Collection of before and after comparison pictures of local areas near Galveston Bay
Mostly areal and recent satellite photos, done by locals to try to estimate what happened to their houses and their neighbours and favourite locales, far as I can tell.
The devastation in some places is astonishing
I hope the evacuation in these areas was selective - that is to say that the evacuation was more complete in the more vulnerable areas than the media reported evacuation statistics. Else we are in for some very bad news dribbling in over the next days and weeks as the local authorities get their act together and start tracing people and who actually got out.
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It was--evacuation orders came early for the lowest-lying areas on that part of the coast. People who followed instructions in a timely fashion should have come through OK ... A friend of mine left as instructed late Wednesday night, and has just received the all-clear to return today (although she's not, because her neighborhood does not have power yet).
Before landfall, I was hearing reports of that ~90K people didn't evac the Galveston area. Have no idea where that number came from though.
A little rant, if you will indulge me...
Mandatory evacuation should be *mandatory*. Declare martial law, have the police and guard roll through and help/make residents leave. (It is important to assume stragglers just need assistance complying unless otherwise demonstrated.) It will never be 100%, but at very least you won't have people stuck because they didn't have a way out. It also makes the 'protect my property' types less likely to be stupid and stick around (protect from who?)
I don't feel sorry for the couple that had their beach front mansion destroyed. They are the people who keep the public so far away that you cant even tell if there is water there, then they want help to rebuild their mansion. Let it slide into the sea!
I don't think the US legal structure is such that it is possible for local authorities to declare martial law in such circumstances, there is simply no enabling authority in general.
The "mandatory evacuation" triggers some civic legal shelters, more typically, for example it closes non-essential civic jobs and releases those people, and it shelters privately employed workers, they can leave their jobs without being under threat of being fired.
This is also why with "voluntary evacuation" a lot of people won't leave, their employers won't releases them and they'd be in danger of summary dismissal.
On the science news front: Ike devastated the National Wildlife Refuges near Houston. Also High Island, a critical habitat for migrating birds. The estimated cost to rebuild the NWRs is of the same-order-of-magnitude as the total budget for the whole refuge system.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-09-21-ike-wildlife…