Business finally took me onto Galveston Island yesterday, and it was even worse than anything I could have possibly expected. Man, and I thought Seabrook was bad (it is). My appointment was west of Jamaica beach, about 16 miles west of FM 3005 on the island. Getting to where I had to go meant getting through two police checkpoints. Unless you're a resident, you just can't drive past the seawall onto the west end of the island.
I've lived and worked in three different war zones, and I've never seen anything that compares to what I saw on Galveston Island. It's not just a few damaged buildings, it's that virtually every house on the ocean side of the island was damaged, some more than others. I've seen what war can do, and I'm here to tell you that no war zone I've seen looked anything worse that what I saw yesterday.
Granted most of the damage was done to beach houses, which in most cases are secondary residences. This helps to account for why so few people could be found on the island's west end yesterday. Still, losing a home, whether it's our primary residence or a weekend beach house, isn't an easy thing to have to deal with. Some of the newer homes sustained damage while remaining repairable, but some of the older ones? Well, in some cases there's just not much left.
I'll be seeing more of Galveston tomorrow, and there likely will be pictures to share. They'll say more than I ever could about what happened there. In the meantime, there are a few photos after the jump...and these just barely scratch the surface.
BTW, the death toll is now up to 32...and this number will undoubtedly continue to climb.
