Notes From Texas

A Tiger on Bolivar Peninsula.

Infectious Disease in Galveston.

The New York Times aftermath photos (Chronicle has many more, but this is a good, short sampling).

And Crystal Beach. From the Dallas Morning News, interviewing a woman with her name and SSN scrawled on her arm so her body could be identified. This isn't as painful as the comments below the article. They're all like "My dad lived on Crystal Beach and I don't have any word, his name is..."

And this one: Hey Matt, I'm your uncle Mark Chapman, Miles Brother. We've not heard anything either. I'm at Billy's in NC. Call Billy at 828-443-2537 as soon as you can. If anyone has any information about Crystal beach, please let us know.

The thing about Bolivar Peninsula is...from what I understand as not living there and not being there at the moment...is that the residents (besides the stubborn ones who would not have left anyway) thought they had till Friday morning to evacuate. So many of them were found in their cars by the Coast Guard on Friday, the water up to the roofs, waving at helicopters. They'd stayed to help a neighbor evacuate. They'd picked up a stranded motorist. But the storm surge flooded the place long before the skies started to darken. Like I said last night, I would have packed up the van and left the coast behind in the dust (well, the wet sand) long before that point...but a lot of people thought they had a little longer. And if they chose to take the ferry to Galveston instead of the eastern route off the peninsula, they found the ferry already shut down. And then it's too late to turn around. Not everyone in Crystal Beach and Bolivar was a stubborn "ride it out" maverick. Some of them just borrowed time they didn't have.

One thing I read, from a geologic surveyor or maybe it was the county judge or somebody--is that in West Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula, they'll never find people. They've been washed to sea. They'll figure it out in the coming year when mail can't be forwarded and nobody has heard from them and folks get declared deceased.

Deep breath. Time for my "big" ultrasound, heading out the door. Life goes on--my one last contact down there besides my brother and his family is a guy I went to high school with. House and family came through ok. And he let me know he and his wife are expecting their second. So that's something good today.