US Features
Gilchrist, the village that Ike wiped off the Texas map
Sep 16, 2008, 17:59 GMT
A single house is left standing on the waterfront near Gilchrist, Texas, USA on 14 September 2008 following the destruction along the Texas coast. As Hurricane Ike slowed to a tropical depression after carving a path of destruction through Texas, rescuers were using everything from dump trucks to boats and helicopters to reach stranded residents. EPA/SMILEY N. POOL/ POOL
Gilchrist, Texas - The sunset is beautiful in Gilchrist - within just a few minutes the sky goes from red to indigo and then to a wide range of grey before turning the black of night.
The sunset is, indeed, almost the only thing left unchanged in what was until the arrival of Hurricane Ike a tourist village south- east of Houston with some 750 residents.
The storm only left three to eight houses standing, and they all suffered severe damage. There is no trace of the remaining 200 homes in the village whose population swelled in the summer.
The hurricane, with wind speeds of 175 kilometres per hour, and the tide with a storm surge of 6-8 metres, devastated absolutely everything.
There are no lamp posts, nor house foundations, nor street signs. There are no streets at all, even if a GPS would insist that the avenues called Paisley, Mabry or Van Zant are on the right. Everything is a vacant lot covered in sand, weeds and a lot of water.
Within a radius of some 20 kilometres, the typical scene until last week used to be a bunch of cows, grazing. Now it all looks like a huge rice field in which a few farmers are waist-deep in water in an effort to regroup visibly startled cattle.
Alligators are the new bosses in town, and they even square up to rescue vehicles - the only ones that have access to the partially- flooded road.
Everything was swept out to the Gulf of Mexico or to Galveston Bay, says Aaron Reed, a spokesman for Texas Parks and Wildlife. The department's job usually has a much different focus, but they too have put their boats in the service of rescue efforts following the hurricane.
With flat-bottomed boats fit for marshland, on Sunday alone they got 30 people out of the extreme south-east of Galveston Bay, some 100 kilometres from Houston. On Monday it was only four people, all of them members of one family who took refuge in their attic alongside their cats and dogs.
However, there was no sign of Gilchrist residents, dead or alive. The authorities hope that they all chose to evacuate, but they know there is always a group of stubborn individuals who opt to stay. And the chances that they survived are zero.
'We have reports of missing people. When the water backs off we guess we will find some bodies,' Reed explained.
The authorities were most fearful about Galveston, where the eye of the hurricane made landfall early Saturday. However, devastation is far greater to the north on the Bolivar Peninsula - Gilchrist has been destroyed, in High Island several houses have been pulled down and the local gas station is under 1.5 metres of floodwater.
No one but rescue teams has made it to the rest of the peninsula, and they describe horrifying scenes.
'At Crystal Beach there are barely a few houses standing, although it is better than Gilchrist, and there was also substantial damage in Port Bolivar,' Reed said.
It is now night-time in whatever is left of Gilchrist, and a vehicle can be seen approaching from the south-west, from an impossible origin. The bridge linking the two parts of the peninsula has been virtually destroyed, but Bobby Anderson manages to cross it in the dark on the truck that he himself carefully cleaned up of sand and water.
He is hungry and thirsty, after several days of eating raw meat and drinking the thaw water from his freezer.
When the storm came, this 56-year-old construction worker was carried off by a wave. He managed to swim to his neighbours' house and he survived there until the hurricane died off. His partner did not make it.
But Anderson refuses to talk about that. He would rather devote his energy to criticizing rescue teams, who refused to give him food in an attempt to get him to leave.
'I did not like the idea of being taken from one place to another without knowing where I was going,' Anderson says to explain why he stayed put despite the warnings.
He left behind some 20 friends who had taken refuge at the Baptist church in Crystal Beach in order to drive to Gilchrist.
'I hope to be able to see them again some day,' he says, and his voice breaks for the first time.
He promises to return as soon as he is allowed to, because he claims he left a lot of expensive computer equipment at his home.
Without getting down from his truck on what was once the Gilchrist seafront, Anderson closed off his reunion with the rest of humanity with an improvised elegy to the village that is no longer there.
'It had several rows of houses on both sides of the road. Some of the houses were very beautiful and very well built, it looked like they could stand any storm. But it seems that this was no ordinary storm,' he says.
COMMENT
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Older Talkback
page: 1
It just burns me up when I see people like this guy criticizing the rescue teams for trying to save his life. Gilchrist is at most 2 miles wide at its widest and at most 10 feet above sea level. He was told the waves would be 20 to 25 feet. He chose to stay and expected other people to risk their lives for his own stupidity. Amazing.
To the other 99.8% of that formerly beautiful beach area, my thoughts and prayers are with you. I have friends who lost several houses there. What a shame.
If these people had heeded the warnings and left before the storm, they would have food, ice and shelter. Of course, it is the fault of George Bush that they can't get to the P O D's. Heck, the hurricane is probably his fault too. This is a terrible disaster and name calling and blaming is doing no good. My prayers are with all of those who have lost so much, even those who critize and complain.
I dont know if you can read but the people on bolivar were told to leave by a certin time and they tried but by the time they left (before the dead line) the water was 4 foot over the road and there was no way to get out. The mandatory evacuation for Port Bolivar was obviously not very well thought out!! So if you dont know the situation dont open your BIG mouth!!!!! you dont know peoples financial or travel situations!!!! and by the way they tried three times to get help and they said they would come and on the fourth time they were told that they were not flying over anymore, that is where SMARTS comes in handy.
If you were stranded on an island would you be able to get a car running if it has been in salt water over the engine?? I would not think so!!! and like i said before keep you BIG MOUTH shut unless you have something positive to say. This man is very smart, most of you out there would not have survived. But he did!! Go Bobby Anderson!!!
I don't call waiting till the day of landfall smart. They've only been talking about this hurricane for two weeks. They waited too long to get out, but they want to blame everyone else for their stupidity. I hate that anyone had to go through what these people did, but it sure as hell isn't anyone else's fault.
'what part of 20' storm surge, with 10 - 15 feet waves on top of that don't you understand?????'
Those who build/buy there need to take that into account at the architectural design stage. Looks like _someone_ got it right, as one house is still standing.
'all the people need is ice and lots of it. FEMA in all there infinite government wisdom is providing MRE'S at staging areas.'
There was plenty of warning. If you didn't have your own sufficient ice & MREs before the storm, you had enough time to get _to_ the ice & MREs. Not FEMA's problem.
'people on bolivar were told to leave by a certin time ... there was no way to get out'
Again, there was plenty of warning. If you waited for the official evacuation order, that's your problem. Official evac orders won't come until stuff starts going seriously wrong. (BTW: they're on the coast; the word 'boat' comes to mind. Float across the narrow waterway and hoof it inland pronto.)
'They've only been talking about this hurricane for two weeks.'
Bingo. Plenty of warning. If you live in the path of such natural disasters without planning accordingly and acting accordingly, not someone else's problem.
Dang, you people are heartless. You know, some people just don't have anywhere to go and they are not about to budge to go to a shelter...some people are agoraphobic or have other health issues, or they simply believe they will survive. No reason to blame them for their misfortune. That comment will come back on your someday.
My wife Kim and I have owned our vacation home in Caplen for 15 1/2 months. The Caplen community is about 1 mile west of Gilchrist. We were on Keith Ave. there and have a beach front lot. Wednesday, I went done to board up windows and doors, and after completion Thursday about noon, I stood on the Geo tube and took pictures of the Gulf. Even then it was rolling, angry and mad looking. I told my brother, 'i'm going to take some pictures of the neighborhood', glad I did. We had everything washed and blown away. Fortunately Kim and I got to take one last stroll on the beach, the Sunday before Ike. Hopefully when things are rebuilt, all of the bloggers can make their way down to the upper Texas coast and see why we all love it so much. Thanks for the prayers and concerns. dm
I cannot believe how ignorant and un-compassionate some of you are. Have you never made a bad choice that you wish you could go back and change your idea on the matter but it was already too late? Or you didn't take someone or something as serious as you should have, only to later regret it. I'm sure most or all of you have at some point in your life. Maybe not as serious, or as dangerous. Howeve, we are all entitled to bad judgement and you cannot blame these people for it.
Have you ever stopped for one second to think that maybe some of these people didn't take this hurricane as seriously as they should have, because of the harsh warnings in the past for what turned out to be not so bad hurricanes? Where they had to go and spend their money (However much they may have had, little or a lot), wait in traffic for hours, stay gone for days only to return home to no damage and a hurricane that turned and missed them all together. Maybe, there for a minute this time they thought it wouldn't be as bad as they were forcasting and they couldn't afford another evacuation or maybe they had health problems and couldn't sit in a vehicle for hours just to move 30 miles? These are all very realistic situations that have happened. Many of those who stayed to ride out the storm changed their minds once the weather service said that it was 'Certain Death' to whoever stayed behind, to evacuate. Some had already made plans to evacuate but were busy trying to collect their most imporant belongings before they 'had' to leave. No matter what, NO ONE expected the storm surge to rise as quickly as it did on Bolivar and many people were caught on their way out in the surge and had no other choice as they could no longer leave.
No matter what the situation, it is not your place to judge. Just because some of these people made a bad judgement call, or didn't obey orders (that have been wrong in the past), it does not mean they deserve to suffer or live with out the neccesities that you or I take for granted every day. They are still human beings and deserve our help. If we can go over seas and help the Tsunami or Earthquake victims, we can surly get off of our a**'s and help people in our own country, moreless our neighbors. So stop complaining about what they did wrong, because im sure their are plenty of people that can complain about your bad choices, and do something to make a difference.
I am sitting in the dark after a week in North Houston with my mother, Clara Gregg. She had a house across the highway from the infamous yellow house. She has had years of experience working for the Texas Department of Human Services and during her years on Gilchrist worked part-time for the non-profit organization Jesse Tree serving the low income retirees and the disable of the peninsula. Many of these people had no way of leaving.
I have read many comments about those who stayed. However, are you aware that many of the residents were elderly with no means of leaving on their own? The county, state nor FEMA sent any transportation for those in need on the peninsula. Many did not have phones or televisions in which to inform them of the mandatory evacuation and by Thursday night it was too late for many.
Yes, those who did know the severity of the storm and chose not to leave have nothing to complain about. However, say a pray for those too feeble or poor to help themselves and whose government let them down.
My prayers are with those in there time of need and there loses. I like the beach but what do you expect to happen on an island.
page: 1
Tommy Brown-Beaumont, TexasSep 17th, 2008 - 14:38:04
I will never understand for the life of me why people (with all the modern forcasting ability) choose to stay and then (if they survive) complain that the authorities aren't doing enough to help them in there self inflicted misery!!!!!
People, what part of 20' storm surge, with 10 - 15 feet waves on top of that don't you understand????? Crystal Beach did not have a sea wall.
You made your choice, now live with it.
To anyone who has access to tons of ice, all the people need is ice and lots of it. FEMA in all there infinite government wisdom is providing MRE'S at staging areas. Hey FEMA there is no fuel to get to your staging areas for the MRE'S. By the way, did I mention that all we need is ice and lots of it. Because us veterans of these storm evacuations have large coolers with our food and we need ice.
This area is just like the region affected by the tidal waves in the Sumatra area. Where is the relief effort of the world for Texas?? We will take care of ourselves, like we always do. Texans are strong people and we will survive.
I guess George Bush hates white people, huh Kanye!!!
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