Hurricane Ike thoughts

The devastation from Ike is horrendous. Mary Fran and I used to vacation down at Crystal Beach near Galveston. It's a little barrier island of beach cottage, a few little stores, and not much else. People drove around the subdivisions in golf carts on their way to the beach. Everytime we visited, we talked about buying a cottage there for retirement. Ike ruined that. Crystal Beach is no more. From the aerial images, it looks as if 80 percent of the homes have been destroyed. You can't see the road. Everything is under water. It's tragic. There are reports of loss of life, but no numbers are offered.

Our town came through the hurricane well. In fact we are the first county north of the coast to have electrical power. All of the surrounding counties are out and some will be out for weeks. The evac was orderly from Houston and Galveston, so, although the EOC was busy on Thursday and Friday, it was not panic time. The busier days were Saturday and Sunday when people who had ridden out the storm realized they were without power, water, and sanitation and very likely would be out for awhile. Then they started to leave Houston and Galveston for shelters.

I really do not understand families with children riding out the storm. The storm would be terrifying to most kids. They were in harm's way from wind and storm surge, and the conditions after the storm were nearly unbearable.

Some of the police at the EOC speculated that the fires on Galveston were homes whose owners had fire insurance but not flood insurance.