Ike changed Bolivar Peninsula forever
Local // Houston
Harvey Rice
Feb. 16, 2013 Updated: Feb. 17, 2013 10:23 a.m.
1of3Jimmy Wiggins of Acadian Builders works last week on a new home under construction as newly built homes can be seen in the background in Crystal Beach, as the Bolivar Peninsula is experiencing a comebackBrett Coomer/StaffShow MoreShow Less
2of3New construction continues apace in Crystal Beach. As of early last month, Galveston County had issued 1,542 building permits for the peninsula. As of this month, there were about 3,800 houses there connected to the water system, compared to 6,000 before Ike.Brett Coomer/StaffShow MoreShow Less
CRYSTAL BEACH - In a span of hours on Sept. 13, 2008, communities that had stood for almost 100 years on the Bolivar Peninsula were nearly wiped off the map by a furious storm named Ike.
Houses, buildings, the post office, the fire station - water and wind swept them away like pebbles pulled back to sea. The storm surge killed at least 15 people on the peninsula.
Here on Crystal Beach, almost five years later, long-time residents say Bolivar no longer resembles the home they remember from before Hurricane Ike, one of the costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. Expensive new houses are replacing the weathered fishing camps that predominated before Ike bulldozed them away.
The storm also drove away many peninsula residents, replaced by the owners of newer homes. "It's a different group of people," said Bonnie Pyle, 46, of Crystal Beach, who has lived on the peninsula all her life. "If I was to go to a bar right now I wouldn't know anybody."
Rebuilding by the beach: Bolivar is on the mend
While other areas such as Galveston have nearly recovered from Ike's destruction, Bolivar's rebirth has been slow and steady, but the progress is undeniable to anyone driving along this isolated stretch of land.
Expensive homes are being built at a rate that locals expect will restore the peninsula's storm-diminished population within two or three years. Residential sales increased 20 percent last year, and the average price of a home rose from $152,000 in 2009 to $245,000 last year, said real estate agent Neil Spiller,
The peninsula had so many small houses before the storm that the average value was about $100,000, said Ann Willis, owner of Swede's Beach Properties.
"Those little fishing camps that people rented and sometimes mom and dad stayed in, all that's gone, and we can never recover that," Willis said.
The newer, larger homes are being sold at a brisk pace. "We have had a 170 percent improvement in our sales," real estate agent Genie Turk said.
Willis said the rental business is rebounding as well. She managed 300 rental properties in 2008, but Ike destroyed or severely damaged all but 10. Now she is back up to 200 rentals, and rental sales were up by more than 20 percent last year.
Building pace slows
Although new construction continues apace, it has slowed considerably since the frantic aftermath of the storm, said Sid Bouse, a member of the Blue Ribbon Recovery Committee formed by the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency after Hurricane Ike.
Bouse said at least 85 percent of the structures between Crystal Beach and High Island on the eastern end of the peninsula were destroyed or badly damaged. The 15-foot tidal surge erased the community of Caplen. A single house, immortalized by a Houston Chronicle photograph, remained in the Gilchrist community. Most of the 43 deaths statewide were from falling trees and related events, but the storm surge caused all the peninsula deaths.
Owners of existing properties were eager to rebuild quickly and others took advantage of cheap land, creating a construction boom in the first three years after the storm, Bouse said.
"After the storm, there was the fear that you wouldn't be able to come back and build," he said.
The building frenzy that followed drew contractors from all over the country, many of them disreputable.
"The building is still very active, but it isn't anything like it was in the insanity of 2010, 2011," Bouse said.
3,800 homes now
Galveston County had issued 1,542 building permits for the peninsula since the storm as of Jan. 3, compared with 996 for the remainder of the unincorporated areas of the county.
Despite the pace of construction, the peninsula has far fewer structures than before the storm. Before Ike, there were about 6,000 houses connected to the water system, but as of this month there were about 3,800, according to the Bolivar Peninsula Special Utility District. It's unclear how much the population has grown since the 2010 census figure of 2,417, so water hookup figures give a sense of the growth.
Nearly all the restaurants and local businesses have been rebuilt, Bouse said, but the increase in housing values means that employees at local restaurants and construction firms can't afford to live on the peninsula any more.
"It's kind of tough for people to get help because there are not a lot of inexpensive places for people to stay," Willis said. Workers drive from Winnie, about 35 miles from Crystal Beach in Chambers County, or take the ferry from Galveston, she said.
Also driven out were many longtime peninsula residents. A large portion of the pre-storm population was elderly and many were unable to return, Bouse said. "You lost the heart of the community," Bouse said.
Pyle said all of the neighbors in her subdivision are new except for one. "All the older people are gone," she said.
The older communities anchoring the west and east ends of the 32-mile peninsula are the exception to the rapid change since the storm. Port Bolivar on the west end and High Island on the east end for the most part were spared the ravages of the storm surge. Both communities remain largely unchanged, with Port Bolivar relying on the maritime industry and High Island on ecotourism from a nearby bird sanctuary.
Snaring federal aid
A significant amount of property can contribute to the recovery. Galveston County received $103 million in federal funds in 2010 to purchase as many as 756 storm-damaged properties, most of them on the Bolivar Peninsula. The money came from a program designed to halt construction in flood-prone areas. The purchased properties can never be built on again.
Federal disaster aid, aside from the cleanup and immediate influx of food and water, has contributed little to the recovery, Bouse said. He formed the Peninsula Development Coalition to snare federal aid. "We were phenomenally unsuccessful in getting FEMA money funneled to the peninsula," he said.
The only federal funds on the horizon are $19 million to build two wastewater treatment plants. The Texas General Land Office and several county commissioners oppose the project, so it's uncertain whether it will be built.
Bouse is unfazed. "What's really excellent is we are going through this subdivision and you can't tell we had a storm," he said. "That's really amazing four and five years out."
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Harvey Rice worked at several other news organizations before joining the Houston Chronicle, including the Jackson Clarion-Ledger, the Mexico City News, El Financiero and UPI. While working for UPI, he was stationed in Mexico City; Washington, D.C.; Miami and London. After joining the Houston Chronicle in 1999, he covered Montgomery County and the federal courthouse in Houston before being assigned to the Galveston Bureau in 2007. He also was sent to Qatar to cover U.S. Central Command during the second Gulf War and was a member of the Enron investigative team.