April 11, Friday, City ,Water, Disaster

Within three minutes I was over water. San Luis Pass flushes out into the Gulf with harsh currents; a 16 year old girl drown here last month and now I was looking down on it from the ¾ mile long bridge connecting the south end of Galveston Island. Again the houses on the island were all built on stilts waiting like cranes for a high incoming tide. Traveling up the four-lane toward the northeast I was amazed to see a large electrical substation with massive power towers leading into it just sitting on ground zero. Everyone’s horror: trapped in a flooding house and the power goes out – at night.
Half way up the island the massive seawall kicks in and the houses loose their safety by resting on the ground behind this false sense of security. This protection wall was built over the years starting in 1902 after the Great Storm that killed 8,000 people.
When I reached The Strand (historic downtown), I searched out the Pier 21 Theater for it showed the 30 minute film The Great Storm. I emerged confused as to why the city was rebuilt. It’s like the town of Hamilton on the Skagit River: “Yea, this is our third flood but we’re not leaving. We’ll re-build.” Where is the logic in this? New Orleans is in the same position of making decisions after 1,800 lives were lost in 2005 after Katrina.
The city of Galveston is just a few feet above the high tide line: any Category 4 or 5 hurricane would again turn it into a flooded sinking ship. The ticket taker at the theater spoke of how her grandmother survived the 1900 storm. It was an amazing event. And now the protecting seawall is over 100 years old with many places backfilled with sand so the original 17 foot height is greatly compromised. (Katrina’s storm surge was around 30 feet.)
During Hurricane Rita, which followed Katrina, it took two days to evacuate the entire island. The ticket taker said it took her and her son eight hours to drive 150 miles inland. People were locked in traffic jams; cars were running out of gas. Go figure.
But next door to the theater was another era: the 1877 tall ship, Elissa. No sooner than I arrive dockside that a drama unfolded. A laughing gull had flown into a strand of monofilament fishing line caught in the forestay. It was hanging by one foot, head down flapping its wings. Two crewmembers had harnessed up and climbed out onto the jib boom. (They needed Caitlin, the Rigger!) They had lashed together two long pike poles with a huge kitchen knife duct taped to the end. Slowly they raised the poles and after several tries, cut the line freeing the gull. The gathered crowd cheered.
The Elissa was one of the best-kept tall ships that I’ve been on. Everything was Bristol. She was built as a steel hulled merchant ship in England. She was named after the owner’s niece. She was “discovered” in 1968 about to be cutup for scrape in Greece. She was made seaworthy and towed to Galveston where she is now the official Tall Ship for Texas. Her stats: Three masted barque; LOA 205 feet; sparred height- 100 feet; tonnage 620 tons. I enjoyed the hour I spent on her having the ship almost to myself.
Down the Galveston Channel sat an imposing exhibit: a retired Offshore Drilling Rig turned into a museum. With a quantum leap of time I now stood in the guts of the beast called Ocean Star fitted with all the exhibits, equipment, models of the oil industry proudly financed by the big name petroleum companies. Halliburton had its shingle hanging on a lot of gear also. The process of finding and retrieving the precious crude fascinated me. I was thinking of Marcus who worked a short time disassembling played out oil rigs as they stood out in the gulf. He was quick to see that it was not his calling.
The highlight of the day though was lunch at Joe’s Crab Shack on the waterfront. Even though it was a dive from the outside, it called to me. Sundog Ale with the Gulf Coast Platter was my grommet delight of shrimp presented in three different styles - with Hush Puppies on the side. Hmmmmmmmmm good!

See photo link.