Texas island city ravaged by Hurricane Ike holding sunrise service to mark 1 year anniversary

Texas city ravaged by Ike marks 1 year anniversary

GALVESTON, Texas — Hurricane Ike will be remembered for the destruction it wrought on the Texas island city of Galveston, but also for how it brought the community closer together, a preacher said Sunday at a sunrise memorial service to mark the storm’s anniversary.

About 100 people gathered at one of the city’s historic beach hotels to listen to preachers of different faiths.

“One hundred years from now when they speak of the storm of 2008, let it be said the community gathered neighbor to neighbor, friend to friend, side by side, that we stood as a community,” the Rev. David Green said at the start of the service.

The service was part of a nearly weeklong series of events to highlight rebuilding and recovery efforts in the year since Ike made landfall just outside Galveston in the early morning hours of Sept. 13, 2008.

The hurricane damaged 75 percent of the city’s homes and as well as thousands of other homes in cities from the southeast Texas Gulf Coast into Houston, which is 50 miles inland. It also submerged farmland and ranches in saltwater, scoured away beaches and ruined thousands of acres of vegetation.

Galveston suffered more than $3.2 billion in damage. The working-class city’s largest employer, the University of Texas Medical Branch, temporarily shut down and had to lay off about 3,000 employees.

Ike was the costliest natural disaster in Texas history. Ike’s powerful storm surge, as high as 20 feet, and its 110 mph winds caused more than $29 billion in damage.

Neighborhoods around Galveston are expected to hold block parties and cook outs later Sunday to reconnect.