Hurricane Alicia: 20 years ago today
Twenty years ago today, Hurricane Alicia slammed ashore on Galveston Island, not so very far from where yours truly now lives. Of course, I wasn't living here then, but I do remember watching the news reports and wondering WHY anyone would want to live in such a god-forsaken place that apparently doubled as a hurricane. Silly me....
Alicia struck land at San Luis Pass on the west end of Galveston Island at 1:40 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, 1983, with 130 mph winds. Tides that were 12 feet higher than normal soon washed away 75 to 100 feet of beach.
Some hours later, after taking a brief post-storm tour of Galveston, Gov. Mark White told reporters that it appeared to him that "every single dwelling has had some significant injury to it."
Galveston's four major hotels had to close so long for repairs that three big conventions had to be canceled (at an estimated loss to the local economy of $1.6 million).
The storm took down 2,300 utility poles and more than 600 miles of lines, putting three-quarters of a million people in the dark and without air conditioning or refrigeration. A quarter of a million were without phones. It would be months before services were fully restored.
In Galveston County alone, the reported cost of phone service repairs was $65 million, and some 158 miles of new main cable were required. It took until almost the end of the year to get all customers reconnected.
Destruction proved total for Baytown's 400-home Brownwood subdivision on a low-lying peninsula jutting into Galveston Bay with a nice view of the San Jacinto Monument. Built in the 1940s and '50s, it was flooded in 1961 by Hurricane Carla, and subsidence caused by excessive pumping of groundwater over the next couple of decades caused the land to lose about 10 feet of precious elevation.
By the '70s, people had nicknamed the subdivision "Submarine Acres." Alicia finished it. Brownwood is gone. Instead of the 400 houses that once occupied the peninsula, you now find Baytown Nature Center with wetlands and wildlife observation areas.
As the storm drove across the countryside, it took out 1,300 traffic signals, 3,000 highway signs and 1,000 billboards. That last number was roughly one-fourth of the total number of billboards along area roadways at the time. One outdoor advertising company official estimated industry property and profit losses would total $5 million.
The hurricane spawned 32 tornadoes that increased the damage toll. They were reported in Houston, Galveston, Pearland, Pasadena, South Houston and elsewhere.
The damage described is of a scale that I find impossible to comprehend. How can one make any logical sense of something of that order of magnitude? People who lived here when Alicia came through still talk about the hurricane with a tone in their voice that almost borders on reverence. Until the next "big one" comes through, Alicia is the gold standard against which all tropical storms in these parts will be measured. No one is in any hurry to see that standard replaced.
Having seen what a few much smaller and less powerful storms can do, I'm not sure I'd want to see the likes of Alicia, either. History repeating itself is seldom a good thing.
