Janice R. Andrews
Residents of Galveston, Texas, a sunny seaside resort, are struggling to deal with the fallout from Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall during the vital peak travel season. Power is still sporadic almost a week after the hurricane, and the town is working nonstop to rebuild. Nick Gaido, whose family has operated a historic coastal inn since 1911, is one of the affected parties. Desperate to avoid losing any more business to the power outages, Gaido planned cleanup shifts for his hotel and restaurant staff as hoover cleaners vacuumed water out of the inn.
For Galveston’s hotel sector, the weekend of July 4th was meant to herald in a lucrative tourist season. But a week later, the usually bustling beaches were sparsely inhabited by a few dozen tourists. Galveston is now again open for business, and Gaido felt compelled to deliver this message emphatically.
“We’ve dealt with storms in late August or September,” added Gaido. “But when you have a storm that hits in the beginning of July, that’s different.”
A Record of Fortitude
Galveston, which is around 50 miles southeast of Houston, is no stranger to enduring catastrophic calamities. The 1900 storm, which claimed hundreds of lives and irreparably damaged the town, was the most destructive. More recently, Hurricane Ike in 2008 destroyed more than $29 billion in property and flooded the historic downtown with a storm surge as high as 20 feet.
But even the citizens of Galveston, used to storms, were taken aback by Hurricane Beryl’s unexpected arrival. The island’s tourism-driven economy came to a complete halt when the Category 1 hurricane made landfall unusually early in the season, right when nearby companies were bracing for a surge of beachgoers.
Companies and Locals Take A Seat
The Way West Grill and Pizzeria, located on Jamaica Beach’s harder-hit west side, was still without electricity on Saturday afternoon. Jake Vincent, the owner, suffered huge losses since all of his stock went bad. Although he was prepared for power to return earlier, he had hoped that it would happen by July 19.
Among Vincent’s losses were some 300 pounds of pepperoni, an 8-foot chest full of fries, and enough mozzarella cheese to load a truck. His 2018 family-owned restaurant suffered a great deal as a result. Vincent had been hoping that a good summer would compensate for a slow winter.
“This tourism season is probably done for,” he stated. “You bank all your summer money to get through the winter.”
The roads that connected the colourful short-term rentals on the west end to the seafood shacks along the popular shore were dotted with orange construction cones and downed cables. Sweating and labouring assiduously on top of lifts, crews from the Houston-area utility CenterPoint restored queue after queue.
Togetherness During the Battle
Jamaica Beach local Greg Alexander raked trash to the edge of the road on Saturday morning. Beryl’s horizontal winds had caused water to flow into his windows, even though he was sleeping in a room at the level of a balcony in a house that was already elevated above the ground.
This is simply another aspect of living in Galveston, for Alexander. After Hurricane Harvey flooded their Lake City home, he and his family relocated to the island full-time in 2017. They’ve been “appreciating our car’s air conditioning more than ever” since they lost power.
Alexander’s dedication to the community has not wavered. “People on the west end aren’t like everybody else,” he stated.
Although they sought solace elsewhere, Steve Broom and Debra Pease were without power on Saturday as well. In order to allow their daughter to utilise their beach property in Galveston, they had already reserved a weeklong hotel stay in Houston. They chose to spend the remainder of the week sleeping in their nonrefundable hotel room after spending the first night in Galveston.
The 72-year-old Broom said he had never seen a hurricane make landfall so early or get stronger so fast as Beryl. He quipped that despite the difficulties, the only thing that could drive him from the island would be if damage caused their property’s worth to increase by two or three times.
Travellers’ Experiences Amid the Pandemonium
Every July, Anne Beem and her husband take a trip to Galveston to celebrate their birthdays, departing from San Antonio. They encountered difficulties this year that went much beyond the hurricane. Tuesday night, following their post-storm enjoyment of a breeze with the windows open, they were greeted by an army of insects. They were forced to sleep in their car with the air conditioner running due to the “mosquitogeddon”.
They purchased a kiddie pool to escape the heat before power was restored on Thursday night. “We just tried to look at it as an adventure,” Beem stated. “Each day was some fresh hell.”
The Road to Recovery for Galveston
Galveston endures because it is a resilient city. The town is committed to recovering and becoming a tourist destination once more. The residents of this cherished town are committed to seeing it restored, with cleanup operations now under way and power restored.
Nick Gaido made it clear that “Galveston is back open.” Despite the wrath of nature, the spirit of this beachside paradise endures.
