High Island residents back today, Bolivar will wait
By CHRISTINE RAPPLEYE
September, 18, 2008
Concern Over Ike`s Human Toll
The death toll in Texas from Hurricane Ike stands at 17, but there is growing concern that the number could grow much higher.
Nearly a week after Ike tore a path of destruction through Texas, questions are being raised about what happened to residents of the low-lying Gulf Coast region who stayed put, despite ominous warnings that they faced “certain death.”
As Ike grew in size over the Gulf of Mexico, AccuWeather.com Hurricane Center meteorologists forecast the hurricane would create a 20-foot storm surge that would obliterate communities on Galveston Island and the Bolivar Peninsula.
Expert Senior Meteorologist Dan Kottlowski says, “The size of Ike created a much larger storm surge than we normally see in a Category 2 or 3 hurricane. The volume of water created by Ike was squeezed into the coastal areas from Louisiana to Texas. The massive devastation would have been exponentially higher had the storm surge been as high as 20 feet.”
The surge reached 13 to 14 feet, swamping the vulnerable low-lying areas and overwhelming the 17-foot seawall that protected the City of Galveston.
The Bolivar Peninsula was not protected by a seawall. Homes and businesses in the towns along the isthmus were no match for the wall of water that pushed across the peninsula and into Galveston Bay.
Entire towns, including High Island and Gilchrist, were wiped out as the surge literally changed the landscape of the peninsula, cutting off any escape routes for those who chose to ride out the hurricane.
According to Associated Press, authorities in three counties say an estimated 90,000 people ignored evacuation orders.
In the aftermath of Ike, roughly 3,500 people have been removed from Galveston and the peninsula and another 6,000 have refused to leave.
While no one is suggesting that thousands have been killed, officials admit that more bodies may be found and some may have been washed out to sea and may never be found.
Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough, the county’s highest-ranking elected official, told Associated Press, “I’m not Pollyana. I think we will find some.” Five deaths had been reported in Galveston by Wednesday afternoon, while the number of missing has continued to fluctuate.
One survivor who rode out the storm in Crystal Beach recounted seeing a friend wrenched from the rafters and swept out to sea.
In scenes reminiscent of post-Hurricane Katrina in 2005, In evacuation shelters hundreds of miles from the coast, displaced residents in shelters across Texas scour address books, blog postings and internet forums as they anxiously search for relatives, friends and neighbors.
Judge Yarbrough says the Red Cross and the Galveston Island Beach Patrol are taking the lead role in tracking down the missing. Search crews left the coast on Wednesday after rescuing survivors from Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula.
The Beach Patrol makes roughly 100 checks daily, mostly acting on tips from concerned friends and relatives of Island residents.
Bodies were still showing up more than a year after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005. In 1900, the Galveston hurricane killed an estimated 8,000 people. However, some reports put the death toll much higher.
It is not know if many of those unaccounted for were able to leave before the storm and simply relocated, or if they were washed away and their bodies were never found.