That is a wonderful story to read. Thanks for posting it, Lanie. Galveston had the potential to be a massive tragedy, but now it looks like things may not have been as bad as feared. Keep praying.
As was observed earlier (palmer, and others) the main reason this wasn’t (hopefully) that bad has mostly to do with many people long dead who built the Galveston seawall a century ago.
Those Texans should be considered the real heroes of Ike.