GALVESTON AFTER IKE
In many places, Galveston looks like a giant sandbox where a child has, willy-nilly, strewn all her toys. Large white pleasure boats lean against the freeway guardrails, pieces of lumber are piled up where there used to be a house, huge oak trees lie on their side, the tendrils of their roots exposed. Driving around, however, it becomes obvious that the real impact of Hurricane Ike has not been upon either the built or the natural environment, as severe as that impact might seem. It is upon those people whose homes and business were drowned under the sandy silt of the waters that rose without warning from the bay to the north and then tore over the island from the Gulf to the south as the storm surge’s heavy waves swamped the island. “Flee from the water; hide from the wind,” the saying goes. As with Katrina, water, not wind, was the real foe.
As residents pull the soggy remains of their home to the curb, as they pile wet dry wall on their lawn, as they rip up floor boards and linoleum and carry them, piece by piece, outside to join the sofa and the refrigerator and the TV set and the curio cabinet out in front, their lives are stripped bare of things, not all of which can be replaced. Businesses as well have been affected, their inventory destroyed, their survival threatened, their workers, many of them now homeless, displaced.
But nature has already begun its comeback. Plants that had been buried under salty water are already shedding their browned leaves and replacing them with new green ones. The first day of my return a battered swallowtail was flitting around the yard.
The birds are mostly back; only the doves and the gulls seem to be absent. Our backyard is active with hummingbirds, jays, house sparrows, and grackles. Yesterday I saw a small wren in the bushes and today the same bush held a Common Yellowthroat. Geckos hide in the coolness of the brush piles in front of most of the homes and squirrels dart about in seventh heaven with all the nuts and seeds they used to have to climb for now brought down to ground level.
A couple of days ago I went over to St. Vincent’s (see posting for February 14 below). The building had taken seven foot of water, destroying the kitchen and the day care center, but had not reached the second floor where the free clinic and administrative offices are located. The children’s paintings on the walls, both interior and exterior, had somehow remained, their colors still bright. Holes had been punched in the doors to allow the water to be suctioned out, but the innocence of the art was unaffected.
Nevertheless, the piles of rubbish give a hint of the destruction, with the remnants of the day care center tossed outside along with the furniture and odds and ends from the gutted interior. A little Tigger lies all alone in the wilted grass. One can only hope that the little smile on his face is an indication of better days to come.
