Shoreacres still suffering from Ike

Houston Chronicle:

Hurricane Ike's storm surge slammed into the picturesque Shoreacres bayfront in the predawn darkness, turning houses into breezeways as it knocked out walls on its relentless push inland.

Today, exactly two months after Ike hit, the scene remains one of utter devastation. Chunks of the brick facade from one house are strewn across its driveway. A toilet lies upended on a front lawn.

In one house, sodden clothing hangs in closets exposed by missing walls, creating a tableau that resembles a child's doll house left out in the rain.

Eighty-eight percent of the 693 homes in this southeast Harris County community were flooded, including many that stayed dry during Hurricane Carla in 1961, Hurricane Alicia in 1983 and Tropical Storm Allison in 2001, City Administrator David Stall said. Only about half of the 1,500 residents have returned.

Because the scale of Ike's destruction was so vast, it was easy for small coastal communities like Shoreacres to be overlooked. Much of the world knows about the devastation in historic Galveston, but few are aware of the comparable damage in this bedroom community.

"We're sort of a little enclave to ourselves here," Stall said. "We're in the shadow of La Porte."

Trailers and mobile homes of all shapes and sizes — rented, borrowed or purchased by residents who wanted to stay on their property — stand in driveways alongside gutted houses throughout Shoreacres. Other residents camp in tents pitched in their front yards.

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Stall, the city administrator, said only about a dozen families rode out the storm in Shoreacres. No one died during Ike, he said, but one elderly man died later from illness he contracted while staying in a house full of wet furniture.

Stall and other members of the town's 14-person work force kept Shoreacres functioning in spite of flooded water and sewer plants, no water service for two weeks and no power for even longer.

Stall slept in his car or on the second floor of City Hall, which stayed dry. With no cell phone service in town, he drove daily into Houston with an air card-equipped laptop until he found a signal so he could download e-mails and post information on the town's Web site.

Shoreacres is bracing for a huge financial hit from Ike, Stall said. Its tax base, all residential, is likely to decline so much that it will have to aggressively cut spending to avoid a crippling tax rate increase, he said.

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Shoreacres is right next to the Houston Yacht Club which is on Galveston Bay. It suffered substantial damage in Hurricane Alicia in 1983 while I was racing my boat on San Francisco Bay. I haven't seen anything about the clubs damage from Ike, but they put in an evacuation plan after Alicia that may have saved most of the boats. Shoreacres was an attractive neighborhood in the upper bay area. A map of its location is here. It is sad to see it so damaged from the storm. The tidal surge had far reaching effects.