Houston Chronicle...Galveston Daily News...Beaumont Enterprise
KHOU- Channel 11...KTRK- Channel 13...KPRC- Channel 2...KRIV- Fox 26
Hurricane Ike pictures from the Galveston Daily News
Hurricane Ike slideshow from Yahoo! News
I've made no secret of my antipathy for southeast Texas, but not even I would have wished something like this on the area. While the plight of millions in southeast Texas will increasingly disappear from the attention of the mainstream media over the next few days, it will be weeks and months before life along the Texas Gulf Coast returns to anything resembling normal.
Seabrook is apparently still cut off- something about ruptured sewer and gas lines- and there seems to be no clear idea of when residents will be allowed to return home. Residents of Galvestion Island may have it even worse. Parts of the new causeway leading onto the island from the Texas mainland have been compromised, though exactly what that means for the short- and long-term remains to be seen. The city's 17' seawall saved the city from a fate such as the 1900 storm, when more than 8,000 Galveston residents were killed. The island's west end, which doesn't have the benefit of a seawall, was not so fortunate, though. Large numbers, perhaps a majority, of beach houses on the west end were severely damaged, perhaps even destroyed completely.
I've been through tropical storms and hurricanes before. If you live along the Gulf Coast for any length of time, you learn to live with that reality. Nothing I've ever experienced begins to approach the damage and the devastation I'm seeing and hearing about from my former home. My heart breaks for those I left behind, because some of these folks may no longer have a home.
Southeast Texas will drop of the media's radar within a few days, but the recovery will take far longer. In some cases, it may never be complete, but people along the Texas Gulf Coast will figure out a way to put things back together...and if I have anything to say about it, I'll figure out a way to get there to help out.
