20 years ago today - Hurricane Alicia affect Galveston

[Guest]

Houston area as the last major hurricane. Wow - hard to believe 20 years has gone by already. Time sure flies by..... locals can post their comment about Alicia here....

[wxman57]

I was working as a marine forecaster (same place as now) back then. We saw those storms drop off the MS coast and begin to rotate not long after. Back then, we had no computers, really. Satellite imagery came off a machine that could only print copies. I still have a copy of Alicia coming ashore. The center tracked right over southwest Houson (where I was living) around 9am. I went to the convenience store down the street to get ice while in the relative calm. Power was out at my apartment complex for about 36 hours, though the condos across the street never lost power.

Our office lost power for days and we had to re-locate at another office. I remember hearing stories of one of the forecasters hiding under a desk as pieces of buildings next door were blowing off during the storm.

As for the aftermath, it's amazing what strong TS-force winds can do. I remember debris piled up 10-20 ft high in just about EVERY median for months after Alicia. Mostly tree branches. It had been a long time since Houston's trees had experienced such wind.

While Alicia was listed as a major hurricane BRIEFLY at the coast, there were no reports of sustained Cat 3 winds. In fact, Alicia did not produce sustained hurricane-force winds in Harris County (where Houston is). Winds across Houston were in the 40-55 mph sustained range with a few gusts up near 75 mph. I believe the last storm to actually produce hurricane-force winds in Houston was way back in 1949. A storm's winds decay pretty fast inland, and Houston is a good 50-60 miles from the Gulf to the south.

If Alicia had been a REAL Cat 3 storm or greater (not just a borderline Cat 3 at the coast), then the damage would have been substantially more. Remember the Mont Bellvieu area that was inundated with a 20-25 foot storm surge during Alicia? Galveston Bay funnels any storm surge, so that the surge at the north end of the Bay and into the Houston Ship Channel will be almost twice that as at Galveston. Imagine a 25-35 foot surge into the Ship Channel in a Cat 4 storm. What do you think would happen if all those refineries in Deer Park were put underwater and out of commision for 3-4 months? Talk about a major blow to the U.S. economy, not to mention many insurance companies going out of business. $10/gal gas (or more)?

Let's hope those big ones stay away from Houston.

[Johnny]

Good post Ticka. I just got through reading an article posted in the Houston Chronicle this morning. I remember Alicia just like it was yesterday. That is what got me hooked on Hurricanes and Severe Weather. Here is the article.



http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/2053355




Hurricane Alicia: 20 years ago today


Staggering numbers tell of direct hit




While helping sort through things after his parents sold their house recently, John Gunning of Lake Jackson came upon several pieces of broken glass in an envelope and asked his mother about it.

"She told me she picked it up in the hotel and saved it," he said.

It was 20 years ago today. They had come to Houston because Hurricane Alicia was on its way and they wanted to get farther inland, "a little bit out of harm's way," Gunning said.

There were 10 of them -- Gunning, his wife, Angela, and their three sons; his parents visiting from Florida; and her parents and grandmother, who came from Galveston.

Gunning, who is a harbor pilot, said that when he got home after taking a ship safely out to sea where it could flee before the storm hit, they drove to Houston and checked into the 33-story Hyatt Regency Hotel, along with about 1,000 other people seeking refuge from the Category 3 hurricane.

Alicia struck land at San Luis Pass on the west end of Galveston Island at 1:40 a.m. Thursday, Aug. 18, 1983, with 130 mph winds. Tides that were 12 feet higher than normal soon washed away 75 to 100 feet of beach.

Some hours later, after taking a brief post-storm tour of Galveston, Gov. Mark White told reporters that it appeared to him that "every single dwelling has had some significant injury to it."

Galveston's four major hotels had to close so long for repairs that three big conventions had to be canceled (at an estimated loss to the local economy of $1.6 million).

The storm took down 2,300 utility poles and more than 600 miles of lines, putting three-quarters of a million people in the dark and without air conditioning or refrigeration. A quarter of a million were without phones. It would be months before services were fully restored.

In Galveston County alone, the reported cost of phone service repairs was $65 million, and some 158 miles of new main cable were required. It took until almost the end of the year to get all customers reconnected.

Destruction proved total for Baytown's 400-home Brownwood subdivision on a low-lying peninsula jutting into Galveston Bay with a nice view of the San Jacinto Monument. Built in the 1940s and '50s, it was flooded in 1961 by Hurricane Carla, and subsidence caused by excessive pumping of groundwater over the next couple of decades caused the land to lose about 10 feet of precious elevation.

By the '70s, people had nicknamed the subdivision "Submarine Acres." Alicia finished it. Brownwood is gone. Instead of the 400 houses that once occupied the peninsula, you now find Baytown Nature Center with wetlands and wildlife observation areas.

As the storm drove across the countryside, it took out 1,300 traffic signals, 3,000 highway signs and 1,000 billboards. That last number was roughly one-fourth of the total number of billboards along area roadways at the time. One outdoor advertising company official estimated industry property and profit losses would total $5 million.

The hurricane spawned 32 tornadoes that increased the damage toll. They were reported in Houston, Galveston, Pearland, Pasadena, South Houston and elsewhere.

In a southeast Houston neighborhood, a 71-year-old woman died in her bed when a tree fell on her home. There were 17 other fatalities before the storm finished with Texas.

When all the broken trees and limbs and bushes had been piled up by property owners just in the city of Houston, the total was estimated at 2 million cubic yards. It took weeks to get it all hauled away. This cost millions of unbudgeted tax dollars in a city already in the financial doldrums because of a slumping oil and gas industry.

It was the biggest blow to the area since Hurricane Carla, 22 years earlier, and after Alicia it would be 18 years before another natural disaster brought comparable levels of destruction to Houston, when Tropical Storm Allison flooded the city.

Ironically, in trying to flee the wrath of the hurricane, the Gunning family bedded down in one of the neighborhoods to get hit the hardest -- downtown Houston.

Skyscrapers lost thousands of windows. Pieces of glass, some quite large and heavy, bombed the empty streets and sidewalks below. Among the buildings dealt the storm's heaviest abuse was the Hyatt Regency.

About 3 a.m., the hotel's three-story sign crashed to the ground. Soon after that the 30-story atrium was opened up when skylights crashed to the lobby floor. Windows of scores of guest rooms gave way to the pressures and the battering.

Just after 6 a.m., the Gunning party and all the other guests were evacuated to the ballroom on the third floor. Gunning said he felt like they were living a scene that belonged in the 1972 disaster movie The Poseidon Adventure.

He said a woman "in a black slinky dress," stepped up to a piano and began to entertain nervous guests while the storm raged on the other side of the hotel walls. The more it raged, the more the people inside that ballroom had cause to worry about the strength of those walls.

The winds seemed to be growing in power and "things were starting to come loose," Gunning said.

The woman at the piano began to play Amazing Grace, and Gunning said you could see many tears flowing in the crowd.

But the walls held. The people in that ballroom survived. And when the danger passed and they could leave the hotel, Gunning's mom knelt and picked up a few pieces of broken glass and put them in an envelope. She kept them to remember Alicia by.

[southerngale]

Wow....what a story! Another reminder of the destruction these storms can bring. I feel for the next area to be affected by a major hurricane.