For many years, Janet Flaner wrote a feature for The New Yorker called Letters from Paris, under the pen name Genet, with a little circomflex accent over the second e. And Charles Murray wrote Letters from Rome, under his own name. Finally,during the Second Vatican Council, somebody using the pen name Xavier Rynne wrote Letters from Vatican City with his take on what was going on in the various commissions and consistories. These all were extremely interesting, as the authors wrote with intelligence and skill about places and things they knew in detail. So, The New Yorker published a lot of really good letters. That was the inspiration for this post, but it’s a tough act to follow, as they say in showbiz.
Galveston was very badly damaged by Hurricane IKE. This was not a big storm, if you count only peak wind velocities, but what did the damage was the enormous storm surge, which swept into the city from the bay side, not from the Gulf. A local weather buff did some research and found that IKE had the second or third highest surge of any storm to hit Galveston. If you fly over the town, you won’t see much obvious destruction, but on the ground the picture changes. The first thing you will notice is the dead aspect everything has. Salt water of the surge killed a lot of plant life, so trees, shrubs and bushes have been burned into a dullish almost UPS brown. Driving in on the causeway, you ride past boats of all sorts and sizes, thrown onto the highway and now moved to one side. The road is clear, but there is debris on the shoulders; paper, plastic, shoes, wood, anything. The causeway was completely blocked by masses of this stuff, and the recovery crews have performed prodigies in removing it. The same holds for the main seaside artery, Seawall Boulevard. It was clogged with rocks, lumber and other flotsam tossed up by the storm, but now it’s pretty clear, for most of its length. City streets were piled high with sheet rock, plywood, paneling, glass, tile, all of which came from houses that were flooded. Residents were tearing this stuff out because it was wet, and letting it sit causes further damage, and the detritus accumulated rapidly. It was also rapidly hauled off to be dumped onto some designated rubble heaps. Teams of trucks and small bulldozers scraped it, loaded it and hauled it away. There is a tremendous amount of activity, on the main streets, such as Seawall Bl, and that can convey the impression of life, or at least, liveliness. Much of it comes from contractors working on various projects. If you go in town, a little, that impression fades. Many streets manage to look both soggy and burned brown at the same time. Many restaurants, stores, bars and specialty shops were damaged and remain closed. But, there is a trickle of re-openings, and promises on the part of others to rebuild and open as soon as possible. The Grand Opera House took a lot of water and the fall/winter schedule of shows and concerts is in jeoprady. Galveston’s public library, the Rosenberg Library, lost almost all the materials and services on the ground floor. These are heavy blows to the Island’s cultural life.
All the fishing piers which extended out into the Gulf have been destroyed, and the resident’s eye is tricked into looking for them. The Balinese Room disappeared, and that closes a chapter in local history. Back in the Wide Open Galveston days, show biz types like Phil Harris and Alice Faye, Frank Sinatra, the various big bands and swing bands all played the Balinese. Wreckage from these structures wound up all along the Seawall, blocks or even miles from where the buildings stood, according to some crazy law of wreckage distribution.
Our house was flooded and we lost a lot of domestic contents. Some of it was stuff we should have dumped years ago, after the kids left. My wife lost a lot of her sheet music and our CD collection, but we took two of her instruments with us when we fled, and the cello in its case floated on the water, and came to rest on a couch, like the Ark on Mt. Ararat. It was dry inside and the instrument is OK, apart from some minor repairs being conducted at the Amati Violin Shop in Houston. It reminds me of the end of Moby Dick, when the coffin pops up out of the wrecked Pequod and shoots to the surface. Ishmael clings to it and is rescued. Books, clothes, appliances, furniture…Pfutsch. We had some energetic help in mucking out and in gutting the place, so, by local standards, it looks pretty good. I finally realized why people in disasters seem to wander around doing silly things, like picking up a shoe or a piece of paper. When everything has been disturbed, everything seems to be of equal importance. You start off working on this, and then you notice that, which seems to need attention and so on. A lot of it is just shock, of course. It’s very hard to focus. I’ve noticed a few “disaster porn” tourists, but not many. My wife suffered a nasty cut on the leg, while trying to photograph some damage, and it still looks nasty, despite stitiches and heavy artillery antibiotics.
UTMB took a very big hit. Many street level facilities were flooded and restoring them will take a while. The Medical Library is undamaged but lobby-level facilities such as the campus book store were damaged by water and everything had to be dumped and the area cleaned.
Our campus is full of workers in protective clothing, scraping and spraying. Some clinics have moved to temporary quarters on the mainland, and the research effort is getting back to where it was, gradually. Many buildings have power and network connections, but some don’t have water. Or the combination may be reversed: water, but not network, etc. This too is being rectified. Serious illnesses have to be treated elesewhere and operations are not being performed for the time being. People are coming back to work or have been relocated offsite. Classes in the University’s component schools will resume next week. Some Thrid and Fourth year students were relocated, as were some residents and fellows. The recovery effort is amazing, but has a long way to go.
The Red Cross, Salvation Army and any number of “helping” organizations are on hand and doing wonderful things. The fear of large scale disease outbreaks has dissipated. City water services came back much earlier than expected, electicity is common if not ubitquitous, there are no giant mounds of rotting garbage and the expected plague of mosquitoes did not occur, due mainly to the persisting dry, even gorgeous, weather. So, there was some good news.
So, we’re back. It’s been bad, but things are happening. I don’t want to make this blog into a weeper, but some of our readers have asked, and I want to answer. It’s been tough, I can tell you. But maybe the worst is over.
