Before:
Gilchrist, Texas before Hurricane Ike, from Google Maps via WunderBlog
After:
Gilchrist, Texas after Hurricane Ike, National Geodetic Survey via WunderBlog.
Google Map of Gilchrist, Texas
This is Gilchrist, Texas. (hat tip to Wunder Blog for the pictures) Or, at least, it was. Now, it’s completely gone. No structures, no wreckage, no anything. Swept into the sea.
Putting aside the completely wrecked bridge, look at the places that used to be beachfront walkways. Where those houses were is *underwater*. I guess this is the risk you take when you build on a sandbar, but I can’t imagine losing my home in that way. I hope most of those people evacuated, and that they were summer homes with relatively little property left in them, but I bet some of them didn’t and some of them weren’t. I like the Jeff Masters’ idea of buying that land (where there is land, anyway) from the homeowners and making it a park (a la the Fire Island National Seashore). I think that’s a much safer way to help these people who’ve lost their property—without setting up the bad incentives which will cause it to be repeated in the next hurricane.
I wonder how much it would cost to buy all of NOLA and turn it into a park…
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