Friday, August 18, 2006

Hurricane Alicia, now only a footnote

Twenty three years ago today Hurricane Alicia crashed through the Texas Coastline. Folks in Galveston, Seabrook, and Baytown remember it well.

21 people lost their lives. Another 3000 were injured or became ill. The Red Cross sheltered or fed 63,000 people. Over 2000 homes were destroyed and another 3,000 suffered major damage. Over 18,000 families suffered some kind of loss. The price tag for the costliest hurricane in Texas History: over $2 billion.

In Baytown, Alicia brought the end to the Brownwood subdivision, which had been slowly subsiding into the bay.

In downtown Houston, shards of glass became deadly missiles when hundreds of window panes were broken out of skyscrapers by gravel blown from nearby rooftops. The windows were designed to withstand hurricane winds but not impact
from debris. The result was huge piles of broken glass in the streets below.

On Galveston's West Beach, Alicia moved the public beach boundary back an average of 150'. The storm surge scoured up to 5' of sand from the beach and left several homes in front of the natural vegetation line and technically on the public beach.
Read more from USA Today

Some photos from Alicia