Galveston not fit for habitation still

NY Times:

An angry snarl of traffic, crawling slowly over 20 miles, snaked its way on Wednesday from the causeway here on Interstate 45. It was full of coupes, sedans and muddy-bottomed pickup trucks. The residents of Galveston were trying to return.

Meanwhile, on the northbound side, a line of vehicles headed back toward Houston. After five days, the rescue teams were leaving. Their grim search for survivors of Hurricane Ike had finally been called off.

So it goes in Galveston, where everything is somewhat topsy-turvy.

People may have food but they most likely do not have power. Flooded basements are drying out, but health and sanitation problems loom. Residents are clamoring to be let back in to inspect their damaged homes — though most are being turned away — and some of the workers sent to help their city are heading out.

“I’ve got to get through,” said James Brooks, a retired longshoreman, who was sitting at a service station snack shop off the highway. Mr. Brooks and his wife had come 150 miles from Bryan, Tex., for their heart medication. Those affected by Hurricane Ike have entered a sort of limbo and are irritable and sleep-deprived. Their patience has been worn thin by the lack of gasoline, the stubborn standing water, the potential threats from insects and disease.

“It’s not a sanitary state on the island right now,” said David L. Callender, president of the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. “People are moving around, trying to clear debris and getting their homes cleared and the like, and they’re encountering these situations where they are going to be at a much higher risk for infection.”

Mr. Callender, who said his hospital will need at least another month before service returns to normal, added that those with urgent needs will be transferred off the island. He also said that deteriorating organic debris, like rotting meat, is becoming a problem.

“It creates an environment for the infectious diseases to increase in number,” he said.

There is still, of course, work to be done. Power crews, garbage trucks and law enforcement officers throng the streets. The military has evacuated about 3,500 people from the island to shelters in San Antonio and continues at a rate of 200 to 400 more each day.

In Houston, hundreds of thousands of people remained without electricity, and officials said it might not be restored until the end of the week. Divers have begun the delicate process of clearing out the tangle of debris that has clogged the navigation routes to the city’s busy port.

Across Galveston County, an estimated 65 percent of the residents have power, County Judge James D. Yarbrough said. About 200 people remained on the slender land spit of the Bolivar Peninsula, where a tiger — apparently hungry — remained at large.

...

So far, the death toll from the storm stands at 51, with at least 20 in Texas and the rest spread across nine other states that stood in the hurricane’s path. Michael Chertoff, the secretary of homeland security, visited the region on Wednesday afternoon and said his agency was working hard to get the lights back on in Houston.

In Galveston, confusion was evident in the sprawling jam that snagged traffic for miles on I-45. On Tuesday, Galveston’s mayor, Lyda Ann Thomas, announced that residents could come back into town under a “look and leave” policy from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., but the order was immediately rescinded.

“We decided we just simply cannot handle the volumes of people that are coming in,” City Manager Steve LeBlanc said Wednesday. He said the city hoped to announce a new plan “very soon.” But not all returning residents got the message that the policy had been canceled.

...

The look and leave policy was a debacle or as the French might say, it was worse. It was a mistake. I-45 is the only route into the main part of the island. There is a ferry going over to the Boliver Peninsula but that does not get you to a habitable location either. On the west end of the island there is another bridge, but the west end suffered some of the worst damage because it was not "protected" by the sea wall.

Right now Galveston Island is where New Orleans was after Katrina, minus the dead bodies and the looters. It does have people trying to clean up the mess and if they make it habitable in a month they will leap way ahead of New Orleans.

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