Blown Over: Galveston and Texas Gulf Coast Struggle After Hurricane Ike

"It's already a problem. I know a family that had to rescue a mom who used to be a pillar of the church—now she's over in a casino in Louisiana calling them in the middle of the night asking them to send her money."

But Johnson's anger and heartbreak are not directed solely at those she sees as doing harm to her community. "We were not organized before the storm," she says. "We were just too damned dependent. I don't know. One of the principles of Kwanzaa is kujichagulia, which means self-determination. I worry that for us, it's too late for that."

Daniel Kramer

Marie Creasy rode out the storm on the seawall in the Poop Deck bar. Her friend Jacqueline Harris evacuated all of one block away.

Daniel Kramer

Social worker Dee Dee Gregoire was one of 3,000 recently "RIF'd" by UTMB.

Details

Ike's Wake: A video and photo tour of Galveston after the storm.

Related Content

• Lessons of the West Explosion: Government Regulation Bad; Government Money Good
  May 10, 2013
• Five Events for the Week, Oktoberfest, Beer, Two Sticks of Buttah and a Bowl of Gumbo
  September 19, 2012
• Texas Parks & Wildlife Department Has Found No Takers For Corporate Sponsor Program
  February 1, 2013
• The Power of Lobbying: Trinity Levees Are Unsafe SUPER Safe, the Corps Says Now
  June 12, 2012
• Three Years After Ike, the Shrimp and Fish are Still Frying on Galveston
  July 6, 2011

More About

• Hurricane Ike
• Galveston
• Marie Creasy
• Jim Vratis
• Hurricane Katrina

Fred Niccum

When he was hired as the director of facilities and maintenance with the Galveston Independent School District, there was nothing in Fred Niccum's job description about running and maintaining a shelter of last resort for 400 hurricane victims of all ages and their pets. Nevertheless, that's just what GISD's director of facilities and maintenance had to do.

Long after most of his staff had already left the island, emergency managers decreed that Ball High School would have to serve as the city's primary shelter—Galveston's answer to the Superdome. Niccum and his wife and a number of bus drivers and custodians staffed the facility.

"With the good help of a number of very focused people, we were able to get that shelter up and running and keep it going through the 14th," Niccum says, pride glinting in his eye.

Immediately after that, Niccum was charged with assessing all the schools in GISD. By the 16th, he had undertaken an in-depth review of all 12 of Galveston's schools. While making his assessment, Niccum saw as much of the damage firsthand as many of the first responders. "It was very eerie for the first 48 hours," he says. "There was no electricity and very few cars were moving, while many more people were walking the streets. All the while I was trying to assess these schools and find out what I could do to get these schools back on track."

Post-Ike Galveston is that rare place where most kids love going to school. "You can see it in their faces and hear it in their little voices—the excitement they have when they talk about what they did and who they stayed with the night of the hurricane," Niccum says. "Their stories are pretty touching, because these kids suffered immensely."

And then there was one highly abnormal, albeit beneficial, weather event. "That snow [December 10] was one of the best things to happen," Niccum says. "It took kids' minds off the hurt for a few hours. I'm happy that these kids got to enjoy something different than living in a home that is in disrepair, or a hotel, or staying in a relative's home, if only for a few hours."

Jim Vratis

Lawyer and restaurateur Jim Vratis firmly believes that Crystal Beach will be back to its former glory. Seeing the place now, you'd be forgiven for thinking he's lost his ever-lovin' thinkin'. Within seconds of driving off the Bolivar Ferry's gangway, you are bombarded with images of destruction of a near-biblical scale.

Feral cats raid garbage cans in packs and squabble amongst themselves. What had been an empty pasture right near the ferry landing is now a junkyard where tall heaps of ruined cars, central air-conditioning units, water heaters and refrigerators await barges.

Honky-tonking little Crystal Beach, once one of the prime blue-collar party spots on the Upper Texas Coast, is now a ghost town. De Coux's restaurant is a mere slab. Coba's Restaurant is utterly destroyed. Mama Teresa's pizzeria collapsed in on itself as if it were professionally imploded. The castle-like Gulf Coast Supermarket, also known locally as the Big Store, still stands, but has been gutted and is still closed, as is virtually all commerce on the peninsula.

And then there are the beach houses. According to Vratis, only 1,500 of what had been 5,000 remain. Along many stretches of the beach, the first few rows are simply gone. Elsewhere, there are signs that the God of Hurricanes has a sick sense of humor. All that remains of one beach house is the raised floor and the front door, while at another, two porch swings dangle over thin air. A third has been deposited—as intact as if it were transported there by the tornado in Dorothy's dream in The Wizard of Oz—straddling Highway 87.

More cars, more appliances and golf carts still litter the salt-poisoned grass. Where a few months ago you would have heard the hum of A/C units, plenty of country music and other sounds of good cheer coming from these getaways, today it's so hushed you can hear even a limp surf lapping at the beach at a distance of 200 yards. And the farther east you go on the peninsula, the worse the devastation. It's hard to imagine that towns in and around Rollover Pass, such as Caplen and Gilchrist, will ever return to even a semblance of what they were last summer.

Twenty years ago, Vratis moved to Crystal Beach from Beaumont and established his law practice in a corrugated tin-sided building in the shadow of Crystal Beach's water tower. The courtly 50-something with a cultured, Louisiana-tinged Beaumont accent later opened the Stingaree Restaurant, which was destroyed, but is now weeks away from reopening. (Beginning in spring 2007, the Stingaree was the site of former Crystal Beach resident Hayes Carll's annual country music festival.)