In Storm-Ravaged Galveston, Echoes of New Orleans

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For Marguerite Simon on Egania Street in New Orleans, it had been a small statue of the Virgin Mary that had weathered Katrina. Strange, but that is way the world looks after a deluge, all at odds and unfathomable. "Yes, you have to laugh, but it don't come from the heart," Marguerite had said, her voice trailing off.

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Hurricane Ike Hits the Gulf

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• The 1900 Galveston Hurricane

Incongruity rules. For Post-Ike Galveston, like Post-Katrina New Orleans, the weather has been glorious. As the suns falls in the west, the brown pelicans head eastward, as they always do, to the wetlands, flying parallel to the 10 mile seawall that islanders had hoped would have held back the surge. As the birds head home, a constant parade of dump trucks line up in a parallel path heading west along the seawall road to a massive emergency landfill by the airport. The city expects up to 1.5 million cubic yards of debris will be removed from homes an businesses. Out on the water, where swimming is still forbidden because of fears of disease, the seagulls have claimed new perches on pilings that once supported beach bars and restaurants, among them the famous Balinese, a nightclub where the Rat Pack partied.

There is order emerging from the chaos. Randalls supermarket and its in-house Starbucks is open, but with the island water and sewer system still not functioning, portable toilets have been lined up outside. Dozens of moldy, battered refrigerators ripped out of the low-rise seaside condos are corralled on street corners. Stacks of new drywall stand outside. Just two blocks from the beach, a tall wire fence has been erected around the gas pumps and doorway of Luke's Supermarket and Deli, a 50-year island institution where West Enders could sit out front and munch on barbecue and boudin.

"A.R. Lucas is alive," the Galveston Daily News proclaimed last week. The owner of Luke's had stayed on in his West End corner store, hoping to be there for his neighbors and customers after the storm passed. As Ike came ashore, he was injured, a bacterial infection set in and doctors in Houston had to amputate his lower leg. "The people of Galveston have a special resilience and toughness about them," Daily News publisher Dolph Tillotson wrote this week. "Perhaps that comes from generations of dealing with adversity. Fire, wind, water, disease and warfare have failed to dislodge the people of Galveston."

In 1900, more than 6,000 island residents perished in a hurricane. Many of the dead were taken out to sea for burial but even though their bodies were weighted down the tides brought them back. For over a month there were mass funeral pyres around the city. There will be no burning on the island this time. Fires are forbidden. There is a dusk-to-dawn curfew and residents are warned to get shots for tetanus and hepatitis before returning. Downtown, with its brick and ironwork Victorian-era buildings — once dubbed the "Wall Street of the Southwest" — is a ghost town. The only sound is the low howl of dehumidifiers sucking moisture out of bank buildings and churches.

In the harbor, most of the luxury yachts have left for safer moorings, while across the channel the massive floating oil rigs ready to be towed to sea have stood firm. But a large shrimp boat, 50 feet long or more, sits on its side in the parking lot in front of Willie G's Seafood and Steakhouse, wedged between a crushed parking lot tollbooth and the tramline rails, its anchor hanging like a noose over the roof of the tram stop.

Many of the 45,000 islanders who evacuated are coming home and the Daily News is offering free advertising as businesses reopen. The land-side bars on the seawall boulevard are open and the motels filled with construction crews. There is a fresh stack of new Spanish roof tiles atop the legendary Hotel Galvez and a few evening joggers have even returned to the seawall.

Francis Sullivan has no idea what she is going to do. Her house is a total loss. She has few clothes, just $38 in food stamps, and her Social Security pension, but she has few complaints. The National Guard charged her cellphone. The Salvation Army has fed her. Meanwhile, Texas state agencies have received over 600,000 requests for various forms of assistance and support from victims of the storm.

If worse comes to worse, she says she will clear out her garden shed, toss out the toys ("The last batch of kids that went through here were my great-grandkids"), and pitch a tent in the back yard if the city lets her. "If God is with me, I'll be fine. The only prayer I want people to pray for me is that God will give me the strength to do what I have to do — no more that," she says.

Click here for an excerpt from Isaac's Storm, Erik Larson's book on the 1900 hurricane.