Yesterday marks one year since Hurricane Ike decimate the Houston-Galveston-Beaumont area. Four days later, I was on the ground in Houston with my employer's catastrophe response team. Having lived in Seabrook for ten years prior to returning to Portland a year earlier, I was better equipped to negotiate the carnage than most of my colleagues who came from far-flung parts of the country. As it turns out, I was far less equipped for the emotional toll the trip would take on me.
I spent the next two months in southeast Texas, finally returning home the day after Election Day. During my time there, I witnessed scenes of destruction and decimation unlike anything I'd ever seen before, and I've lived in three different war zones. Yes, there are pictures...lots and lots of pictures. When I first arrived, I wore out my camera. After all, I thought, this is a once in a lifetime event, and I wanted something to remember it by. As the weeks went by, though, I finally put my camera away. I began to feel rather ghoulish, as if my memories were being purchased with the suffering of others- and there was a LOT of suffering to go around.
A year later, I still find myself struggling to process what I saw and experienced. There simply are no words to adequately describe returning to my former hometown and seeing the devastation that so completely engulfed so many. Seabrook was not the hardest hit place, but the damage was severe nonetheless. Todville Road along the waterfront looked worse than anything I'd ever seen in Croatia during the war there. I had an appointment on a Sunday afternoon in a neighborhood near where I used to live, and I as I drove into the subdivision, I could see that every single house had a six-foot pile of salt water-soaked carpet, furniture, and other personal belongings on the curb. Once I finished with my business, I drove away to a quiet place, and then I pulled off to the side and cried. A year earlier, and I could well have been where they were. These were people that I saw at Kroger, at Blockbuster, and at the Post Office. Now everything they owned was ruined and piled curbside.
My former house (where my former wife still lives) was fortunate not to have sustained anything but comparatively minor damage. Go a block in either direction, though, and there were house where the storm sturge had reached four feet. A friend near Seabrook's sewage treatment plant had several feet of water and sewage in their home during the height of the storm. These weren't just horrific stories; these were friends and neighbors...and it hit home. Hard.
As I went to more far-flung areas, like Galveston, Anahuac, Oak Island, Winnie, and the Bolivar Peninsula, I saw damage even worse than what Seabrook sustained. Every day I was there, no matter where I went, I saw something that took my breath away. The severity and degree of devastation was awe-inspiring...until I remembered that the lives of thousands had been turned upside down by a storm that had lasted perhaps 12 hours. People kept telling me that I'd eventually get used to it, and that professional detachment would kick in. I kept waiting, but it never did. After two months, I was emotionally spent. On top of the emotional impact of trying to process what I saw and experienced, I felt guilty about returning to my home in Portland, where the street lights worked and the houses didn't smell of mold and sewage.
It's been a year now, and those two months are still with me. If I live to be 105 and never see anything like that again, I'll die a very happy man. As much as I hate Houston (and I truly do), I would never wish anything like Hurricane Ike and it's aftermath on anyone. Yes, things are looking up, and much has been repaired and restored. Houston itself has largely returned to what it was before Ike. The outlying less affluent areas in many cases still have a long ways to go, and some of those place may never be what they were before. More than anything, it makes me profoundly grateful that I live in a part of the country where an inch of rain is a significant weather event.
When I look back at where I was just a year ago, it's hard not to recognize that I'm a very fortunate person. Things could be a whole lot worse...because I've seen it.
