Gilchrist is Gone, Pt. 2
There is no Gilchrist. Not anymore. The devestation is, to my knowledge, unprecedented in the modern era on the U.S. mainland.
Of the approximately 1000 structures existing in the town before Hurricane Ike, only about five survived the hurricane. Approximately 200 of these buildings were homes, and it is thought that some of the residents attempted to ride out the storm in their homes. According to media reports, about 34 survivors from Gilchrist and the neighboring communities of Crystal Beach and Port Bolivar have been fished out of Galveston Bay in the past few days. Rescuers who have reached Gilchrist have not been able to find any victims in the debris because there is no debris. Ike’s storm surge knocked 99.5% of the 1,000 buildings in Gilchrist off their foundations and either demolished them or washed them miles inland into the swamplands behind Gilchrist. Until search teams can locate the debris of what was once was Gilchrist, we will not know the fate of those who may have stayed behind to ride out the storm. Not only did Gilchrist suffer a head-on assault by Ike’s direct storm surge of 14+ feet, topped by 20′ high battering waves, the town also suffered a reverse surge once the hurricane had passed. As Ike moved to the north, the counter-clockwise flow of wind around the storm pushed Galveston Bay’s waters back across the town of Gilchrist from northwest to southeast. This second surge of water likely finished off anything the main storm surge had left.
(Emphasis added.)
I recommend you follow the link and look at the first two pictures. Mother Nature, sometimes she is a bitch.
Update: More before and after pictures here.
And actually, a close reading indicates that the survivors mentioned by Dr. Masters were not from Gilchrist.
With flat-bottomed boats fit for marshland, on Sunday alone [Texas Parks and Wildlife] got 30 people out of the extreme south-east of Galveston Bay, some 100 kilometres from Houston. On Monday it was only four people, all of them members of one family who took refuge in their attic alongside their cats and dogs.
However, there was no sign of Gilchrist residents, dead or alive. The authorities hope that they all chose to evacuate, but they know there is always a group of stubborn individuals who opt to stay. And the chances that they survived are zero.
Update: Some people still don’t get it.
It is now night-time in whatever is left of Gilchrist, and a vehicle can be seen approaching from the south-west, from an impossible origin. The bridge linking the two parts of the peninsula has been virtually destroyed, but Bobby Anderson manages to cross it in the dark on the truck that he himself carefully cleaned up of sand and water.
He is hungry and thirsty, after several days of eating raw meat and drinking the thaw water from his freezer.
When the storm came, this 56-year-old construction worker was carried off by a wave. He managed to swim to his neighbours’ house and he survived there until the hurricane died off. His partner did not make it.
But Anderson refuses to talk about that. He would rather devote his energy to criticizing rescue teams, who refused to give him food in an attempt to get him to leave.
I’m strongly tempted to be cold and heartless for a moment: “Fucking dumbass,” was my first thought. “Fucking dumbass ingrate” followed shortly thereafter. But no matter how much I try, no matter ho much of an idiot he may seem, I have to admit a sneaking admiration for the human spirit. There’s always folks just too damn stubborn to give up, no matter what the odds.