Willful passivity and political cowardice can be a real and present danger to our lives.
Few of us in the Galveston/Houston area will ever forget Hurricane Ike in 2008.
On September 13, 2008, Hurricane Ike made landfall in Texas at the north end of Galveston Island, sending a 10- to 15-foot storm surge into Galveston and parts of the western end of Galveston Bay, and up to a 20-foot surge over the Bolivar Peninsula and parts of Chambers County, Texas.
Virtually every structure on parts of the Bolivar Peninsula was wiped away. Broken glass littered streets in downtown Houston.
Ike was responsible for $29.5 billion in damage, making it the second-costliest U.S. hurricane on record, second only to Katrina at the time. Since then, 2012's Superstorm Sandy topped Ike's financial losses.
In the Houston Rice University/Medical Center area fallen trees made some roads impassable. Power lines were tossed into the streets and in peoples’ yards. Traffic lights dangled on threads. I noticed the powerful wind had thrown some onto the street’s esplanades. The absence of traffic lights made driving treacherous in some areas.
The hurricane force winds had blown out windows in the high rise buildings downtown. Living a few miles from the area, I could hear glass breaking all night long as the storm slowly ground its way through the city. When I turned on CNN (we still had power at the time) I saw desktop computers flying out of the blown out windows of office buildings.
Our garage door sounded as if it would soon be ripped from its hinges and tossed into the air. Wind. Please go away, I begged. The wind didn’t listen. It continued on its relentless and unforgiving path.
Many of us went without power for two to three weeks. Few of us could go to work for several days. The absence of electricity rendered gas stations useless. They could not pump fuel. Long lines prevailed at the few functioning gas stations. Anger and frustration prevailed among those in the lines. It was hot, sticky and mosquitoes swarmed everywhere.
No refrigeration forced grocery stores to throw out tons of meat, dairy products and other perishables. It was hard to find ice because everyone needed it.
Some residents, trying to have a little fun, used the flooded sections of Allen Parkway as a swimming pool. They dove in from the overpasses. I have to say these people are a lot braver than me. Flood waters tend to bring fire ants and snakes along with a lot of debris. If one clicks on the link to the Houston Press one can see some pretty amazing photos, including the divers.
While Hurricane Ike wreaked damage and caused the tragic loss of life, when compared to a super storm, Ike was almost nothing more than an inconvenience to Houston. Ike’s devastation of the Bolivar Peninsula in the Galveston area, in which the force of nature swept hundreds homes into the sea, would be the norm for a super storm.
So, on Thursday while driving home I heard an interview on Houston’s Public Radio. Reporters for the Texas Tribune and Pro Publica had recently questioned Houston area geologists and scientists about the city’s storm and flood infrastructure. The subject certainly peaked my attention because this area had experienced devastating flooding during Memorial Weekend 2015. Almost as bad, tornadoes and flooding hammered much of Texas, including Houston again, in October. People here had barely moved back into their repaired and raised homes when this weather nightmare struck. So yes, indeed. I wanted to know everything I could about the city’s flood/storm infrastructure.
What has been done to improve the infrastructure since Hurricane Ike?
We dodged a super storm bullet in 2008 because the hurricane had made an unexpected turn.
But in the wee hours of Sept. 13, just 50 miles offshore, Ike shifted course. The wall of water the storm was projected to push into the Houston area was far smaller than predicted — though still large enough to cause $30 billion in damage and kill at least 74 people in Texas. Ike remains the nation’s third-costliest hurricane after Katrina and Superstorm Sandy.
While Houston has ducked super storms for decades, scientists, weather forecasters and economists insist that it is only a question of time before one strikes the Galveston Coast and the Houston area.
Still, scientists say, Houston’s perfect storm is coming — and it’s not a matter of if but when. The city has dodged it for decades, but the likelihood it will happen in any given year is nothing to scoff at; it’s much higher than your chance of dying in a car crash or in a firearm assault, and 2,400 times as high as your chance of being struck by lightning.
The environmental and economic impact would be devastating. Not to mention the desolating loss of life.
Such a storm would devastate the Houston Ship Channel, shuttering one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Flanked by 10 major refineries — including the nation’s largest — and dozens of chemical manufacturing plants, the Ship Channel is a crucial transportation route for crude oil and other key products, such as plastics and pesticides. A shutdown could lead to a spike in gasoline prices and many consumer goods — everything from car tires to cell phone parts to prescription pills.
“It would affect supply chains across the U.S., it would probably affect factories and plants in every major metropolitan area in the U.S.,” said Patrick Jankowski, vice president for research at the Greater Houston Partnership, Houston’s chamber of commerce.
Houston’s perfect storm would virtually wipe out the Clear Lake area, home to some of the fastest-growing communities in the United States and to the Johnson Space Center, the headquarters for NASA’s human spaceflight operation. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses there would be severely flooded.
So, knowing that a super storm is inevitable, what has been done about it? Texas Land Commissioner, George P. Bush ( son of Jeb) said the issue keeps him awake at night.
“That keeps me up at night,” said George P. Bush, the grandson and nephew of two U.S. presidents and Texas’ land commissioner. As head of an agency charged with protecting the state’s coast, he kickstarted one of the studies that will determine the risk the area faces and how to protect it.
But the process will take years. Bush said, “You and me may not even see the completion of this project in our lifetime.”
The Land Commissioner is so worried that he commissioned a study that will take decades. Surely other studies have already been completed. Ike struck eight years ago. Tropical Storm Allison hammered Houston sixteen years ago. Dr. Phil Bedient, a Rice University environmental engineer, has been writing and lecturing about this issue for decades. I’ve attended some of his lectures. I’ve seen the maps, graphs and charts. We don’t need another study. We already know what has to be done.
Of course George P. employed the usual Republican stalling tactic. Act like you are doing something while doing little or nothing. The Governor of Michigan defaulted to a similar ploy. He ordered a study of the lead producing pipes in the city of Flint. Residents have already been poisoned by lead in the city’s water supply. This nightmare has been going on for two years. A study won’t stop the ongoing injury to the health of the city’s inhabitants. The pipes must be replaced.
Several proposals have been discussed. One, dubbed the “Ike Dike,” calls for massive floodgates at the entrance to Galveston Bay to block storm surge from entering the region. That has since evolved into a more expansive concept called the “coastal spine.” Another proposal, called the “mid-bay” gate, would place a floodgate closer to Houston’s industrial complex.
None of the above have happened so far.
But none have gotten much past the talking stage. Hopes for swift, decisive action have foundered as scientists, local officials and politicians have argued and pointed fingers at one another. Only in the past two years have studies launched to determine how best to proceed. A devastating storm could hit the region long before any action is taken.
Talk is cheap when people are more worried about their political careers than they are about the people they are supposed to serve. As one of the reporters mentioned, it looks like a super storm will have to wreak its havoc on the region before those in charge will do anything about it.
Think about this for a minute. A super storm will drown entire communities between Galveston to north of Clear Lake City (a swath of approximately twenty five miles to thirty miles), south of Houston, while the lower lying areas inside Houston will become Ike’s Allen Parkway “swimming pool.”
And then our officials will act?
In Texas, as in most Republican states, it always comes down to the money. None of the politicians have the courage to call for an increase in revenues to offset the expenses of floodgates or dikes. So they do nothing except commission useless studies that likely line the pockets of George P.’s campaign donors.
That or some billionaire in Galveston who opposes dikes or flood gates is flooding the campaign coffers of area politicians. Or, worse, a greed monger who owns part of Galveston’s Seawall area wants it all for himself. If a super storm strikes and everything is swept away, the fat cat can buy the devastated land on the cheap. I’ve heard about this evil and craven plan from a local real estate agent. I hope it is a rumor.
“We’re sitting ducks. We’ve done nothing.” said Phil Bedient, an engineering professor at Rice University and co-director of the Storm Surge Prediction, Education, and Evacuation from Disasters (SSPEED) Center. “We’ve done nothing to shore up the coastline, to add resiliency ... to do anything.”
Voting matters. Big time. Do you want to continue to be a sitting duck? Because these do nothing, small government, climate change denying, crony capitalist politicians are a clear and present danger to our lives.