINLEY wrote:Jerry, I don't know if you know this, but the Orphanage is/was for sale as a private home recently. It's HUGE!

John,

Yep. Pretty large. Here is a photo of it after the 1900 Galveston Hurricane.

http://catalog.dallaslibrary.org/Repository/pa84-3-42A.jpg

Galveston RR Museum photos:

http://www.galvestonrrmuseum.com/grrm_082.htm

Post Ike report on the Strand in Galveston, from one of the Yahoo groups I belong to.

from the Houston Chronicle

Galveston Historical Foundation Announces a Preliminary Assessment of
Damage to its Historic Properties after Hurricane Ike.

The Galveston Historical Foundation (GHF) announced today a
preliminary assessment of the damage to its historic properties due
to Hurricane Ike.

"The news is serious, but certainly not as bad as we feared," said
GHF executive director Dwayne Jones, speaking from the foundation's
temporary headquarters in the offices of Preservation Texas in
Austin. "Most importantly, of course, all our people came through
without injury. As for the properties, some fared better than others."

First reports from the scene indicate the following:

* The 1861 U. S. Custom House, GHF's headquarters, was flooded by as
much as 8 feet of water, causing damage to files, archives,
equipment, systems and inventory. Structural damage seems to be
limited to an upstairs door onto the gallery, although the extent of
roof damage if any is not yet known.

* The 1877 tall ship Elissa, restored by GHF in 1982 and a proud
symbol of Galveston, seems to have ridden out the storm with little
damage beyond the loss of several of her sails. Large steel piles
driven deeply in to the harbor bottom allow the vessel to remain
attached to the shore even beyond the estimated 18 foot rise of water
on Friday.

* The Texas Seaport Museum at pier 22, Elissa's home berth, did not
do as well, suffering considerable damage to the brick and wooden
pier structure, and a suspected total loss of the wooden workshops
which serve the maintenance needs of the ship. The Seaport Museum
itself, in the 1990 Jones Building, is suffered little damage.

* The 1857 Italianate mansion Ashton Villa at 24th and Broadway lost
two to three windows on the second floor, and had as much as 18
inches of flooding on the first. Damage to furniture on the first
floor and windowless parts of the second floor must be extensive.

* The 1889 Gresham House at 14th and Broadway, known as the Bishop's
Palace and the most visited historic attraction on the island, seems
to have weathered the storm with little damage, as it did during the
Great Storm of 1900.

The bottom floor of the building, which contains offices, a ticket
counter, and has been in the process of renovation as a visitors
center, is actually a little below grade. It was subject to as much
as three feet of flooding.

* The city's two oldest residential houses, the 1837 Michel B. Menard
House and the 1839 Samuel May Williams House, suffered surprisingly
little visible damage.

* The wooden 1859 St Joseph's Church building, the state' oldest
German Catholic Church lost one window, but was otherwise undamaged.
Its wooden steeple, somewhat truncated in the 1900 storm, still stands.

Damage to the contents of the foundation's warehouse on Mechanic
Street was extensive, as it was inundated with at least 10 feet of
active water. Most of the physical equipment used during Dickens on
The Strand, the foundation's popular holiday festival, was destroyed.
The foundation's Salvage Warehouse at the Sealy Garage building
suffered window damage and flooding of several feet.

From the houston architecture forum I'm a member of, someone from the Moody Mansion said that their basement was flooded too, and they had a few broken windows too. SO, they had the exact same damage as the Bishop's palace.... I was hoping to visit the house next year, because the Moody Mansion is having an exhibit on the architecural treasures that's left from the previous Moody Mansion. The current MM wasn't bought by the Moody's until after the 1900 Hurrican, only by a few months. I think the old MM was torn down for a school, and was close to the old Orhpans Home.

Could a levee save the island?

By T.J. Aulds
The Daily News
Published October 26, 2008

In the late 1970s, Army engineers foresaw a storm that so closely resembled Hurricane Ike their description of it reads like a premonition.

They described in detail how storm surge from Galveston Bay could cause catastrophic damage to downtown Galveston and other areas along the harbor.

They also described in detail how to prevent that damage.

Hurricane Ike, which came ashore Sept. 13, swamped Galveston’s downtown business district with water as much as 13 feet deep.

The University of Texas Medical Branch was shut down because 750,000 square feet in 84 campus buildings flooded.

Bolivar Peninsula looked like it had been bombed. The communities of Bacliff, San Leon and Kemah were wrecked by the storm surge.

In the middle of all the destruction, Texas City came through with little damage and almost no flooding. That’s because it was ringed by a levee system — the same kind of system that engineers recommended for Galveston almost 30 years ago.

A ‘Wake-up Call’

Construction on the Texas City levee system started after Hurricane Carla flooded the heart of the Galveston County mainland, which is home to some of the nation’s largest the petrochemical plants.

“Carla was the real wake-up call after all the plants flooded,” Galveston County Engineer Mike Fitzgerald said.

With 15.7 miles of earthen levees as high as 23 feet, 1.3 miles of concrete walls 20 feet high, three large pump stations and a flood gate, the system has withstood every storm since 1961.

And while the levee system sustained about $2 million in damage and significant erosion during Hurricane Ike, Fitzgerald and emergency management officials praised its performance.

At its peak, storm surge came within 2 of feet of topping the levee near Dollar Point, a few miles north of the Texas City Dike. The levee is 23 feet high there, Fitzgerald said. The storm surge reached 21 feet.

The surge tore away some riprap, rocks buried at the base of the levee, and tossed them halfway up the earthen berm at several points. The surge also caused as much as 12 feet of erosion.

Inspiring Confidence

Hurricane Ike did not damage levee system improvements begun in 2006 as a result of a comprehensive study after Hurricane Katrina, Fitzgerald said.

That includes repair work on the Moses Lake floodgate, which was interrupted but has resumed.

Still, the damage did not compromise the integrity of the system, which also protects much of La Marque.

Without the levee system, much of Texas City, including an estimated $4.6 billion in oil refineries, chemical plants and other petrochemical service facilities, would have been at risk.

“It performed with flying colors,” said Bruce Clawson, director of Homeland Security for Texas City. “We were confident going in that the levees would hold. There wasn’t any flooding within the city because of the system.”

Can You Spare $94 million?

Fitzgerald said Galveston would likely also have been spared as much as 90 percent of the flood damage it sustained had county and city leaders adopted recommendations outlined in a 1979 U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study.

As part of a Texas Coast Hurricane Study, the corps recommended building a ring levee system stretching from the ends of the Galveston seawall north and a ring along Harborside Drive.

The 12.5-mile system would have been as high as 19 feet and would have include three pump stations to send floodwater out of the city and into the bay, protecting about 8,000 acres — 12 or so square miles.

The cost in 1979 dollars?

“It would have cost $94 million,” said Fitzgerald. “With a benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.4.”

That means that for every dollar spent, the system in 1979 would have protected almost two and half times as much in property from flooding.

Fitzgerald insists that had the corps’ recommendations been followed, the widespread flooding of downtown Galveston, the areas between Harborside Drive and Broadway and the $700 million in damage, lost revenue and other Ike-related expenses for the medical branch would have been greatly reduced, perhaps prevented.

“UTMB would be open today if we had that system in place,” Fitzgerald said. “Ninety percent of the flooding would not have been there.”

Little Local Support

Fitzgerald was able to salvage the report from his Ike-flooded offices at the county courthouse. The report was the culmination of a 12-year, multimillion dollar study of hurricane risk on the Texas Coast.

It includes recommendations for an even more extensive flood protection system that would have continued north along the shores of Galveston Bay to La Porte.

The more extensive levee system was estimated to have cost $250 million in 1979 — in addition to the $94 million for Galveston levees.

Ring-type protection systems for Galveston had been studied as early as 1962, but met with little local support, according to the 1979 report.

Instead, Galveston County commissioners pushed for a six-mile extension of the seawall. The Corps of Engineers insisted that would not be enough to protect the island, and its report outlined what Galveston might see if it were hit by a hurricane eerily similar to Ike.

Counting Costs

“Extending the seawall would only afford protection to approximately a 2,000-foot strip of land immediately behind the extension,” the corps reported. “That portion of the island beyond the 2,000-foot strip would be subjected to wave attack from the bay after the storm center crosses the island from which a seawall would offer no protection.”

The bay side of Galveston flooded well before Hurricane Ike made landfall. The back surge from the storm flooded the island’s downtown business district with as much as 13 feet of water.

Even the plan to extend the seawall was abandoned.

“Estimated costs were developed for a 6-mile seawall extension for both a concrete seawall structure and a riprap-protected earthen levee,” the report says. “There was no support for the 6-mile extension plan at the meeting nor in subsequent correspondence; therefore, further studies for the 6-mile length were terminated.”

‘Worst Possible Impact’

Arthur Janecka was one of the engineers who compiled the report. Now deputy district engineer for project management in the corps’ Galveston office, he had just joined the corps in the winter of 1965, about the time study had begun.

“The study was sanctioned because of Carla — that was the whole reason for it,” Janecka said. “Of course, Carla told us volumes of what would happen. What we were looking for in this case was that it had a favorable cost-to-benefit ratio.”

The study involved as many as 12 engineers and outside experts in real estate, structural engineering and construction.

“We were trying to figure the worst possible conditions and worst possible impact,” Janecka said.

It also included groundbreaking mathematical models that predicted storm flow, as surge was called then.

Using a grid system, Janecka and the team mapped where the water from a storm would flow to try to predict surge scenarios. Using the 1900 and 1915 storms, as well as Hurricane Carla, as guides, the team was able to build mathematical models.

As it turns out, those models were the precursors to models the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center use to map storm surge scenarios today.

“They are far more advanced today, of course, but no one had really done them before we did,” Janecka said.

Sticker Shock

Despite strong backing of Galveston’s congressman, Jack Brooks, then chairman of the House Committee on Government Operations, the corps’ recommendations met plenty of resistance.

Part of the struggle came because a local government — the county commissioners or the city of Galveston — would have had to agree to pay 30 percent of the cost. An estimated $120,000 annual maintenance budget also was a sticking point.

“Detailed planning for both the La Porte-Texas City and Galveston elements of this plan was suspended because of the lack of local support and the inability to identify a local sponsoring agency,” the final report stated.

“Assuming the local interests would be required to contribute the minimum of 30 percent of the total costs, this amount is beyond the financial capability of most local sponsoring agencies.”

The biggest objection, though, came from those who thought the system would impede development.

“When we were having those public meetings, the ($94 million) price tag was staggering,” Janecka said. “Plus, a lot of people didn’t want to look out their door and see a wall in front of them or a levee in front of them.

“A lot of businesses also saw a loss of business. We had congressional interest. We just didn’t have much interest from the citizenry at the time.”

The corps also wasn’t there to push any proposal on anyone.

“Salesmen we are not,” Janecka said. “Local people have to be sold on it. From the corps’ standpoint, the local people have to go ask for the project — then Congress provides the money, and we execute.”

Without local support, the report was shelved until Fitzgerald pulled it from the dampness of his office a few weeks after Hurricane Ike.

Another Wake-up Call?

With the exception of brief discussions about the report shortly after Hurricane Alicia struck the area in 1983, Fitzgerald said there has been no further discussion about the subject — until now.

“If that money had been spent 30 years ago, there’s no telling how much better off we would be today,” County Commissioner Stephen Holmes said.

“We should go ahead with a feasibility study, at the very least. I want to get the ball rolling on this.”

With Hurricane Ike’s devastation fresh in everyone’s minds, now is the time to explore options to protect the areas most damaged, Holmes said.

“I’ve seen those surge models before, and even after seeing a graphic presentation of what could happen, you still say, ‘No way this would happen.’ But it did,” Holmes said.

“What a storm does like this is make me appreciate the accomplishments of Galveston after the 1900 Storm.”

It was that storm at the turn of the last century that convinced local leaders to raise the island, using dredge material, and to build the seawall. Holmes and Fitzgerald say it might be time again to think on the same scale for the entire county.

Better Protection

Fitzgerald used the 1979 study as the basis of a rough plan for constructing a similar ring-type system around Galveston, but one that would use 20-foot-high concrete walls instead of levees and a series of pump stations.

Fitzgerald estimated that such a system would cost $800 million to build today. He had not estimated how much annual maintenance would cost.

“You look at the damage (Ike) did to UTMB alone, what’s that — $700 million?” he asked.

He said he hoped the success of the Texas City levee system would serve as a catalyst to study ways to better protect Galveston and beyond.

Holmes agreed: “We need to look at our entire system,” he said.

“Improve the Texas City system, look at what we could do to protect those areas to the north. I can’t help but believe we need to put this on the front burner. It’s not a question of if, but a question of when we get another storm.”

My family paid our first visit to the Beaumont/ Port Arthur area since Ike. It has been five months since Ike hit; but we started seeing the first roofs with blue tarps as far north as the Grapeland, Texas area. Unlike Rita, however, the damage did not look progressively worst as we moved further south; the winds were not as strong, and the area has had five months to clean up.

While the winds in this part of the country was not as strong, the storm surge was much worst. The levee system protected Port Arthur and other communities, but those outside the levee system were swamped with several feet of water. I was told that Hwy 87 from Port Arthur to Winnie was buried in debris starting at the floodgate doors; it took several months to clean it all up.

One of the communities hardest hit was Bridge City. It is open to Sabine Lake; and the storm surge was driven by the winds all the way up the Sabine River, to flood Bridge City with four feet of water. It was probably not much better off than some parts of New Orleans post-Katrina.

I drove through Bridge City on a side trip I made to Lafayette. I expected to see the utter destruction you hear about in New Orleans; with many homes and businesses abandoned and awaiting repair and demolition.

Imagine my shock when I was greated with a new Bridge City. Much of the town has been restored; and new stores and buildings have risen up to replace those that were torn down. There are still buildings that have been abandoned and are awaiting demolition or rebuilding; but they are amazingly few and far between. (My wife also saw several homes for sale in Bridge City that had the sheetrock and other materials removed to the four foot level, but needed to be finished out again.)

But the bounce back that small town has made left me in total awe. There were billboards by the local bank; advertising to help out with the rebuilding. You would think the downturn the economy has taken in the past few months would have slowed things down further; but you wouldn't know it driving through town.

Why such a different picture from New Orleans? There are probably many reasons, such as a better response from national, state, and local officials. But, I think it also says alot about Texas -- I think we as a state are used to getting up when the horse has thrown you, and getting back on again; without any help. We don't stand around waiting for the government to help us; we take care of ourselves and our own.

We didn't drive down Crystal Beach to Bolivar Point, or to Sabine Pass. We were told that the town of Sabine Pass is apparently being told to take a page from Galveston's book, and raise the whole city above flood stage. The bridge over the canal at Rollover Pass has been restored; but they didn't know if the Galveston Ferries were running again. No news on Galveston itself, either.

Amazing James! Thanks for the update 'cause how soon we forget--out of sight out of mind.

Another survivor of both Rita and Ike - the remains of Mary Allen College on Hwy 287 in Crockett, Texas. With the large birds flying around the ruins; it is one of the creepiest places I have seen in person. Yet, it's massive walls have outlived buildings much it's junior. A hopefull sign declaring it to be the Mary Allen Museum still leans against it on the left; and the old Mary Allen College sign is still by the street.



(If the above picture doesn't display; try the link at:

http://www.bighugelabs.com/flickr/onbla ... size=large )

EDIT: from the March 2008 City Council minutes:

CONSIDER AND APPROVE RESOLUTION OF THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CROCKETT, TEXAS, SUPPORTING THE MARY ALLEN MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART AND HISTORY, INC. EFFORTS TO RAISE GRANT FUNDS TO RENOVATE AND OPERATE THE HISTORIC MARY ALLEN COLLEGE BUILDING LOCATED WITHIN THE CITY LIMITS OF CROCKETT; AUTHORIZING THE MAYOR TO CONVEY THE CITY’S SUPPORT AND TO PERMIT THE MAYOR’S PARTICIPATION IN THIS COLLABORATIVE EFFORT; PROVIDING FINDINGS OF FACT AND PROVIDING FOR AN EFFECTIVE DATE
Mayor Pro Tem Holcomb made a motion to approve Resolution of supporting the Mary Allen Museum of African American Art and History, Inc. efforts to raise grant funds to renovate and operate the historic Mary Allen College building located within the city limits of Crockett; authorizing the mayor to convey the City’s support and to permit the mayor’s participation in this collaborative effort; providing findings of fact and providing for an effective date. Council member Jones seconded the motion. Motion passes 5-0.

Galveston still hurting from hurricane’s beating
8½ months after Ike slammed Texas, island city struggles to recover

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30951045/

The beaches of Galveston, Texas, were packed for Memorial Day.

“There’s new sand. There’s people everywhere. Everybody’s happy. Beach looks beautiful,” said Leann Payne of Baytown, Texas, one of an estimated 250,000 holiday visitors to Galveston, a sliver of an island just off the coast. “Couldn’t ask for anything better.”

In fact, you could.

As officials prepare for the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Monday, residents of Galveston and other coastal areas of Texas are still a long way from getting back on their feet from Hurricane Ike, which pummeled the state on Sept. 13.

“Many of the most severely impacted communities may face years of recovery before they can even begin to see their communities made whole again,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency said in its official impact report three months after the storm.

Ike caused $11 billion of damage on Texas’ coast, FEMA estimated, and more than $8 billion more in neighboring Gulf states, making it the third most destructive hurricane in U.S. history. It was so ruinous that the World Meteorological Organization, which decides such things, retired its name.

Hurricane names rotate every six years, but there will never be another Hurricane Ike. One was more than enough.

It has been 8½ months since Ike hit, but FEMA is still shuttling coastal families back and forth between temporary homes, and officials are still trying to identify all of the 37 people believed to have died in the state — four of the last five bodies were identified last week through DNA testing, The Houston Chronicle reported.

Along the Texas Gulf Coast, people remain jittery. In a survey released last month by CPL. Retail Energy, one of the state’s largest power providers, 62 percent of residents said they did not believe they were prepared for another major hurricane.

Galveston at the center of the storm
Galveston, where Ike made landfall, was hardest hit, suffering nearly $3 billion of the state’s toll. And it is there that the recovery has been most painful.

The last of the state and federal recovery centers on Galveston and Pelican Islands, which make up the city, didn’t close until April. Reconstruction of the city’s seawall still hasn’t been completed, and only one of its fishing piers is usable.

Eighteen teachers were laid off from Ball High School as part of the Galveston Independent School District’s restructuring after enrollment fell by 22 percent in Ike's wake. Now the high school struggles with a severe teacher shortage, because on some days, nearly a fifth of its 150 teachers are absent as they rebuild and move, Superintendent Lynne Cleveland said.

Finding substitute teachers “is a struggle,” said Lisa Schweitzer, a teacher who took 10 days off this school year to move out of and then back into her home.

“Subs are also in the same place we are, and so many people don’t live here on the island anymore,” she said.

Classrooms have doubled and tripled up, and sometimes more than 600 students are crammed into the auditorium, said Dean Blair, the school’s principal. On a few occasions, the school has resorted to showing classes informational films or episodes of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.”

The city's economy, which is based on an $800 million tourism industry and the University of Texas Medical Branch, its largest employer, also is reeling. Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas said 47 percent of the city’s tax base was in the hardest-hit west end of the island, and she predicted that it would take five years to build it back up.

Damage to the medical center also curtailed health care in the region. The main hospital still has fewer than half the beds it did before the storm, and its emergency room remains closed.


Beach rebuilding boosts tourism
The quarter-million Memorial Day visitors equaled the number of tourists for the holiday a year ago, rewarding officials’ decision to ship in new sand to rebuild beaches along 2½ miles of the 6-mile stretch of shoreline that Ike eroded by more than 50 feet.

“I was actually expecting less but, wow, it’s beautiful,” said Claudia Holloway of Houston, a tourist who returned for the first time since the hurricane. “We love it. And we’re coming back again.”

The turnout was “a good barometer of what the balance of the summer will bring to the island as far as tourism is concerned,” said Lou Muller, executive director of the Galveston Park Board of Trustees.

But in the longer term, FEMA's impact report said, “the double jeopardy of Ike and the general economic slowdown do not bode well for the tourism industry.”

Overall economic data will not be available until next month, but one key measure — business at hotels — indicates that far fewer people are visiting for more than just a day trip.

Quarterly tax reports on file with the state comptroller’s office show that the city’s hotels registered $12.6 million in taxable receipts in the last three months of 2008, down by 30 percent from the same period the year before.

Thanks to displaced residents and out-of-town contractors rebuilding the city, receipts rebounded in the first three months of this year, the last period for which figures were available. But even with that temporary influx, 19 percent of the city’s hotels with 10 or more rooms reported about $1,000 or less in taxable receipts from January through March.

Medical center damage cripples health care
The University of Texas Medical Branch is an even bigger concern.

Besides being “the economic engine for the city of Galveston,” according to Mayor Thomas, as well as Texas’ largest provider of indigent care and a world-renowned center of biomedical research, it was the primary care center for Galveston and surrounding Galveston County before the storm.

But it “took an enormous hit from Hurricane Ike,” said Joan Haun, the state coordinating officer for FEMA assistance.

Its blood bank, pharmacy and radiology department were destroyed. Overall, it suffered more than $1.3 billion in losses, only $100 million of which was insured, a state audit found in late April. The medical center finally reopened on Jan. 5.

Before Ike, it employed more than 12,500 people and supported about 7,000 other jobs in the region, according to the University of Texas System, which estimated last year that it contributed about $250 million a year to the Galveston economy and more than $600 million across Southeast Texas.

But Ike closed John Sealy Hospital, the general public facility. Because patient care generated 59 percent of the center’s revenue, it couldn’t meet its payroll, and in November, it laid off a fifth of its workforce — more than 2,400 people. Nearly 600 more employees left on their own.

“Downsizing has added to the economic loss” in Galveston, said the Houston-Galveston Area Council, a coalition of local governments. The “layoffs have a direct economic impact but also affect Galveston businesses that serve the workforce and that are already struggling to recover from Ike.”

Sealy Hospital has since reopened, but with fewer than half its previous number of beds, and in place of its emergency room, it operates an urgent care clinic, where patients are treated and released or transferred to other hospitals.

Besides bogging down the local economy, the downsizing of the hospital after Ike has “created a significant crisis” in health care, the Galveston County Health District said in its annual report.

Ambulances now travel an average of 34 minutes to other hospitals, compared with an average 6-minute trip to Sealy before Ike. Critical trauma patients are flown off the island by helicopter.

The hospital says it hopes to have its emergency room open by late summer, but “it is not possible to foresee the future of it, or the health care system, in Galveston County in the near future,” the health district report concluded.

Anniversary planning under way
The City Council recently approved a 42-project proposal drawn up by a long-term recovery committee the city created after the storm, with a goal of “making Galveston a livable community once again.” The proposals would affect virtually every one of the residents, involving projects to improve economic development and repair the environment, housing, human services, infrastructure and transportation.

“There are many ‘legs’ to recovery,” Betty Massey, head of the committee, told the City Council. “Hurricane Ike’s winds and water played havoc with every aspect of life in Galveston.”

This next step comes this week. Thursday, the committee plans a meeting to figure out how to mark the anniversary of Ike.

It’s just three months away.

Two weekends ago, we went to Galveston Island; our first trip back as a family since Hurricane Ike tore up the island. We also rode the ferry across, and took a quick look at Bolivar pennisula.

We immediately noticed, like Clyde, the absence of the oak trees. The island looks so open now; you can see vistas you couldn't see before. I noticed the old steam compresses still sitting out in the open, and Moody Compress looked surprisingly unscathed. The badly damaged Flagship Hotel on piers off of the seawall is still standing, but awaiting demolition; they are rebuilding Murdoch's next door.

The ferry ride across was rough, one of the roughest I can remember. Tall waves, and high winds in mid-channel. But dolphins played in the bow waves of our ferry and a ship we passed, and I was reminded of that ferry crossing I made with a friend from England when a wave completely washed over his rental car.

No-one else may have noticed, but there used to be a line of fishing shacks next to the ferry landing on Bolivar that included an old caboose. All are gone now; just a few pilings remain. You are now greeted on the island by a yard full of cars and other stuff that was abandoned and destroyed by the hurricane, being crushed on site and hauled away. But the Point Bolivar Lighthouse continues to shine it's light of hope, as it did in times past.

There were more houses standing on Bolivar than I would have expected. Some might have been rebuilt; you could see pilings here and there where a cabin used to be.

We are planning to go back for Dickens on the Strand in December. The Railroad Museum on the island will probably still be closed, but the rest of the festivies go on. I am once again reminded of when my friend from England came with us to a previous Dickens, and watched us silly Texans acting like Victorian Englishmen.