Hurricane Ike: 2 Years Later

I know this is a blog primarily about the arrival of our little girl, but on this 2 year anniversary of Hurricane Ike, I’d like to take a minute to reflect on that.  It’s hard to believe it’s been 2 years since Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston.  Much has changed but much remains the same.  

I go swimming every morning in Texas City and this morning as I was driving back onto the island, I realized how different things looked from when I first drove back onto the island two weeks after Ike hit.  Oleanders and palm trees have been replanted and look beautiful.  There are no boats and debris in the roadway.  Businesses have reopened.  And many houses have been repaired and are livable once again.  But there are parts of town that still look as they did after Ike.  Our next-door-neighbor still has a tarp on her roof as her landlord continues to wait for a settlement with the insurance company.  Our old neighbor moved out because he couldn’t handle two years of a leaking roof.  While in UTMB the other day, I saw that the lower level was still primarily gutted, though the cafeteria was rebuilt and serving all kinds of delicious foods.

When we first returned after Ike we said, “It will take 10 years to rebuild Galveston!”  and in truth, it probably will.  But despite the devastation, the island is as beautiful as ever.  This summer the beaches were packed with people.  If you needed to be somewhere you didn’t dare drive down Seawall because of the traffic.  It may not be the same as it was prior to Hurricane Ike, but the people of Galveston are resilient.  

All you have to do is look at what happened after the 1900 Hurricane.  The 1900 Hurricane killed an estimated 10,000 people and is still the deadliest natural disaster to have hit the United States.  Instead of leaving, the survivors not only rebuilt their homes and their lives, they decided to build a 17 foot high seawall and to raise the island behind the seawall.  Thousands of buildings were elevated on stilts while mud from the Gulf was dredges in to raise the land.  This took years to accomplish and the people lived with the stink of mud and dead fish.  And they walked on elevated boards to get from their homes to town.   

Thanks to the hard work and sacrifices made by the survivors of the 1900 Hurricane, our house received minimal damage from Hurricane Ike.  Galveston is not a “dead city” as a recent article claims:  http://247wallst.com/2010/08/23/americas-ten-dead-cities-from-detroit-to-new-orleans/#ixzz0xWpN6cpe  but rather a city that continues to work hard to both preserve the past and built towards the future. Galveston is an amazing city and I’m proud to live here.  

Marmalade: our hurricane surviving cat.  Picture taken the April after the hurricane.