“It’s been hard for them (residents and business owners),” says Rochelle Gaskins, public relations manager for the Galveston Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. “Just imagine: You just lost your home and your business. You get up each morning in a different frame of mind.”

Gaskins knows it will take time, maybe years, to really rebuild. But like many others, she believes the people of Galveston will do just that.

Today, in conversations with the people who live on the 873 square miles called Galveston Island, “resilient” is a word heard often. Yet many seem surprised at the strength of the pluck and vigor they have witnessed since Hurricane Ike blasted through the island on Sept. 13, leaving a toll heavy with damaged and destroyed property but light in casualties.

“None of us really expected a lot of these people to recover as quickly as they have,” says Bill Balboa, biologist and Galveston Bay ecosystem team leader for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.

He sees a lot of damage to the fishing industry, with boat ramps damaged and small buildings destroyed. But he also sees people repairing things as quickly as they can — like fishermen in their shrimper boots out laying decking, on top of roofs making repairs, fixing both buildings and boats.

“It’s how they make their living,” he explains. “Commercial fishing is a tough job, and it takes tough folks to do it. They are not going to sit around and wait for anything. They are going to get to work.”

“By early October, there were already shrimpers in the bay,” Balboa says. “I saw six out there within three weeks of the hurricane.”

Balboa grew up in the Rio Grande Valley and remembers the wrath of Beulah, a Category 3 when it struck in 1967, killing 58.  He says everyone on the coast knows a hurricane is a “what if” proposition and prepares for it. If they didn’t, Ike could have been a lot worse.
It is not just the commercial fishermen who are back to the grindstone. People from every background are working to reclaim their lives and livelihoods on the island, Balboa says.

“Some of our employees have homes on the island, and they went back as soon as they could and lived without power, starting to clean up,” he says. “Now they have power, and are slowly but surely getting things done.”

In many places, those without power or even a home still standing have pitched tents and continue to clean and begin the process of rebuilding.

All this work happening so quickly was a surprise, Balboa says. “I didn’t expect it, and it’s impressive.”

Gaskins says a positive, can-do attitude has marked the nature of the people who have thrived among the oleanders on the balmy island for more than a century.

“That resiliency has been here since the days of the pirate Jean Lafitte,” Gaskins says.

Four weeks after Ike swept through, she notes, many businesses and homes were cleaned and gutted, awaiting the cleanup crews to pick up the debris and insurance claims to come through.

Ike may have been a Category 2 hurricane in terms of wind, but in terms of water, many islanders feel it was more like a Category 4.

City of Galveston Police Det. Scott Pena says most people didn’t expect Ike to be that bad, and that may be why the shock was so great.

“We had really geared up for Rita (in 2005),” he explains. “We just knew it was going to be our Katrina. I remember watching (Rita) come in on the TV, and at the last minute it turned north.”

Luckily, during Ike, almost everyone evacuated. Pena and other police, firefighters and city staff rode out the storm on the island. The night before was spent in last-minute rescues and in trying to get holdover residents to come into a shelter. In the immediate aftermath of the hurricane, all Pena could think of was his military service.

“I’ve spent time in Afghanistan and Haiti, and that’s what it looked like here — a Third World country,” he says. “People were wandering the streets lost. Some were pulling jugs filled with gas. Everybody was just stunned.”

Pena remembers the sensation he felt as “eerie.”

“It is a totally different animal when something like this is not in a Third World country but in your own backyard.”

No one expected the backside of the island to get the surge and damage it did. The seawall did its job, but the part of the island considered safe from the tidal onslaught was pounded.

“All the businesses that were built out into the water are not going to be allowed to rebuild, but it looks like everything else will,” Pena says. “The building codes again will be changed as a result of this, and in some places the land may have to be built up, because they weren’t before. But I think a good 80 percent (of the 68,000 who lived there before the storm) will stay and rebuild.”

The 1900 Hurricane that devastated the island, killing about 8,000 and just about leveling the city, was a Category 4 in every sense, according to Stan Blazyk, author of “A Century of Galveston Weather.”
The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston retiree and weather expert for the Galveston County Daily News agrees that this time the island was spared more destruction because the seawall — a 10-mile, 17-foot-high barrier put in place after the 1900 Hurricane — was in place.

Also, the island was mostly just a few feet above sea level in 1900 but a century later had been elevated in many areas, making its structures better able to withstand the tidal surges of hurricanes.

Despite the sheer size and terrible power of earlier storms to hit Galveston, Blazyk says people were taken by surprise when they began to realize the enormity of Ike. A 12-foot-plus water surge hit the island, damaging and destroying property, homes and businesses. He takes with a grain of salt reports of 17-foot water surge marks, which are as high as those from the 1900 Hurricane. The official reading is 12.64, although he does believe it could have been up to 14 feet in some places.

“We’re in a period of increased hurricane activity, and it may last another 10 to 15 years,” he claims. “We are vulnerable now.”

Craig Brown, a retired Houston dentist and Galveston entrepreneur, spent weekends on the island for years before retiring and moving here several years ago. He and his wife, Angela, lived on the West End during their years as weekenders, but moved full time into a historic home in East Galveston. She owns and operates the Mod Coffee House in the Pix Building, which the couple owns.

They plan to rebuild their businesses and stay put. “It is a risk, but every place has its problems. …There is no place without risks,” Craig Brown says.

Also in the Pix building, however, was the Studio 22 Pilates Center on the ground floor. The owner of the Pilates studio, a physical therapist, evacuated to the Hill Country and was offered a job there. She decided not to return, which Brown understands, although he had hoped she would come back. At Chamber of Commerce meetings he learned that many other business owners are returning.

Brown also points out how everyone was concerned about structures on or near the seawall, but those, he claims, held up well. “In this particular hurricane, the structures behind the hurricane got hit the hardest. The storm surge pushed water over the 17-foot seawall through the ship channel into the bays and harbor on the backside of the island. Those areas flooded,” Brown says.

he power of the water is what was so devastating, he adds.

Blazyk agrees. “There is something about the water damage that is more depressing than wind damage,” Blazyk says. “It’s messy. Unless you have been in a house that has had water damage, you can’t imagine.”

When Brown and his wife returned the Monday after the hurricane (sheriff’s deputies brought them back), he realized it wasn’t just water but the backup of sewage, oil and other toxic materials that made such a mess.

"It left sludge, a toxic sludge that is hard to clean up. The day we came back, you had to have boots, and there was 12 inches of ooze that you sank into and had to walk through in downtown,” Brown recalls.

After having surveyed the damage that day, he finds the scene today “unbelievably different.” Within a few days of the hurricane, heavy equipment was in place to help with the cleanup. And while he knows others have criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency, he believes it did a wonderful job.

People now have gone in and stripped the carpets and torn out the sheetrock. Brown says that, from the outside, downtown looks pretty good, pretty normal. You still see debris along the roadsides, but the city is coming along.

Alicia Cahill, spokeswoman for the City of Galveston, says it was not only FEMA pitching in to clean up the island. Public service crews from McAllen, a city that had just suffered through Hurricane Dolly, came to help and offer what they learned in the aftermath of a storm that also caused widespread power outages.

San Antonio City Public Service crews came, camped on the beach and worked tirelessly to help get the area back to some semblance of normalcy. A relationship developed earlier with Austin to take the special needs residents of Galveston (with the pets they will not leave) proved invaluable. Numerous other Texas cities sent fire and police to help in the crisis.

“They came to help, and we were prepared,” Cahill says. The island has been learning and improving since the 1900 Hurricane, first with the seawall and land elevation of island properties, and later with extensions of the seawall, more stringent building codes, upgraded infrastructure and relationships with other cities that suffer the same twists of nature.

When the island had a close call with Rita three years ago, the city decided to establish ties with Biloxi and Gulfport, Miss., and New Orleans. It gave the staff a chance to look at the problems faced by those cities because of Katrina, and to try to prepare for them.

“We talked about the challenges and what they would do differently if they could,” she says. “It is nice to have a relationship where you can pick up the phone and say, ‘What did you do when this happened?’”
Cahill lives in the East End in a historic home, but also owns a home in the West End beach area.

“Many of us in the administration of the city and the work crews rode out the storm at a hotel downtown,” she says. “I kept thinking my home in the West End was gone. But because it was built in the last 10 years with more stringent building codes, it was OK. A little damage, but not gone. A lot of homes are that way — the new ones built under the tight codes survived, and the oldest, sturdier homes are all right.”
Downtown was hit hard by water, and while many business owners there will come back to rebuild, those without insurance may not.

“Many couldn’t get insurance because they were not elevated,” Blazyk explains.

Like many others, he believes that the island will recover, just as it did after 1900, after a major hurricane in 1915, and after many lesser storms since. It is the way it will recover that concerns him.

“It won’t be better,” he believes. “The island has been going through a process of changing to a tourism-based economy that brings lower wages and less industry. There are already rumors that one industry will relocate to the mainland.”

Blazyk says the move toward a tourism-based economy is a process that has been ongoing, and the storm may speed it up.
Gaskins also says Galveston has been on that economic path for some time. She notes that with the recent layoffs of 3,800 from the UT Medical Branch and its lack of a future here, tourism will become the No. 1 employer on the island and have the largest economic impact.

Already, Galveston has been busy putting on its best tourism face. Dickens on the Strand was scheduled for Dec. 6-7, and the Lone Star Motorcycle Rally (the island’s second-biggest economic event) was set for Dec. 11-14.

Beaches opened on Columbus Day weekend, and many hotels and resorts are back in business or close to getting there. The biggest boon to the island’s economy is its annual Mardi Gras, slated for Feb. 13-24.

“We’re going to be busy, and that is going to help our business community,” Gaskins says. “The Motorcycle Rally, Dickens on the Strand and other upcoming events will be an economic boost for our community.”One way or another, Galveston will bounce back.