CRYSTAL BEACH, Texas — Anne Willis, a lifelong resident of Bolivar Peninsula, moved back to her hometown of Crystal Beach nearly three months after Hurricane Ike.
The storm had shattered homes, leaving only concrete slabs and splintered wooden beams. Electricity had just returned, but at night it was so dark that paper bags floating in the sea breezes resembled ghosts. Services at one church were held for six months under a white tent along a highway.
“There were only 100 people here. Our grocery store had been reopened in an RV,” said Willis, a real estate agent. “I thought it was terrible. How are we going to get through this?”
Ike made landfall near the island city of Galveston in the early-morning hours of Sept. 13, 2008. A year later, Willis and other southeastern Texas residents are surprised and grateful for the progress they have made in coming back from Ike, the costliest natural disaster in Texas history.
Ike’s powerful storm surge, as high as 20 feet, and its 110 mph winds caused more than $29 billion in damage, destroying thousands of homes and fouling farmland and ranches with saltwater from the Gulf Coast through Houston, 50 miles inland.
Now, a “building boom” of residential and vacation homes is underway on the peninsula where many Texans get their beach time.
Willis estimates about half of Bolivar’s 4,000 residents have returned and between 400 and 500 new homes have been constructed, but the houses aren’t going up fast enough for the rest of the population to return.
Mayor Kirk Roccaforte said 65 percent to 70 percent of Bridge City’s housing is back up as well as 95 percent of its businesses.
But there are still about 600 Federal Emergency Management Agency-provided mobile homes in the city, down from a peak of 1,700. Roccaforte himself has been living in a FEMA trailer since November.
