Hurricane Ike batters poor southeast Texas diocese

Last Updated Tuesday, June 02, 2009 1:30:23 PM

By Valerie Schmalz

Hurricane Ike batters poor southeast Texas diocese

Most church structures damaged by winds, floods

Hurricane Ike breezed through the headlines, lost in the deluge of financial upheaval and presidential election politics, but it left wreckage and battered and flooded homes for many in the mission Diocese of Beaumont, Texas, as well as for many others along the Gulf Coast around Galveston and Houston.

All but one of the mostly rural diocese's 54 churches and missions were damaged in the Sept. 13 hurricane, including a dozen seriously. Several small communities in the diocese of 80,000 Catholics were flooded, with homes destroyed or heavily damaged. Residents are still digging out more than a month later.

Hurricane Ike hit just as southeast Texas was finally recovering from the effects of Hurricane Rita almost exactly three years ago, Beaumont Bishop Curtis J. Guillory told Our Sunday Visitor.

"About six months ago, I rededicated one of the last churches that had been damaged by Rita," he said. "Things had just begun getting back to normal. Then we got Hurricane Ike."

By the time it hit land in Texas, Hurricane Ike was 400 miles wide and moving slowly, so it battered the area for hours, Bishop Guillory said. Of the Beaumont diocesan churches that were damaged very seriously, one in Bridge City took in 6 feet of water. St. Anthony Cathedral Basilica in Beaumont suffered a half-million dollars of damage, with stained- glass windows popped out of the dome and other water damage.

Overall, the storm killed 82 people, and U.S. coastal-area damage is estimated at $27 billion. While Hurricane Rita's damage was primarily from wind, Hurricane Ike brought a surge of water as high as 20 feet, including a lake that rose over its banks and flooded homes.

"We have a lot of marshes here, so that brought out the snakes and alligators and salt water," Bishop Guillory said. "Some people lost thousands of head of cattle either through the salt water, drowned or [were] eaten by alligators."

Living in tents

Even after insurance claims are paid, the diocese needs to raise $2 million to rebuild churches, parish halls and schools, Bishop Guillory said. The diocese also expects to lose another $2 million in offerings from the parishes. And the southeast Texas diocese has put its $25 million capital campaign on hold as the area recovers.

But the outpouring of support from neighbors in Texas and Louisiana and the greater Catholic Church is heartening, Bishop Guillory said. "What I tell the people is, 'Now you are the beneficiary of what you have been doing for people across the world.' Hopefully, we don't have to have a financial crisis or a hurricane to see our need for one another and our dependence on one another as our brothers' and sisters' keepers."

The fishing community of Oak Island was one of those that fared the worst, with all but a handful of 350 homes flattened by a 20-foot storm surge that came in from the Gulf, said Father Khanh Ho, vicar of an area that includes the very poor community. About half of the residents -- who are Vietnamese, Hispanic and native Texans -- are Catholic, relying on shrimping, crabbing and fishing, he said.

"The people are still living in tents and in their cars, or with their friends, because they don't have any place to go. Their life totally depends on the water," said Father Ho. "The hurricane destroyed their houses, their boats, their livelihoods."

Father Ho said very few of the residents had flood insurance, and he added that flood insurance became more expensive and covered much less after Hurricane Rita hit Sept. 24, 2005. That is also a problem for the Diocese of Beaumont, which has a much higher deductible, which will make filing claims for the damage on many of the churches, schools and church buildings difficult, Father Ho said.

Oak Islanders are unable to take advantage of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's offer of vouchers for hotels or apartments because the closest are an hour and a half away in Houston, Father Ho said.

The same holds true for residents of Bridge City and Orange County, the other two areas in the Beaumont diocese worst affected by Hurricane Ike, said Bridge City family physician Dr. Christopher Penning.

Trailers for those left homeless were beginning to arrive by the end of October, but so far there are only 300 of the 5,000 FEMA trailers requested, said Penning, who is also a Catholic deacon.

'Horrible smell'

In Bridge City, though, the economy is thriving, based on oil and oil refining, and the close-knit Catholic community is rebuilding, said Penning. People are digging the mud out of their houses and stripping out the soggy and moldy Sheetrock. "The people here are very upbeat. I think most everyone is happy in many ways because they were spared," he told OSV, noting few, if any, deaths were linked directly to the storm, although there were car accidents and nursing home deaths during the evacuation. The community is grateful for help from neighboring areas, and most people are camping out in their own homes, he said.

Oak Island, on the other hand, is 12 miles away and on the Gulf, and Hurricane Ike came in, hit the homes, and then the storm surge dragged the homes back out to sea, Penning said.

The storm wrecked a small African-American Catholic church in Orange County that had just been rebuilt, Bishop Guillory said. "I was going to rededicate the church in November because it had been totally destroyed by Hurricane Rita."

Father Ho's St. Louis Catholic Parish church was largely spared. Parishioners even raised $8,000 in a recent second collection to purchase tents and sleeping bags and other supplies for the community of Oak Island. "Everybody has some damage. I am living in a trailer because the water got into my rectory. The people in Oak Island, they lost everything. I could not believe my eyes. I found many people sleeping on the ground. A lot of debris around them -- a horrible smell," said Father Ho, who came to the United States from Vietnam as a seminarian in 1981.

Bishop Guillory said the diocese is distributing gift certificates of $100 and $200 to pay for groceries, clothing, gas and other necessities.

Living near the Gulf, the hurricane brought the sea much closer -- with many residents finding shrimp, snakes, alligators and jellyfish in their homes along with mud, said Bishop Guillory. "I talked to one guy who lived very close to the Gulf of Mexico, who said in one room of his house there were 50 snakes and they were very upset -- you can understand they were probably starving in that saltwater. I asked him if he was going to live in that house, and he said he was -- but he said his wife wouldn't!"

Bishop Guillory voiced what several people said after the hurricane, which is part of life along the Gulf.

"I'm alive," he said. "That's a great gift."