The Recovery

We have been back for a couple of weeks now. Superficially, everything seems normal. There's just this awareness that not all is right with the world. One begins to realize there are subtle differences post storm. There is more sunlight in some places than there was a month ago. Store signs are missing letters or are dangling at some angle. News coverage is on to other things, but the effects of the cyclone are still being felt by many.

Damage locally is being repaired. However, we can go to Surfside ten miles away and see some pretty amazing sights. Streets and roads are washed out, and, regrettably, there is severe damage to some homes. All in all, they escaped the harsher fate of Galveston 50 miles to the north. However, if it's your home that's beat up, it doesn't matter.

There are lots of volunteer opportunities, and I plan to do my bit when possible. One of the big problems is that many houses, all of which are elevated on pilings, need exterior staircases. The homes survived with little or no damage, but the storm surge took out the stairs and folks can't get back in.

Here's a few pictures of Surfside that were sent to me.

View of Surfside on Saturday morning
after Ike made landfall.

Stacy, Alex, Hutch, and I drove around last Saturday. There are several homes that were subjected to lots of sand erosion. Their foundations were simply undermined and they have settled at odd angles. You can see some of that in the building directly above. It's a public pavilion. You can see the broken roof due to the part of the structure that as settled in the water. There's the bits of people's lives still scattered about: a boat sitting on dry land next to the Intercoastal Canal, golf carts washed from underneath a house are sitting in a vacant lot, refrigeration equipment from a restaurant sitting outside under a tarp.

There is a road that parallels the beach, running from Surfside to Galveston and crossing the San Luis pass where Galveston Bay connects to the Gulf of Mexico This is where the eye made landfall. It has been so damaged that it is impassable. Several lengthy stretches are simply gone. Residents of a small community at the extreme northeast end are basically cut off from us. Estimates are that it will take about $100 million to rebuild it to today's standards.

In the end, we dodged a bullet. Only a relative few are having major problems while our neighbors up the coast are facing monumental challenges. This will take years to build everything anew.

I suppose to those who live elsewhere it may seem strange that we would stay here in the first place with the knowledge that all our material possessions could be blown away in any given hurricane season. I don't relish the potential much myself. Put the heat and humidity of the Gulf Coast and the tabletop flat land in the mix, and it really seems outlandish to live here. But it's just home.