Galveston Sees Its Past Bearing Down

On this day, everything was already out of whack, and Hurricane Rita was still more than 72 hours away, spinning into a fury in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Target store -- normally bustling -- was empty save for a handful of weary police officers buying beef jerky, and the staging area for ambulances set up in the parking lot. Patients with IV poles by their sides were queued up on gurneys in the hospital lobby. And the broad white beach, on an afternoon of near-record heat, had been left to the shorebirds.

Mary Adams, the psychic on Seawall Boulevard, was packing her white Cadillac on Wednesday in front of her bright blue office at the beach. She was following the advice she had been giving out all week: “Evacuate the island as soon as possible, because it doesn’t look very good to me.”

Adams had scoured the future before Hurricane Alicia hit this fragile barrier island 22 years ago, and “it wasn’t as bad a prediction as this one is going to be,” she said.

“This one, I find, is going to be a little worster.”

Here, where the gulf meets the wide Texas coast, memories of hurricanes span more than the month since Katrina devastated the state next door, pouring refugees into Texas and terrifying most Galveston residents into practicality.

That’s why this sea-level city of nearly 60,000 began to empty out fast Wednesday, after officials ordered a series of rolling evacuations -- nursing homes first, at 6 a.m., and everyone else a dozen hours later.

“I was here for Carla in ’61 and Alicia in ‘83,” recounted Pauline Rios, 54, as she waited in front of Galveston Community Church for the rest of her caravan to arrive. “We stayed for Alicia, and said, ‘Never again, never again.’ It spawned 23 tornadoes, and it was a 3. This is a 4 now; could be a 5.” Hurricane Rita strengthened to a Category 5 later Wednesday.

And then there was the big one in 1900, memorialized along with the others in a City Hall display that is part historical witness and part Texas pride, as if to say, “Look what we have lived through.”

That storm doesn’t have a name, but it does have a reputation: It is No. 1 on the National Hurricane Center’s list of “The Deadest, Costliest, and Most Intense United States Tropical Cyclones From 1851 to 2004.”

On Wednesday, a somber Lyda Ann Thomas, mayor of this threatened city, recounted how her family had lived through that storm, which killed about 8,000 people and destroyed about 3,600 homes.

They were Kempners, one of the city’s founding families, and they stuck around after the devastation and “helped Galveston get back on its feet,” she said. They were deeply involved in the construction of the sea wall, which helps protect the island to this day.

“I think that my resolve and commitment to this community has been inbred,” she said Wednesday evening during a disaster briefing in which the words “catastrophic” and “historic” came up repeatedly. “It’s in my blood to protect this island as best I can. It’s helped me stay calm.”

Calm is a precious commodity at this point. The storm is expected to hit in the early hours Saturday with winds as strong as 190 mph. Thomas said that she expected part of the island to be destroyed.

City officials have reserved 200 rooms at a hotel built 37 feet above the beach on top of two World War II bunkers. They plan -- for now -- to hunker down and make sure that government continues.

“Will we decide to leave at some point?” said City Manager Steve LeBlanc during the briefing. “I think we’re still thinking about it at this point.”

But if LeBlanc and the rest of the Galveston government were sure of one thing Wednesday, it was this: that the first order of business was to empty out the island.

About 2,500 of Galveston’s elderly and carless citizens poured into public transportation -- bright yellow school buses, plush charter numbers with powerful air conditioning, little shuttles -- provided by the city to carry them to safety and shelters well north of Houston.

They started boarding around 8 a.m. at the island community center. By noon, about 1,000 had departed. And by evening, the city was down to just a few stragglers -- a good thing, since there were only two buses left and no more on the way.

Sweating in the blazing noon heat in the community center’s shadeless parking lot, Myron Davis, 53, waited for his extended family to assemble. He wasn’t going to board a bus without everyone -- not after watching the television footage of Hurricane Katrina victims spread out throughout the country and searching for their loved ones.

“We don’t want to have to be looking for the kids,” he said. “After watching TV, we’re going to get on a bus and stay together.”

This hardy survivor -- who sat through the last four big storms in his Galveston home -- is leaving before Hurricane Rita mainly because of those kids. His own and his grandchildren. “We’re going to get out of here and save the next generation,” Davis said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll just get some water, and God will bless our island again.”

As the day wore on, the streets emptied, the wind rose, the humidity thickened, and more houses and businesses were boarded up, their wood-covered windows giving the buildings the blank look of sleeping faces.

At some places, like the Galveston Visitors Center, the boards were numbered in bright spray paint. They had been through this before. Others, like the Shop & Drive, bore optimistic promises on splintery plywood: “Yes Re-Open Monday.”

As storm predictions worsened, the broadcasts became more shrill. The surges. The wind. The potential for disaster. Gov. Rick Perry was a ubiquitous presence on television and radio, urging people to leave.

“If you’re thinking you’re pretty John-Wayne-bulletproof,” he said on radio station KTRH, “this could be the one that costs someone else their life because of your foolishness.”

Those someones he was referring to were likely public safety officers. In Galveston, 180 police and 117 firefighters have been ordered to stay on the island, no matter what. Nurses, doctors and other staff would also remain at the University of Texas Medical Branch, a six-hospital complex, where all but six of the sickest patients were evacuated in a long line of ambulances throughout the day.

The lobby of John Sealy Hospital and Children’s Hospital was a whirl of controlled chaos during the evacuation of about 370 patients. A security guard was trying to direct traffic -- patients and gurneys to the right, all others to the left.

A nurse bent over a premature baby hooked up to machines that far outweighed it. “Get Well” balloons floated in the darkened gift shop. A line of ambulances rumbled along the curved driveway outside. One rare quiet spot was a women’s restroom, where a frightened Lakisha Mason was washing her hands and getting ready to return to work.

A member of the food service staff, Mason promised that she was going to work until the last patient was gone. If they took nourishment through their mouths instead of a drip or tube, she’d be there even though her family was evacuating.

“I want to eat,” she said, “but my stomach is so nervous. I’m more scared of being left behind than anything -- plus seeing all those New Orleans people, what they went through.”

She shook her head and headed out the door with one small bit of instruction: “Stay prayerful.”

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A city at risk

Nearly wiped out by a hurricane in 1900, Galveston built sea walls for protection. Later, “geotubes” were installed along other sections of the coastline. Some say, however, that such structures contribute to beach erosion.

Erosion control

“Geotubes,” long, polyester tubes filled with sand and slurry, are buried and covered with sand and vegetation. The tube hardens, protecting land behind it.

A city on the sea

Long overshadowed by Houston as a port city, Galveston has become a resort and cruise ship destination. Its industrial base includes shipbuilding, seafood processing and metal manufacturing. It also has campuses of the University of Texas and Texas A&M; University.

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Galveston city profile

Population: 56,597

Median age: 35.28

Median household income: $31,742

White 44%

Latino 26%

Black 25%

Asian 3%

Other 2%

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Households by number of vehicles

1 vehicle 47%

2 vehicles 28%

No vehicle 18%

More than 2 vehicles 7%

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Housing

Renter 57%

Owner 43%

Median price for owner-occupied housing: $84,991

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Occupation (age 16 and older)

White-collar 59%

Service/ farm 25%

Blue-collar 16%

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Sources: All demographic data are 2005 estimates from Claritas, except racial breakdowns, which are from the 2000 census. Geotube information from University of Texas, Texas