Still a mess, Galveston to reopen soon

updated 8:49 p.m. ET Sept. 22, 2008

GALVESTON, Texas - As repair crews work to make this hurricane-ravaged island city inhabitable for the thousands of residents set to return this week, the mayor is seeking more than $2 billion in emergency federal aid.

The final price tag to fully restore Galveston after Hurricane Ike plowed ashore early Sept. 13 and displaced most of the 57,000 or so residents is still unknown.

Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas, along with officials from the Port of Galveston and the University of Texas Medical Branch will meet with a Senate ad hoc committee in Washington on Tuesday. They will seek $2.3 billion in emergency appropriations: nearly $1.2 billion for Galveston; about $600 million for the city's hospital; and about $500 million for the port.

Hurricane Ike battered Galveston with 110 mph winds and a 12-foot storm surge and has been blamed for 61 deaths, including 26 in Texas.

More than 1 million people evacuated the Texas coast, and about 45,000 residents fled Galveston Island, about 50 miles southeast of Houston.

Many to return Wednesday
Many are expected back Wednesday, the first day officials were allowing residents to return to an island still sorely lacking basic services. Galveston City Manager Steve LeBlanc said officials are working on a plan to provide temporary shelters on the mainland for those who find homes they can't live in. But LeBlanc stressed the shelters would be available only for a short time.

"It's not there to sustain life on the island," LeBlanc said. "We cannot possibly provide shelter and homes and setups for you long-term."

City leaders are also looking at setting up a shuttle service to take residents from the temporary shelters on the mainland to their houses during the day so they can make repairs and clean up.

LeBlanc reminded residents who planned to come back Wednesday that the city still only has limited medical, power, water and sewer system capabilities, and that life for them will be difficult upon their return. It could be several weeks before services are restored.

Fuel and other essentials remained scarce and police will indefinitely enforce a 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew once the island reopens Wednesday.

Still, the island is far from deserted — at least 15,000 people ignored mandatory evacuation orders before and after the storm, and many of them were still there Sunday.

Wearing jeans and rubber boots, clutching Bibles and weeping between hymns, residents of the storm-shattered Texas coast comforted each other at makeshift church services.

About 50 people came together on a basketball court outside the Oak Island Baptist Church, just south of Interstate 10 about a mile from the tip of Trinity Bay. They sat on folding chairs or simply stood, forced outdoors by the 1-inch layer of mud left inside the single-story red brick building by floodwaters that tossed pews like matchsticks.

A demolished mobile home was still lodged among trees, many of them snapped by the storm's 110-mph winds that somehow left the church's trio of 20-foot white crosses still standing. Across the street, piles of debris had sprouted, proof of the labor undertaken since the storm blew through last weekend, and of the work yet to come.

"I know it's hard. Looking around, it's tough," the Rev. Eddie Shauberger told the congregants. "But there is a God, and he has a plan for our lives."

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