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The pictures you have seen of Freeport, Surfside, Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula are surreal and numbing – I saw the same images along a few bayfront communities in Chambers County.
Monday afternoon, after eight hours of chain-sawing and timber cleanup, I rode east along IH-10 and saw the piles of marsh grass on the side of the interstate that had to be removed with dozers after five feet of water covered the heavily traveled thoroughfare.
I remember the great flood of 1994 when more than 30 inches of rain swelled rivers and bayous and raised the water to within three feet of the interstate. I was home from college on Christmas break and remember racing cars down IH-10 with my buddy’s airboat. We thought we would never see water that high again, and I wouldn’t have believed water had risen over the highway had I not seen the water-line and debris along the treetops Monday.
I rode through Anahuac, the county seat of Chambers County, and saw nearly half of the electricity poles and lines lying on the ground. Wind gusts reached as high as 135 miles per hour. Thankfully, I counted over 200 linemen trucks from states as far as Michigan already on the scene trying to restore power.
Keeping on a southern course, I headed to Double Bayou, which runs through Oak Island on the eastern shore of Trinity Bay, to check how the shrimp boats and boat ramps fared. Oak Island is a fishing village made up of mostly crabbers, shrimpers and seafood houses. Before I arrived in town, I was met by a Texas Department of Public Safety roadblock, which allowed me access after showing media credentials.
What I didn’t realize was residents of Oak Island were being allowed, for the first time since the storm, back to the mayhem to assess their homes and damages. I will never forget the morbid look on their faces as they picked through the ruins that once was their home, littered from one end of the town to the other.
Had I known, I would have stayed away in respect for citizen’s privacy. Instead, I saw total destruction. I saw clothes, crab traps and garbage in the tops of 12-foot trees. I saw concrete slabs where homes once stood. I saw tires and metal skids where mobile homes once rested.
Across the channel where my father and I have navigated countless times, the latest two weeks ago, I saw round bales of hay carried from nearby fields by the 12-15 feet of storm surge. If you remember the images from the tsunami in Southeast Asia, the town of Oak Island resembled it.
Though I never made it to Smith Point, results were same. A wall of water engulfed the entire town made famous by its oyster production facilities. Cows, horses and hogs were found floating in Trinity Bay and many were dead on the side of the road.
I finally reached my friend, Chuck Uzzle, in Orange late Wednesday. His brick home stood in a quiet neighborhood about seven miles from Sabine Lake, 10 feet above sea level. When I talked to him he was ripping out drywall and insulation from over two feet of water that swamped his home.
“I’ve got shrimp and croakers swimming in my pool right now,” he said. “Can you believe that?”
Honestly, I have a hard time believing. But, then again, there were plenty who didn’t believe Noah, either.
Bink Grimes is a freelance writer, photographer, and author. Contact him at binkgrimes@sbcglobal.net or www.binkgrimesoutdoors.com.