Remember everyone was saying the same exact thing as Katrina hit....’that’s all?’
We know what we discovered later.
All I remember about Katrina were all the stories about how many dead people there were in the Superdome.
This will most likely still go down as a property loss with hopefully minimal life loss. The difference between this one and Katrina to some extent is that the water will recede in a couple of days and you’ll quickly know what you have. That wasn’t the case in Katrina nor would have been the case in the Port Arthur area had a large storm surge breeched the levee system there. Like NO once the water was in the only way out would be by pumps.
From High Island west to the Ferry at Galveston is a long penisular with a mile or so wide habitable space. Lots of beach cabins, some very expensive up on piers and associated small commercial establishments. To the north of the beach road would be marsh and mostly cattle grazing, etc.
Our local weather man said at High Island the storm surge was 14.25’. Thus the entire penisular westward should have been totally over topped with surge water. Most likely many structures will have been lost.
Well, one of the big differences from Katrina (aside from the fact that it’s Texans that got hit and therefore we’ll be fixing our problems quickly instead of whining for two years that nobody has fixed them for us) is that unlike New Orleans, Houston and Galveston are built above sea level and aren’t bowls. The water is already draining out of the flooded areas.
Centerpoint Energy has deployed *600-700* crews in a frantic rush to get power back on, more are coming from other states - even so, it may take weeks to repower the area.