Residents of Ike-ravaged peninsula head home

Some worry state will seize land
Pam Adams felt a sense of guilt that her home survived and those of her neighbors didn’t.

“It is just devastating. I feel so sorry for all these people,” she said. While their home remains standing, the first-floor garage was wiped away, the wooden staircase to the second floor was knocked out and the home’s interior suffered water and mud damage.

Warren Adams said he planned to repair and rebuild. But like many other Bolivar Peninsula residents who planned to do the same, he worried whether his home could be seized by the state because Ike eroded so much of the beach that it might now sit on public property.

Jim Vondra, 63, whose beachfront home in Crystal Beach was destroyed, said he plans to fight the state if it decides to claim his land.

“We’ve got plenty of lawyers,” he said. “We are going to go after them.”

The Bolivar Peninsula’s population more than doubles during the summer months with the arrival of tourists and beach home owners. The peninsula stretches 27 miles along the Texas Gulf Coast. It is bounded on one side by Galveston Bay and on the other by the Gulf of Mexico.

The peninsula, named for South American revolutionary hero Simón BolDivar, is about 3 miles at its widest point and about one-fourth of a mile at its narrowest. Its five residential communities are Crystal Beach, Port Bolivar, Caplen, Gilchrist and High Island.

Ike has been blamed for at least 64 deaths, including 29 in Texas. More than 1 million people evacuated the Texas coast.

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