HURRICANE IKE -- LION AND TIGER UPDATE

(LOLLion concept by little gator)

I watched ten minutes of Inside Edition today (first time in my life) because they promised video of Shackle the lioness who rode out Hurricane Ike on the near-epicenter of Bolivar Peninsula in the Crystal Beach First Baptist Church. Turns out, the lion AND the tiger both belonged to the same guy, Mike Kujawa. He has a sort of home-grown zoo there, which in addition to the felines also once had goats and an emu. When it came time to evacuate, Mike knew he could not get both lion and tiger into the same vehicle -- they're not buddies. Mike had raised Shackle since she was a cub and she was human-friendly in a way the tiger (also a female) was not, so he let the tiger loose from her cage to keep her from drowning, but left her inside a fairly spacious enclosure. He and Shackle hit the road, but were unable to leave because of early flooding from the surge before Ike arrived.

Tigers are good swimmers and this one survived the storm just fine. As soon as the blow was over, Mike let authorities know about his situation with both big cats and requested help with moving the tiger-- who, in the meantime, was being fed and was definitely not roaming the Peninsula, as news sources had reported. According to a "settings things straight" article from the Beaumont Examiner Online, "Dr. Sarah Matak is the local veterinarian in Winnie, the nearest town on the mainland. She was contacted by officials who requested she tranquilize the tiger so it could be moved to safety. She in turn called Carl Griffith, the former Jefferson County Sheriff and Judge who owns an exotic game ranch down the road.

"Conditions in the storm-ravaged community had deteriorated by the time Matak and Griffith arrived in Crystal Beach on Wednesday, Sept. 17, four days after Ike hit. 'They had been feeding it, but he was a very aggressive and angry cat,' said Griffith. 'There were only two choices. It was either put it to sleep or they were going to have to kill it.'

(Tiger sedated for transport from Bolivar Peninsula on 17 September 2008, photo from Beaumont Examiner Online)

"Accompanied by Texas Game Wardens, Griffith and Matak went to Kujawa’s animal house. The former sheriff and two others cautiously approached the tiger’s enclosure in an attempt to avoid agitating the animal. 'That’s the biggest problem with darting animals,' said Griffith. 'As long as you don’t get them excited, the adrenaline doesn’t start pumping. He went down fairly easily; we got a dart in him and got another dart in him.' (sic -- again, it was a female tiger). Matak said the tiger was transported to an animal refuge facility near Somerville in Central Texas."

It seems likely to me that Galveston County's Judge Jim Yarbrough led reporters astray deliberately as to the danger from the tiger, not to make a good story but to discourage unwanted visitors to Bolivar Peninsula. I bet it worked, too.

The Inside Edition video revealed how very large Shackle the lioness is -- at 400 pounds, she looked giant next to Mike Kujawa, a well-built man. (The tiger was also 400 pounds.) He said they spent the night of the hurricane on an air mattress on the altar, as shown in photos, "cuddled up and hanging onto each other". The neighbors who brought Mike and Shackle into the church for safety elected to spend the night in a balcony above the altar, from which vantage point all the news photos appear to have been made as well. During the video, Shackle took exception to the camera at one point and began growling, starting to gather herself up. Mike said genially "Let it go" and she settled back down. A minute later, he turned to her and said in the tone we use with small dogs, "Gimme a kiss." She obligingly licked his cheek.

I can't even get that kind of sugar from my 7 lb. house cat, Dinah.

And, as the article soberly concludes, this "may be the only good news coming out of Crystal Beach anytime soon...On his trip to Crystal Beach to tranquilize a tiger, Griffith got a troubling glimpse of what the recovery to come might reveal. 'I saw a number of new vehicles that were in the debris, which led me to believe there were probably many people still there when the storm hit,' he said with a weary shake of his head. 'I do not believe too many people could have survived that storm.'

"The clear implication from this long-time lawman and public official was that it was unlikely people would leave late-model cars and trucks in the path of a destructive storm they felt compelled to flee."

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HURRICANE IKE: EIGHT DAYS LATER

(Elizabeth Jones of San Leon sits with her four-month-old grandchild; photo by Sharon Steinmann of The Houston Chronicle)

The news cycle in the rest of the country appears to have moved on from Hurricane Ike. I can understand this: The near-meltdown of our entire financial system and the resultant evil seizing of yet another opportunity by the Bush administration to shift the cost of their failure onto working people is critically important. This regime will continue to hurl their feces at us until we chop off their hands. However, I note a huge volume of folks still tuning in here at this blog to find coverage of what, for them, is first-hand disaster. I particularly want to shout out to the people dialing into us from the Gulf Coast -- you there in Point Bolivar, High Island, League City, Brazoria, Beaumont, Orange, Seabrook, running on generator, perhaps? -- who are coming here. I'm thinking about you.

And it's not just me. I'm getting daily hits on Ike posts from people in Trondheim, Norway; Boquete, Nicaragua; South Korea, New Zealand, Iran, Sri Lanka, Chile, South Africa, as well as all 50 states, looking for information about how it goes in the aftermath.


Many local and online news sources have gone either silent or perfunctory. Perhaps it is a concerted media blackout, the corporate powers and/or Republicans trying, once again, to reduce disaster to a short cycle of sensationalist reporting followed by the next Anna Nicole Smith frenzy, so large numbers of people won't ask awkward questions about civic responsibility and governance. When Letterman runs his nightly "Great Moments in Presidential Speeches" moment, a frequent past excerpt is Ronnie Raygun declaring "Government isn't the solution to our problems, government IS the problem" with his shellacked dyed hair the first clue to his Alzheimer-plaque-riddled oblivion and his B-actor smile not hiding the coldness of his neoconservative eyes. For millenia, people have chosen to form governments in order to protect them from being swept away: Consolidate community resource so when the unstoppable strikes, we can save the lives of strangers. Leaving this to individuals, or to charity groups, has never worked long-term. It took a huckster like Reagan and the metastatic generations after him to convince average Americans to vote against their own long-term interests. How many more enormous swaths of geography, population, and culture do we have to lose to subsistence existence before we demand a New Deal?

If you live along the San Andreas fault, take note: When the Big One strikes, if these folks are still in power, you will be SOL.

(Richard Crook celebrates with a dog he rescued at Crystal Beach on September 18; photo by Eric Gay/AP)

And yeah, some of the TV shots portray big beach houses rendered to kindling, but the overwhelming majority of those whose economic survival has been destroyed by Hurricane Ike are working class and/or on fixed incomes. Tourism helps maintain the tax base of many Gulf Coast communities, but the tourists want a service industry to keep them happy on vacation, and those jobs are now indefinitely absent.

This section of coast also draws a high population of Snowbirds, retirees from northern states who come here to spend their elder years in a trailer on Social Security (because it was cheap to live here). Shrimpers, rice field workers, trawlers, rig monkeys, migrant farmers, and fast food workers don't have any other means of support.

Over one million evacuated elsewhere and those still not able to return home are wondering WTF to do now, without residences or jobs. Over 22,000 are still in shelters in Texas. It's safe to assume these people are hard workers, devoted to their families, often disabled, more likely to be people of color or children or single mothers than the average population. They will do the best they can, as usual. But we have to make sure Republican leadership and the media are not allowed to again perpetrate the smear job that was likewise done on the residents of New Orleans: They are just as deserving of respect and dignity as Katina evacuees were and are.

(Gerald Barnett, 10, takes a box in a human chain of volunteers preparing to handout boxes of food to Houston residents; photo by Marcio Jose Sanches, AP)

One striking exception to the trickling away of reporting on the aftermath is the Houston Chronicle online. This newspaper, which had an edition ready to hit the streets before Ike's winds had died down, is doing an unprecedented job with getting information out on its blog. They are utilizing every possible facet of online technology and resource in creative and community-created ways to go above and beyond "reporting the news": They are serving their community in profound and untiring outlets. This is absolutely a Pulitzer-worthy effort.

Because they are almost the only source for current, useful news, I'll be quoting from them heavily in this round-up. In every case I'll give you a link to go directly to the horse's mouth, because what is there is a goldmine of information, far more than I can even allude to. This is an example of what a newspaper can do which will never be offered by blogs: In the field reporting, documentation, and community connection.

In addition, the Houston Chronicle is compiling a spectacular photograph collection, both from their own photographers (go here and scroll down to the Photography section) as well as making available images sent to them by online viewers here. I spent hours going through the hundreds of photos taken by journalists, which are arranged intelligently, download instantly, and are extremely high quality, both in terms of format and content. In addition, there is geographic coherence to some of the files, i.e., all photos from Galveston or the Bolivar Peninsula on a given day. Many of the images illustrating this post are from these files, and I do recommend viewing them yourself here. However, I have to issue a trigger warning: Some of these photos are heartbreaking. One in particular showed a dead animal on the Bolivar Peninsula with strong clues as to what it endured as it died, and I haven't been able to put it out of my mind since. I took care not to bring the hardest of these photos to this post, and if you don't want to see the underbelly of tragedy, best not to look through all of the Chronicle's photolog.

(Agitated water moccasin on the Bolivar Peninsula)

The City of Austin has announced it is shutting down our Convention Center as of Thursday, September 25, for "repairs". I find this suspicious given that over 1,000 Hurricane Ike evacuees are currently living there with no place else to go. Supposedly FEMA officials have the "goal" of getting them into temporary housing elsewhere, but our local news reports that the vouchers FEMA has issued some people for hotel/motel lodging have been refused by those motels because either (a) there was no clearance with the business from FEMA or (b) the people applying for the vouchers failed to make a second confirmation phone call. Does this run-around sound familiar to you?

In order to get transitional housing, FEMA will have to "determine that the applicant's house was not only damaged by Ike, but has to be deemed inaccessible and uninhabitable." Wonder how long that will take? Let's ask someone in one of the trailers outside New Orleans.

More than 400,000 people statewide have registered for FEMA assistance, and about 135,500 families had qualified for government-funded hotels, but apparently only 9,000 have received transitional vouchers. The KXAN article reports that Austin city officials have stated "they are still not going to turn people away. They are looking at the Delco Center as a possibility for those who by next Thursday are still not set up in transitional housing." For those of you not familiar with Austin, the Delco Center is a sports center 15 miles and over half an hour's drive from the heart of Austin with NO walking-distance food or shopping outlets.

To register with FEMA, call 1-800-621-3362, TTY 1-800-462-7585 or visit www.FEMA.gov (all Austin public libraries offer free internet access).

When dealing with FEMA:
• It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete the application process. Only one family member per household should register. Before you call or go online, gather the following basic information to speed the process:
• Social Security number (including your spouse's);
• Daytime telephone number where applicant can be reached;
• Address of the damaged property;
• Current mailing address;
• Brief description of disaster-related damages and losses;
• Insurance information; and
• Direct deposit information to help speed delivery of funds.
• If you have losses that are covered by insurance, please contact your insurance company prior to calling FEMA; it could speed up FEMA's delivery of assistance for any remaining uninsured essential items for which you may be eligible.
• When the home becomes accessible for inspection, you should notify FEMA through the helpline at 800-621-3362 or by visiting a Disaster Recovery Center. FEMA may provide additional assistance after the home has been inspected. If an applicant is denied assistance, the Helpline can also assist in an appeal of that decision.

To protest the shunting of Austin evacuees to a distant location, contact Sara Hartley, Office of Emergency Management, (512) 802-1469 (pgr) Hurricane Ike Media Hotline, (512) 404-4653. Or you can send an e-mail to the City of Austin Public Information Officer via this page: PIO form.

(Matthew Harris, 12, hugs his mother Karen Harris as they wait in line to board a bus that will take them out of Galveston September 13; photo by LM Otero, AP)

Galveston is now allowing residents to return as of 6 a.m. Wednesday, September 24, in a staged, tightly-monitored fashion. Only those who live behind the seawall will be allowed to stay. Residents who live in the West End can check on their property, but must leave before curfew begins at 6 p.m. Violators risk a $2,000 fine. Every resident will be stopped at a checkpoint and given an information sheet, letting them know what to expect and who to contact, according to City Manager Steve LeBlanc.

Here's some details:

• The West End has no water. The East End has compromised water supplies, not enough to fight fires, and if the water line extends above an electrical outlet or switch, turning on that switch will cause a fire which cannot be stopped.
• Gas service to every home has been turned off. LeBlanc said residents need to contact a technician with their gas provider to arrange for service to be returned.
• Residents will have to sort and bag their own debris and trash.
• Very little retail is open.
• LeBlanc urged residents to re-consider bringing young children and the elderly in the city, given its condition. He also advised residents who plan to clean up their property to bring rubber gloves and face masks to protect them from the mold.

(A house lies across Highway 87 near Crystal Beach September 15; photo by Smiley N Pool for The Houston Chronicle)

On the Bolivar Peninsula, search and rescue has been concluded and all but about 35 residents have now departed, leading County Judge Jim Yarbrough to back off from his threat to forcefully remove residents. An article at the Huffington Post states "Authorities plan to allow residents back to the peninsula next week to examine their property. Because the main road is impassible in many spots, they'll load people up in dump trucks and other heavy vehicles."

(Shackle the lioness who rode out the hurricane at the First Baptist Church in Crystal Beach, Texas; AP photo)
Shackle the lioness has been taken to the mainland. In addition, the tiger at large (whose name was never given but I've been thinking of him as Guillermo Blake) has been captured and taken to safety.

(An alligator crosses Gulfway Drive on the north side of the Bolivar Peninsula, September 15; photo by Tony Gutierrez/AP)

About 1.4 million customers remained without power statewide, including about half of the Houston area. For a map of where power has been restored in the Houston area, click here at the Houston Chronicle. As of this writing, the local utility outages are reported as:

• CenterPoint: 46% out
• Entergy Texas: 29% out
• Sam Houston: 35% out
• TNMP: 24% out

As of September 19, CenterPoint Energy has released the map below showing estimated time for completion of substantial restoration (which they define as 80%).


The Houston Chronicle is maintaining a comprehensive list of Where to Get and Give Help (including make donations), in every conceivable category. This is the best source out there, bookmark it.

(Blanca Linares, 76, originally from El Salvador, smiles as she gets a bag of ice from 13-year-old volunteer Daniel Medrano in Galveston; photo by Julio Cortez, The Houston Chronicle)

The Houston Chronicle has a Guide to Tree Debris, determining how to tell if a tree can be saved, getting reliable tree-damage assessment and removal, trees that survive hurricanes, how to get rid of vegetative debris and haul it yourself.

(Salatheia Bryant-Honors, Co-Pastor of Reedy Chapel A.M.E., prays; photo by Nick de la Torre, The Houston Chronicle)

The Houston Chronicle is running a "Fact or Fiction" section to research and report back on rumors arising in Ike's aftermath. A few of their answers are:

• The rumor that "If you're out of power for five days, FEMA will pay you $2,000" appears to be false. The Chronicle reports "The FEMA Web site shows no indication that they are cutting checks for any amount of money due to Hurricane Ike, much less $2,000, nor is the agency offering any money to people because their homes have lost power."
• The rumor "The statue that commemorates the 1900 hurricane in Galveston was destroyed" is also false. The monument is still standing.
• The rumor that "All Houston-area YMCAs are open to the community for showers and battery-charging" is mostly true. But you need to know which YMCA's are open and have power. the Chronicle is providing that information here (PDF file).

(Photo by James Nielsen, The Houston Chronicle)

From the Houston Chronicle, an expansive and very helpful guide to living without power, Weathering Ike: What To Do After The Storm. This includes:

• Games to play with friends and family when the power is off
• Accounts of people doing generator and resource-sharing
• Recipes for those without power
• Places to take the kids, including libraries, museums, YWCA's and malls with power
• Tips on avoiding injury and disease after a storm
• Should you trash or eat defrosting food?
• Things to keep in mind when filing your insurance claim (with contact numbers for most major insurers)
• An updated list of distribution centers supplying ice, water and meals (MREs) for residents
• Phone number for hotel and motel chains in Houston
• Saving your wine

I'll reprint here one section from this excellent series: Tips to protect your home from power surge, by Corilyn Shropshire and Tara Dooley

"When the lights go on, it will be unexpected, the lucky ones with power say. Here are some tips to be prepared so you don't blow it when the lights go on in your neighborhood:
• Unplug it: Unplug all appliances, especially sensitive electronics such as computers, plasma televisions. Turn off air conditioners. New homes with electric water heaters sometimes have switches. Turn those off. When power first arrives in crowded neighborhoods, a short-term overload is possible. That can damage electronics.
• Breaker box: Stay away. Those boxes are often poorly marked and messing with the main breaker can cause more trouble than it's worth when the power goes on.
• Take it slowly: Leave one light on. But once power is up, plug in small appliances first. Then switch on the bigger ones. Finally, turn on the air conditioner.
• Check your connections: Energy companies are responsible for the system until it hits your home or business. The rest is up to you. Check the connections from the wires to the house. If there is a problem, call an electrician.
• Be mindful of dangers: Just because the power is on in your home, does not mean all is right in the entire world. Just yours. Remember to stay away from low hanging or downed power lines. Assume they are dangerous.
• Dig carefully: It's not just about the electricity. Gas lines are also a concern. Underground lines can be disturbed by well meaning maintenance efforts. Before digging holes in the ground to fix a fence, make sure the underground utility lines are marked. You are required to call 811 for the service that will mark the lines. Remember, there may be a wait for this service."

For evacuees returning to their homes, Bobby Hankinson wrote for the Houston Chronicle a guide to What to bring back:

"If you evacuated from Houston or its surrounding communities for Hurricane Ike, please wait to return home until your city leaders give their public approval.
When it's safe to return, take the opportunity to pack accordingly. You may want to consider acquiring a few additional items while you're in an area that was not as hard hit by the storm.

"Here are some suggestions for what to bring with you, especially if you will be returning to a home with no power:

• Water. Buy bottled water for drinking and fill up jugs for sanitation.
• Gasoline. Lines in our area are very long, and fuel is in short supply.
• Ice. Fill up a cooler.
• Non-perishable food. Some supermarkets are open, but lines are long.
• Batteries.
• Flashlights.
• Candles.
• Matches.
• Prescription refills.
• Baby wipes and hand sanitizer.
• Cleaning supplies.
• Charged cell phone and laptop, plus a car charger for electronics.
• Disposable camera to document damage for insurance.
• Written list of important phone numbers.
• Extra towels, socks and underwear. Even if your water is on, washing machines need power to run.

Commenter cb mallard shares these additional tips to homeowners:
1. Disposable latex gloves to wear under work gloves.
2. Large clear and black garbage bags. Clear means save, black means throw away. (This is invaluable because everything is covered in mud - so items and piles become indistinquishable)
3. Small kitchen garbage bags (prior water,sewage, etc. - put under toilet seat , then tie and thow away.
4. Sense of humor. Find a stuffed animal and set it on an upholstered chair in your yard - any kind of trashy yard art like that (a) helps you find your home when trash is 8' high and (b) lifts spirits. We put a big stuffed bunny on a Harley.
5. Have a watch or alarm set for every 60 min to take a water break.
6. Take 6 million pictures.
7. When in doubt or really sad about something - keep it, every heirloom doesn't have to be thrown away today; some can be rescued, or thrown away later. CDs can be washed off, or you may not be ready.
8. Find out from state about generator, power washer allotments. You will need both if you are going to clean up. This is not the time to go off brand - get one from Lowes or Home Depot or someplace to which it can be returned if it doesn't work.
10. What you need in the begininng are people with lots of upper body strength (young, strong) ripping up carpet and tearing out walls, etc. calls for that. Someone with less strength can take pictures (take 2 of everything from different angles, take the ceilings, etc.)
11. Have a picture pile. People brought things out by wheelbarrow and I took pictures before we put in the 8' trash piles. This is so crucial for insurance - both flood, FEMA, etc.
12. Apply for all the help you can get. Don't worry, if you are not eligible you won't get any. This is a good job for the person who doesn't have a lot of upper body strength.
13. You need a bag with Social Security cards, driver licenses, electric bills, mortage papers, insurance papers. The Red Cross and Salvation Army were great. Go early in the process and early in the morning! Take a book to read and plan to be there 4 hours."

And here's one of the recipes for those without power, from Nicki: 'I make a "salad" from rinsed and drained black beans, drained corn and a can of Rotel. It's better with fresh cilantro and lime juice, but at least it's spicy and a relief from the peanut butter sandwiches.'

(Sculptures of the Blues Brothers sit in chairs in front of a demolished business on HWY 87, September 18, in Crystal Beach; photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

If you are one of those who will be returning home to assess damage, here's some advice from Texas Watch, a statewide consumer advocacy organization active in insurance, nursing home resident protection, patient protection and consumer law issues:

• Take Documentation.
• Make a comprehensive inventory of the household items lost in the storm, and keep receipts from emergency repairs and temporary housing costs.
• Track Communications with Your Insurance Company.
• Keep a log of all communications with your insurance carrier, including anytime they fail to return a call or miss a scheduled appointment.
• Be Careful What You Sign.
• Do not sign anything you do not fully understand. Make sure all documents are explained thoroughly so that you know what you are signing and how it will affect your claim.
• Ask for Proof.
• If your insurer tells you that you are not covered, require them to offer proof. The burden is on the carrier to point to the exclusion in your policy.
• Complain if Necessary.
• If you believe that you are being treated unfairly by your insurance carrier, file a complaint with the Texas Department of Insurance and/or the Texas Attorney General's Office.

Contact Texas Watch's Ike Insurance Hotline at (888) 738-4226 for assistance in filing complaints. (Staffed M-F, 9-5 CDT) This toll free hotline will be the clearinghouse of information and a way to compile information about potential insurance abuse.
Texas Watch will not be able to directly solve victims' insurance problems. However, it will monitor complaints and refer them to the appropriate government agencies, such as the Texas Department of Insurance and the Texas Attorney General's office.

(A cat looks down from a a tree in Galveston's flooded West end; photo by LM Otero/AP)

Over 20,000 cattle and hundreds of horses have died or are dying as a result of consuming salt-contamined grass and water. In addition, Hurricane Ike reportedly broke down more than 90 percent of livestock fencing in Orange, Jefferson and Chambers counties. Officials with the Texas Department of Agriculture said the situation is "unprecedented."

As I reported in a prior post, owners of livestock may contact their local emergency management officials, or call the Texas Animal Health Commission at 1-800-550-8242 extension 296.

To assist in the care of farm animals in the stricken region, you can:
• Offer financial donations through the Texas AgriLife Extension Service at their website or by calling 979-845-2604. They are setting up horse and cattle feed donation and distribution sites.
• Contact the Texas Department of Agriculture at their Hay Hotline or call 1-800-Tell-TDA to sell or donate animal feed, hay, or other resources such as feed and water troughs.

(Employee Marleny Alvarado transports a cart full of animals from Galveston into the Houston SPCA; photo by Dave Rossman, The Houston Chronicle)

There simply isn't enough good to be said about the first- and second-responders to this disaster, many of whom are working on their own time to do heroic jobs. Any way you can honor and assist this folks, do it. I'm happy to report that not only did Gaido's Restaurant in Galveston survive, they prepared a sit-down linen dinner for exhausted rescue workers this week. Way to go.

(Mary Kay Gaido of Gaido's Restaurant prepares tables for a free lunch in Galveston for about 1,000 first responders helping with the recovery efforts following Hurricane Ike on September 18; photos by Scott Olson/Getty Images and Matt Rourke/AP)

Bits and Bobs:
• Texas oyster production has been hammered as a result of habitat destruction by Hurricane Ike. Shrimp and fish seem to still be in full supply.

(Thousands of fish are revealed on the shoulder of a road as flood waters recede in Orange, Texas; photo by Eric Gay/AP)

• The waves of Hurricane Ike have uncovered a ragged shipwreck near Port Morgan, Alabama that archeologists say could be a two-masted Civil War schooner that ran aground in 1862 or another ship from some 70 years later.

(Rabbi Roy Walter leads the Congregation Emanu El Shabbat; photo by Eric Kayne, The Houston Chronicle)

[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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HURRICANE IKE: LIONS, TIGERS, AND WHAT CAN WE BEAR?

(A short by Guilherme Marcondes of Brazil, blending puppetry, illustration, photography and CGI)

When I read that a tiger was roaming the devastated Bolivar Peninsula, I began to imagine Hurricane Ike himself as the tiger.

I lived in India as a small child during the late 1950s, and grew up on stories of my father's tiger hunts out in the forested areas where he worked most of the time. Twice a tiger began poaching humans from small villages, almost always an animal who has been partially disabled or become too old to hunt for its regular game. If news of this reached Daddy's crew, they quite sensibly refused to go out into the field to work until the tiger was dealt with. He went with a professional hunter, sat in a tree blind all night with a goat tethered below, and once it was his shot who killed the tiger. He made pains to tell us he took no pride in it. He said it was dangerous but not skillful hunting, taking down an animal who had reached the end of its natural resources, and he refused to take the skins or keep a photo.

In this case, however, it was the Tyger who took us down.



Humans have always chosen to live in proximity to nature which can destroy them. Those margins tend to be fecund and nurturing when nature is peacefully asleep. The Mississippi, Vesuvius, San Andreas -- we cluster like dolts near our imminent death. But we are not dolts, we do know the risk. We simply think we can outrun it, outbuild it, outlive it.

Among the Yurok of Northern California, the world was seen as a flat disk of land floating on The Ocean Beyond The World, into which all rivers ran. Beyond that Ocean lay The Ocean Beyond The Ocean, and further still was the World Beyond The World. Between the two Oceans was the lip of the great bowl of sky, which did not fit snugly but shifted from side to side. As it rattled up and down, it created the ocean waves. Sometimes as the sun goes down, you can see through that gap between the sky and distant ocean's border, glimpsing the World Beyond The World -- what we call the green flash at sunset.

The motion of the sky and its subsequent waves create instability in our land disk, they believed. (If this is not the most elegant theory of plate tectonics you can imagine, existing for tens of thousands of years before our modern "science", I'll eat my Mao cap.) To help settle the earth, every spring they had a long dance where they pounded the bare earth with their bare feet, communing with it all the way down, reassuring it. When the dances went well, there was no terrible earthquake that year.

It makes as much sense as building levees to corral the Mississippi and halt its westward roam through New Orleans and the Atchafalaya. More sense to me, in fact.

And for a century now, wetlands and barrier dunes along the Gulf Coast have been altered so developers could earn quick money building houses for the rich. Roads and commercial property always followed, meaning more development, and eventually communities rose up where those native to the region knew it wasn't smart to build.

(Map from Texas Indians)

The people who originally lived on the coastal bend of Texas, from barrier islands inland, are collectively known as Karankawas. They made a vivid impression on the first Europeans to encounter them, standing generally over six feet tall, heavily tattooed, men with pierced nipples and lips, and covered either in mud or rancid shark liver oil to ward off insects. (Some Europeans wrote you could smell them coming because of the fish oil, but after enduring coastal mosquitoes, many newcomers themselves took up using the emollient, odor be damned.) They were highly skilled archers, with long bows over six feet in length and arrows up to three feet long for use in shallow water.

The Karankawa are legendarily said to have practiced ritual cannibalism, but this claim must always be regarded with suspicion: Apparently one of the first questions Europeans asked any new tribe they countered was "Where are the cannibals?", and they remained so obsessed with the subject that generally some obliging joker among the newly "discovered" people would finger a neighboring tribe as eaters of human flesh. In actual fact, the only reliable evidence we have of ritual cannibalism among peoples of the Gulf Coast are the Catholic explorers and missionaries themselves, converting their wafers and wine into the body and blood of Christ before consumption.

The Karankawa only lived on barrier islands and the coast itself during winter months, when shellfish were edible, fish migration beneficial, and the mosquitoes not as bad. Plus, of course, the threat of hurricanes was to be avoided. During the summer they retreated inland to hunt and forage. On Galveston Island, Karankawa rescued the few survivors of the ill-fated Pánfilo de Narváez Expedition in 1528. Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca wrote that upon finding them in their pitiful condition, the Karankawa sat down and wept with them. By 1860, through disease and outright genocide, the Karankawa were extinct.

Early European settlers along the Gulf Coast moved on as soon as they could unless they were pirates, in the military or of a certain mindset to adapt to the environment. By the mid 1800s, this latter group, the settlers, knew to keep things simple: Grow a little rice, catch a few fish, smuggle enough to buy sugar and kerosene, and ride out the hurricanes which came up without enough warning to flee. Like islanders and hazardous coastal dwellers anywhere, they've developed a particular culture, tough and easy-going in a mixture I understand.

One of my good friends is a descendant of Mary Hannah Hollingsworth, born 1817 in Lancashire, England and an immigrant to Canada by 1828. She married a Scot, George Albert Brundrett, in Canada and they moved to Michigan, where Brundrett was a sea captain on the Great Lakes. After he died in the 1840s, Hannah moved with her seven children (ages 15 to 3) to the Gulf Coast where free land was offered to settlers. They went first to Bludworth Island, then started a ranch on St. Joseph Island. This sand barrier island, across from Aransas Bay from Rockport, is low on trees and drinkable water, high on snakes and mosquitoes. Hannah made a go of it, however.

During the Civil War, Union blockade of Texas was constant and Saint Joseph was frequently bombarded by Union ships. Hannah was on her third husband by this time, with two baby daughters, but when the rest of the island inhabitants finally gave up and retreated inland, she refused to leave, despite being estranged from her husband. Almost as soon as the rest of the population cleared out from St. Joe, 50 Union Marines landed on the island and burned or demolished most of the dwellings. They commandeered Hannah's home, and while they did not treat her badly, she kept her distance, eavesdropping on their plans. A few days later, she slipped out at night during a favorable tide, rode up island to Cedar Bayou channel and waded across it neck-deep in her heavy long dress and petticoats to warn a Confederate installation that the Yankees were coming. She returned to her home in time to change clothes and feed her babies' breakfast. If you've seen Aransas Bay and Cedar Bayou, you know what courage this woman had.

I was born in Rockport, on a blistering August afternoon in a tiny hospital with no air conditioning, close enough to the ocean that my mother said she could smell the iodine. We moved to Palacios when I was six weeks old, then to Lafayette, Louisiana six weeks after that, and by nine months of age I was living in India, so I did not grow up a Gulf Coast kid, but I love the region passionately. The last thing I did in 2000 before I went in for my knee replacement surgery (the operation which left me with a cognitive brain injury for over a year) was to drive to Port Aransas and hobble into the gulf for a possible goodbye visit. I tend to cry when I listen to Nanci Griffith's song:

Gulf Coast Highway, he worked the rails
He worked the rice fields with their cool dark wells
He worked the oil rigs on the Gulf of Mexico
The only thing we've ever owned
Is this old house here by the road
And when he dies, he says he'll
Catch some blackbird's wing
And he will fly away to heaven
Come some sweet bluebonnet spring.

(You can listen to my favorite version of this song, by Emmylou Harris and Willie Nelson, at this link.)

(Map of Bolivar Peninsula from the Houston Chronicle)

Apparently many of the people who lived in more remote areas of the coast and intended to flee Hurricane Ike were prevented from doing so by early advance of the storm surge. One article from the Houston Chronicle states on the Bolivar Peninsula, by Friday "rising water had already swamped much of the peninsula", trapping Norbert Kurtz with his dogs Galoot and Lucy. Similarly, on Friday morning, waves whipping over Texas 87 turned back June and John Peveto of Crystal Beach. "Many abandoned their vehicles and walked or caught rides in high-clearance trucks to High Island. Those abandoned vehicles — scores of them — are scattered, many half buried in sand or muck, across the marshy landscape."

The article goes on to state "The communities of Caplen and Gilchrist, which bracket man-made Rollover Pass on the east end of the peninsula, were hit hardest by the storm. Most of the homes there are gone, leaving nothing to mark their place save concrete foundations, some of which sprout the shattered remains of the timber pilings on which they stood. The storm surge scoured many areas so deeply that septic tanks are completely exposed. Three of the four lanes of the State Highway 87 bridge spanning Rollover Pass are wrecked and impassable, mauled by storm surge. The integrity of the single lane remaining is suspect."

Kurtz, his dogs, and the Pevetos were rescued yesterday. All search and rescue on Galveston Island has been concluded, and likely some of those resources will be reallocated to other areas such as the Bolivar Peninsula. The death toll is currently at 51. However, the absence of bodies in some areas where there were known to be people who had refused to evacuate has led some authorities to caution about the possibilities of people having been washed out to sea.

The Dallas News yesterday printed a long article with first-person accounts of those who rode out Ike. I'm going to copy in a couple of these here to share:

'Among those who made it out alive was Kathi Norton, who put on a life jacket as the storm closed in on High Island, on the Bolivar Peninsula. She and her husband, Paul, knew the dangers of staying, and put their important documents, credit cards, money and cell phones into a plastic bag, and held on tight. All too quickly, the floodwaters rose and the house started to break apart. Through the gaps, they saw refrigerators, lawn mowers and hot tubs floating past. The deck broke away next. Then the roof started to buckle.

'"The whole floor was just opened out," he said. Norton grabbed his wife and headed for an outdoor staircase, escaping in time only because a flagpole kept the house from crashing down for a few precious seconds. "I look up, the house is coming on us," he said. For hours, they sloshed around in 4-foot waves before finding themselves perched in a tree. They finally made their way onto someone's motor home, which then started to sink. They were able to cling to rafters of a nearby structure and hang on until daybreak. "We had to grab that staircase and float wherever it took us," the 68-year-old retiree said.

'Willis Turner decided to ride it out on his wooden boat next to his house on Crystal Beach, also on Bolivar Peninsula, but it nearly capsized and he was saved by a rope his wife tossed to him. The two held on inside a home that she said "vibrated like a guitar string." "It was like an atomic bomb going off. Right after the eye passed, whole houses came by us at 30 miles an hour - WHOLE HOUSES! - just floating right past," Turner said. "It was unreal. Unreal." Turner and his wife awoke the next day to an island they no longer recognized. The first four rows of houses on the beach were washed into the sea. There were no more restaurants, no more gas stations, no more grocery stores. The neighborhood was gone.

'In Galveston, Charlene Warner, 52, weathered the storm with her landlord and a neighbor in the apartment above her own. "It felt like an earthquake - the rumbling and the rocking of the building," she said, smoking outside a shelter in San Antonio. "Everyone was praying. It was so terrible. All I could say was, 'Lord, please don't kill me. Forgive me for what I done,"' Warner said, as a tear rolled down her cheek.

'After the storm, she and neighbors waited for rescue, but no one came. The water receded, leaving a layer of muck filled with snakes. But with no water, no electricity and a shrinking supply of food, Warner decided to go for help, sliding her way across the goo a block and a half to the fire station. Firefighters took her and neighbors to a spot where they could get on an evacuation bus. She arrived at a shelter in San Antonio with her purse stuffed full of personal documents and cigarettes, and one spare outfit that she washed and drip-dried on a railing Tuesday. "I lost everything. What you see with me is all I have," she said. "I never seen anything like that in my life. I'll never ride out another storm."

'Cheryl Stanley said she and her husband, Tom, wanted to evacuate their Galveston apartment before the hurricane hit but couldn't. Their son, Casey, has cerebral palsy, and the three live on the third floor. When they tried to leave, the elevators were turned off, and they couldn't carry Casey down the stairs. "It was horrible," Cheryl said. "The building was shaking all night."

'A few hours into the storm, Casey said he didn't feel safe in the bedroom, so they moved him to the living room. About three hours later, the ceiling in his bedroom collapsed. "Thank God, we got Casey out of there," his mother said. After the storm passed, paramedics carried Casey downstairs. And neighbors carried the wheelchair."

When Galveston Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas attempted to allow a "Look and Leave" policy for her city on Tuesday, it had to be rescinded only hours later as miles of traffic jams stopped highway movement toward Galveston, including emergency crews and supply vehicles. Galveston has no water, sewage, electricity, or hospital, and there is no date anticipated when these might return. In Houston, America's fifth largest city, most of the population is still without power and isn't expected back on for at least another week. The port, one of the nation's busiest, is being swept by sonar boats to clear debris clogging navigation.

(Resident trying to return to Galveston snarled in traffic; photo by Beatrice de Gea for NY Times)

The International Herald Tribune states Houston "Mayor Bill White complained FEMA wasn't bringing in the supplies fast enough, and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett had personally taken over coordination of efforts to hand out relief supplies. FEMA officials in Houston said they were refining glitches in the relief effort and delivering millions of meals and water every 24 hours. Spokesman Marty Bahamonde said FEMA will begin paying for 30 days of hotel expenses for homeowners whose houses are uninhabitable."

But what happens after those 30 days are up? What's going to happen to the 3000 evacuees still here in Austin? At least one of them on the evening news last night had found an aerial photograph of her house in Galveston -- or rather, where her house used to be -- and said "That's it. I'm now living in Austin." Welcome, sister.

The Christian Science Monitor yesterday observed "Charitable organizations, which played a central role in post-Katrina emergency relief, report they're already exhausted and depleted after responding to hurricanes Gustav and Hanna, as well as tropical storm Fay."

On a bigger scale, I think we're looking at another mass migration of people from one region to another, such as occurred after Katrina. Such as occurred after the 1927 Mississippi Flood, when an entire generation of African-American tenant farmers said "Fuck you" to the white land owners of the Delta and followed railroad lines north, leading eventually to (among other things) Motown and Oprah Winfrey.

Coastal building policy has been a controversial ember for some time, and is going to flare back into open flame in the months ahead. The Christian Science Monitor already sidled up to the issue yesterday with an article which states 'Safely ensconced behind a 10-mile long seawall built after a catastrophic 1900 hurricane, native Galvestonian Andrew Shelton took barely a lick from Ike. On either side of the seawall, however, a 12-foot storm surge claimed perhaps hundreds of recently built homes with beach access and million-dollar views.

'The contrast, says Mr. Shelton, reveals the folly of an exuberant coastal policy that has allowed taxpayer-subsidized market forces to place some of the nation's most valuable real estate on the coast's most unpredictable perches. "The irony of this storm is that rich people who built outside the seawall got wiped away and the lower economic classes who trust the seawall survived," says Shelton, whose great-great-grandfather, John Henry Hutchens, survived the 1900 hurricane, which killed more than 6,000 islanders.

'As the unprotected West End neighborhoods of Galveston Island remained impassable, and news came that much of Bolivar Peninsula to the east, also unprotected, had borne the brunt of Ike's massive wall of water, questions are being raised about the storm's impact on coastal development. I think people are now going to weigh carefully their investments, whether it's in terms of industry, business, and government," says Heber Taylor, editor of the Galveston County Daily News, Texas' oldest continuously published newspaper.

'With President Bush visit to the island Tuesday, it's a debate that's likely to focus on Galveston, where storm memories run deep in the island's colorful and multi-cultural heritage, and where recent decades have seen political and market shifts that seem to contradict the hurricane lessons learned, and still practiced, by many natives.

'On the other side of the debate is the notion that coastal development is no riskier than building in wildfire-prone California hills or along Tornado Alley in Kansas, with few critics questioning the right of residents there to receive federal insurance and rebuilding aid. Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with its $130 billion federal aid package, began shaping that debate in earnest, sparking deep reforms in required construction practices. In some beach towns in and around Galveston Island – including Bolivar, Rollover Pass, Crystal Beach, and Gilchrist – Ike may now define how Texas decides to draw both physical and philosophical lines on beach-building.

'Even before the storm, Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson proposed that new coastal construction be set back at 60 times the erosion rate – 60 feet for every foot of erosion, for example. "We now have a graphic example of why you should build as far away from the dunes as possible," Mr. Patterson told the Houston Chronicle during a flyover. Local officials blasted Patterson's proposal, claiming that communities couldn't survive without new construction. The late '90s real estate boom helped fill tax coffers at a time when local industries were declining – especially in old boom towns like Galveston.

'So far, the federal government has largely sided with building boosters. In high-erosion corners of the Gulf like Dauphin Island, Ala., the Army Corps of Engineers has moved sand in order to replace home lots that washed out to sea. Generous infrastructure funds guaranteed by federal law allow the government to underwrite disaster recovery, and also tend to support rebuilding on vulnerable lots.

"It's a very positive sign for sensible management if the State of Texas does take a new look at how we rebuild extremely vulnerable shorelines," says Rob Young, director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines at Western Carolina University in Cullowhee, N.C. "But I'm also skeptical, because the people who are being shut out of rebuilding tend to be wealthy and politically influential. People say, 'Those people must be nuts to build on the West End of Galveston,' but it's actually the taxpayers who are nuts for subsidizing that development."

'Alphonso Nickerson, who rode out Ike with his mother behind the seawall, says wealthier residents will certainly rebuild. "If you don't have to worry about money, it's no big thing," he says. But Carlos Silliman, a laid-back outdoorsman, says city government has abandoned the lessons of the last half-dozen storms. He thinks the city should stop building infrastructure to the unprotected areas and pay more attention to storm-proofing the city's five electrical substations, all of which fizzled out.

'"Yes, these kinds of storms become memorialized and they become part of that culture," says Anthony Oliver-Smith at the Institute for Environment and Human Security at United Nations University in Bonn, Germany. But he says, "Memories of [natural disasters] begin to diminish after 30 years, at which point development begins again to put people in harm's way."'

(Residents of Pasadena, Texas, affected by Hurricane Ike receive ice, water and food from members of the Texas National Guard; photo by Chris Graythen, Getty Images)

Even for those willingly staying behind in the current disaster zone, things are going to get much worse before they get better. The soil of Bolivar Peninsula is spongy with moisture and contains tangled mats of vegetation which are a refuge for snakes and a breeding ground for vast clouds of mosquitos. One man in Galveston was found on the street with more than 1,000 mosquito bites, and he was airlifted to another city.

The New York Times reports 'The sludge left in homes and on roads as floodwaters recede represents a “toxic soup” of mud, human waste, asbestos, lead and gasoline that poses serious health risks and must be removed before people return. Homes must be inspected for structural damage and for leaks before natural gas service can be restored. And before debris can be hauled away, hazardous material has to be separated from what can be sent to recycling centers, burned or chipped into mulch.

'“At 60,000-feet altitude, the damage just looks like a lot of debris,” said Steve LeBlanc, the city manager. “Just clean it up. Flip a switch. And we can be back online. It’s a whole lot more complicated than that.”

(Christopher Cox amid the remnants of his trailer in Galveston, Texas after Hurricane Ike; photo by Carlos Barria/Reuters)

'Waiting on hold with his insurance company, one resident of Galveston Island, John Strange, took a break from scraping sludge off his home’s vinyl floor. He said the bugs that were emerging from the sludge were just too overwhelming. “They could fly away with your hat,” he said. “The roaches are bigger than I’ve ever seen in New York City. They’d whip a New York roach. The mosquitoes are as big as your thumbnail. You name them, you know, like ‘Hey, George.’ ”

'In New Orleans, the sludge and floodwaters left after Hurricane Katrina had lead levels that were 56 times the amount considered safe in drinking water and bacteria levels that were 19 times the acceptable measure, according to federal officials who briefed Congress at the time. The Environmental Protection Agency will begin taking samples of the sludge and floodwater this week to check for contaminants, Galveston city officials said. Grady Clay, an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers, said that adding to the difficulty in clearing the debris was the large amount of construction material from hundreds of collapsed homes that has to be separated if it has asbestos.'

Adding to the worry is the question raised by an article from The Institute for Southern Studies stating 'The Galveston area of Texas that took a direct hit from Hurricane Ike is home to a top-level biodefense laboratory that studies highly contagious and deadly diseases including bird flu, but lab officials are assuring the public that the pathogens were secured before the storm made landfall.

'The Robert E. Shope Laboratory is located in the Keiller Building on the sprawling University of Texas Medical Branch campus in Galveston. The basement of the Keiller Building flooded during the storm, but UTMB reports there was no loss of biocontainment or biosecurity. All labs were decontaminated and secured prior to the storm, with all infectious agents stored in proper containers, according to UTMB. However, UTMB's statement contradicts claims by state and federal officials that the lab's pathogens were destroyed before Ike hit. For example, Texas Gov. Rick Perry's spokesperson told CNN that the lab's pathogens were purposely destroyed before the staff evacuated the facility. Officials with the Department of Homeland Security also told the network dangerous materials were destroyed.

'Some observers question the wisdom of building top-level biolabs on a barrier island vulnerable to severe tropical storms and intense flooding.'

No shit, Sherlock.

And then, of course, we circle back around to lions and tigers on Bolivar, oh my.

(Shackle, an 11-year-old lioness, growls on her altar at the First Baptist Church, Crystal Beach, Texas; photo from AP)

I've found no further word on the tiger. The lion, however, is an 11-year-old lioness named Shackle. Her owner, Michael Ray Kujawa, was trying to flee Crystal City when he saw cars and trucks stranded in early floodwaters, blocking him from leaving the peninsula. He persuaded Shackle from his car and was met by other residents who helped them to the nearby First Baptist Church. They locked the lion in the sanctuary and fed it pork roasts as the storm arrived. Shackle never panicked as water came up to their waists and debris came through broken windows. Kujawa stated "When you have to swim, the lion doesn't care about eating nobody."

I keep thinking about the kind of person who, when they see a neighbor struggling through floodwaters with a grown lion, say "Hey, there's Mike with a lion, let's go help him put 'er in the Baptist Church" and then stick around through the storm with him and his animal. There's neighborliness and then there's unflappable flexibility. I think the latter is part of Gulf Coast culture.

Galveston County Judge Jim Yarbrough says the Texas attorney general's office is trying to figure out how to legally force out the 200 people refusing to leave Bolivar Peninsula, since it has no gas, power, or running water. (Not to mention the tiger.) Even with martial law, I wouldn't want to be the folks going up against the neighbors of Shackle.

(Shackle the lioness lying on the altar floor of the First Baptist Church, Crystal Beach, Texas; photo from Metro UK)

[To view an interactive map showing video and photo reports by the New York Times from around the region that was hit by Hurricane Ike, click on In Ike's Wake.]

(Cross-posted at Group News Blog.)

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HURRICANE IKE -- WEST END, BOLIVAR PENINSULA, AND FEMA RESPONSE

(Point Bolivar Lighthouse, photo by Larry Brandt)

As terrible as the damage from Hurricane Ike to Galveston is, word is emerging that communities to either side of Galveston -- the Bolivar Peninsula and the west end of Galveston Island -- have been wiped out. In addition, there is some question that this news is being kept from the public by a deliberate media blackout imposed either by Texas Governor Rick Perry or, as he claims, by "federal authorities".

In a post today by Vince Leibowitz at Capitol Annex, questions are raised about the media blackout and possible reasons for such an action. He links to TV footage of a press conference where ABC13 reporter Wayne Dolcefino confronts Governor Perry about access to Bolivar and the West End, well worth watching here. Wayne Dolcefino speculates that government officials don't want Katrina-like images coming out of Texas. The reporters discussing this issue quote one official who says there "could be some unpleasant surprises" ahead.


However, since then I have been able to find some information online about the regions in question, and Wayne Dolcefino has been able to fly over Bolivar. Associated Content reports that the Bolivar Peninsula, the 27-mile-long barrier island just east of Galveston which includes the communities of Port Bolivar, Crystal Beach, Gilchrist, High Island, and Caplen, has experienced "near total destruction". The article states "The few houses still "standing" have severe damage and are surrounded by desolate sand and piles of rubble where neighboring houses used to be. Hurricane Ike's storm surge and winds have destroyed not only many of the buildings on Bolivar Peninsula, but also the very land itself."

Current satellite images of these areas are available at this independent site being run by Jake Abby, including some before and after shots, and they verify the above report.

KHOU of Houston in its article quotes Kathy Rush of the Gilchrist Volunteer Fire Department as stating "Crystal Beach looks like somebody set a bomb off. For the most part houses are leveled." She goes on to say “My house looks like a slab with a sign hanging on it.” She estimated that 80 percent of structures on the peninsula have been destroyed. U.S. Postal inspectors who went on a brief survey returned stating there was no place left to which mail could be delivered in Gilchrist. KHOU has some video of Bolivar Peninsula, including the interview with Kathy Rush, available here. This also includes a brief comment on the devastation which has been visited on wildlife, such as birds with broken wings.

ABC13 reports the historic Bolivar lighthouse, which survived the 1900 storm and sheltered five dozen people from death during the storm of 1915's 126 mph winds, has been destroyed, with the top shaved off.

With regard to the West End, including community of Jamaica Beach, The International Herald Tribune reported 'Officials expressed fears that more would be found as other areas of flooding were searched, particularly on the west end of the island, where there was "horrendous" devastation, said the city manager, Steve LeBlanc. "We had been taking rescue calls" from the west end, LeBlanc said at a news conference, "but we have lost all communication with them. We know there were people out there. What happened to them, I'm not sure."'

I was able to find a couple of pieces of footage of the West End. One is raw video without commentary from KHOU, a 15 minute clip which begins at Mud Island, crosses San Luis Pass and follows the waterfront south of 3005 to Jamaica Beach, Galveston Island State Park, and Lake Como. You can follow the path of this video on the aerial map below of Galveston Island at this link (click on the map to zoom closer).

At just past 11 minutes in of this video, you can see Jamaica Beach, with a few official-looking vehicles in it. For comparison, here is a pre-Ike photo of Jamaica Beach from their town website. I had this already on my hard drive because the characters in the novel I am currently writing spend a week each summer at Jamaica Beach. I've been to this part of Galveston Island several times, and I feel a personal empathy for what has happened there.

ABC13 also has some video of the West End with a little commentary available here.

The Capitol Annex post at the beginning of this article stated "local government leaders and some legislators have already begun to criticize both the state response and FEMA’s response to Ike, although none of that has been covered by the media yet." Our local (Austin) news this morning did include a clip from Texas Congressman John Culberson expressing his anger about the fact that 300 National Guardsmen, state troopers and other emergency workers are going hungry at a high-school football stadium and at another staging area on Houston’s west side. He said "they were brought in and just dumped", and have run out of food and water. He beseeched nearby residents to take food and water to the would-be rescuers, and blamed FEMA. The Dallas Morning News covered the story here. (Thx, Jesse, for the link.)

In Austin, as schools which were being used as evacuee centers are being reclaimed for classes, evacuees are being consolidated at the Convention Center (Netroots Nation attendees, yes, the same rooms we were in). Austin still has 4000 people from the Gulf Coast at shelters, at least 1500 of which are from Galveston and have no hope of returning home for the foreseeable future. One local story highlighted a young woman, Veronica Perez, who is here with her husband and a 12-day-old baby, literally only a bag of clothes and baby supplies and no money at all -- they had to leave before her husband could get his check. She is very worried about her baby getting sick "from being around all these people", and she said "I know my house is gone. Has to be."

Austinites are going to the centers to offer what help they can, even if it is only to listen to the frustration and fear these displaced Texans are living through. The local Capital Area Food Bank has already received donations of $25,000 and another 25,000 pounds of donated food, all of which has immediately gone out to feed evacuees. I'm going to post their website again here, since they are doing the immediate work of feeding folks. Can't get more basic than that.

I watched the rescue of one couple from a flooded house in Texas City, who had spent the day after Ike in their hot attic. When the water began pouring in, the man called 911. He said they told him to "tie my ID to my ankle, so maybe they'd be able to identify me when they found my body." He was seriously pissed off by this response.

Why is it that as much as 40% of Galveston's population didn't evacuate, despite the warning that they "faced certain death"? I can't exactly argue their mindset, because I certainly would have left. But I can imagine my little brother being one who stayed put. When you are poor, when you don't believe anyone in authority based on lifetime experiences of being lied to, manipulated and treated like crap, when your car won't handle a 300-mile stop-and-start drive (if you have one), you can be seduced by the idea of "I can handle this, I handled Gustav, I'm tougher than those other folks." Raised poor means you do face horrific challenges more or less on your own, with your family. And you do survive things other people call "unbearable". It's a combination of courage, despair, and poor judgment created by lack of positive learning experiences. (To put it nicely.)

Do not assume they are stupid, or counting on rescue. Most of the people being interviewed right after rescue are saying "Never again, no matter what, I'm clearing out." Of course, if they are treated shabbily post rescue, if the people currently in shelters are pushed around and put in toxic trailers like too many Katrina survivors were, there is a certain percentage who will choose to face death again rather that endure further class humiliation.

When I was in fourth grade in a small, mostly Latino town in South Texas, one day our teacher handed out mimeographed sheets to all of us about a free school lunch program about to start. (It was 1964). I read it carefully before folding it into my pocket. Every Monday, my mother raided the corners of her purse, piggy banks, the car, for coins to make up enough to pay for our school lunches, which as I remember was perhaps a dollar a week. It was still cheaper than sending us to school with home-made lunches, but the stress of finding that much money caused her to lash out at us without being able to stop herself. This mimeographed sheet was like a gift from god, I thought.

After I got home, I found her in the kitchen making beans, rice, and greens from the garden. She was focused on cooking as I pulled out the sheet and asked the main question on it: Did Daddy make less than $250 a month. Absent-mindedly, she answered "Hell, yes" as she stirred something. Then reality sunk in and she looked up at me. "Why are you asking?"

I began joyfully explaining the golden opportunity we had just been handed. Before I could finish, she snatched the paper from my hands and read it. Her face went red with rage and she ripped it up in my face. "This is charity" she hissed at me. "This is a government hand-out. Do you want people to know how bad off we are? Do you want them to treat us all like shit? Don't you EVER tell anybody how much money we have, and don't you dare take charity from all those assholes who want to make themselves feel better by making us beholden to them."

I knew she was wrong. I knew how hungry we were, and that it wasn't dignified, either, to be hungry. However, I was nine years old, unable to argue. I didn't take in her logic. But I did absorb some of her shame, against my will. It's still in there, making it hard to write this and admit it, making me want to make sure you know my mother was brilliant, the finest human being I ever met, my role model in most other regards.

Shame makes people crazy. It contributes too often to their deaths. And the way to assist them out of it is not to call them stupid for having it. I don't expect George W. Bush or Michael Chertoff to understand that, of course, but we who are looking for the bigger picture can find an effective way to deal with the increasing likelihood of irrational human response to natural disaster in our nation.


[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]

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