GILCHRIST LONE HOUSE “BEFORE” PHOTO AVAILABLE

If you would like to see a photo of the “Lone House” taken back in May click on the link below.  Some of the dialog is interesting too.

Thanks to “DewDrop” for letting me know about it.

http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-89312

Please visit the rest of this web-log at http://cloudman23.wordpress.com/.  If you are interested in weather, there are some tutorials scattered about and more will be added in time.

Lone Gilchrist House – Why This ONE? – What Now?

Things Look Gray for this surviving house. Left Click to Enlarge

FOR IMAGES, VIDEOS, AND INTERVIEWS – READ ON.

Thankfully, no one has asked me, “Why focus on this one house, when so many others were totally destroyed?”  I have asked myself that question and I’m not sure how to answer it.  I suspect it has to do with my regard for the architecture that withstood the force of the surge, the wind, and the backsurge and my curiosity over the building codes, and the type of special measure taken to construct such a strong house.  Then, there is also the curiosity about the history of the house, especially when it became apparent through Google Maps and Google Earth images that the house either underwent a major remodeling or was totally new (as it turns out the latter is the case).  Now, in spite of its survival and the great pains the owners must have taken to make it a secure structure, it looks as though the house might not be reoccupied.  Time will tell.

Yes indeed, THINGS LOOK GRAY!  It’s far from over.  Close to 40 people from that peninsula were fished out of the water in successful rescues but it is feared that many more are lost and will never be found.  There are hearts that are broken and more breakage is on its way.  In my opinion, survivors should be counting their blessings and I’m sure that most of them are.

My house in Homestead, Florida having been totaled in 1992’s Andrew might have played a role in the awe and wonder I felt when I saw photos of the lone house that survived in that Gilchrist neighborhood.  I know what it’s like when a killer storm is bearing down, experiencing the unknowns, wondering if you’ve done enough to protect your loved ones and the structure, and going through the rebuilding process (which in some respects is more of a nightmare than the storms themselves}.  I was very lucky.  I had a job, I had good insurance, and I had resources to purchase a 25′ travel trailer to live in during the year it took to rebuild the house.  I also had an understanding family who knew how to roll with the punches.

The reason why I emphasize that “I had a job” is because after Andrew, many businesses that were destroyed did not revive.  The region suffered a great deal.  Post traumatic issues were abundant, and the divorce rate increased dramatically.

Thanks to a “heads up” from Kimberly, a reader of this web-log, I am able to provide you the following links:

Watch and listen to this video on CNN.com.  You will hear an interview with the house owner’s sister and in addition to current aerial images you will see a before image of the house.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/18/ike.last.house.standing/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

For more details read this from CNN.com.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/18/ike.last.house.standing/index.html

Listen to an Anderson Cooper interview with the owner of the house, Pam Adams.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/09/18/ike.last.house.standing/index.html#cnnSTCVideo

Please visit the rest of this web-log at http://cloudman23.wordpress.com/.  If you are interested in weather, there are some tutorials scattered about and more will be added in time.

Location of Gilchrist House Confirmed!

Thanks to images posted by Dr. Jeff Masters this morning on the WeatherUnderground.com site, aerial images before and after have confirmed the location of the lonely little house that seems to have survived the ravages of Ike.  I have reworked the scale of the images he posted and placed red arrows marking the house that has been being addressed in this web-log.  It confirms the suspicions of myself and others that the house was either rebuilt or replaced between the time that Google loaded it’s images and today.  After I post the before and after images I will paste in Dr. Masters’ specific comments about Gilchrist.  Remember, for an enlarged view – left click two times.

Why did Gilchrist get destroyed

and Will Gilchrist be rebuilt?

By Dr. Jeff Masters

WeatherUnderground.com http://www.wunderground.com/tropical/

“It’s rare to see a town so completely destroyed by a hurricane, to the point where you can’t even see the wreckage. The neighboring towns of Crystal Beach, to the south, and High Island, to the north, were also mostly destroyed, but weren’t swept clean of nearly all structures and wreckage. This is because Gilchrist was built in an unusually vulnerable place. It’s bad enough to situate your town on a low-lying peninsula, as was the case for Crystal Beach. But in Gilchrist’s case, the town was located at the narrowest point of the Bolivar Peninsula, at a point where it was only a few hundred meters wide (Figure 2). Not only did Gilchrist suffer a head-on assault by Ike’s direct storm surge of 14+ feet, topped by 20′ high battering waves, the town also suffered a reverse surge once the hurricane had passed. As Ike moved to the north, the counter-clockwise flow of wind around the storm pushed Galveston Bay’s waters back across the town of Gilchrist from northwest to southeast. This second surge of water likely finished off anything the main storm surge had left.

I hope the government will see fit to buy up the land that was once the town of Gilchrist and make it into a park. Building a town in Gilchrist’s location makes as much sense as building a town on the sides of an active volcano. (Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who have done just that, such as on the slopes of Vesuvius in Italy). If past history is any guide, Gilchrist will be rebuilt, and it will take another mighty hurricane to permanently take down the town. That was the case for the town of Indianola, Texas, which lay in a vulnerable low-lying location on the shores of Matagorda Bay in the mid-1800’s. Indianola was the second largest port in the state of Texas, and home to 5,000 people. In 1875, a powerful Category 3 hurricane piled up a huge storm surge as it came ashore in Indianola. The surge destroyed 3/4 of the town’s 2,000 buildings, and killed 176 people. The city was rebuilt, but in 1886, a devastating Category 4 hurricane swept almost the entire town of Indianola into Matagorda Bay, killing another 250 townspeople. The people of Indianola finally gave up and moved elsewhere, and the ruins of their town now lie under fifteen feet of water in Matagorda Bay.”

Please visit the rest of this web-log at http://cloudman23.wordpress.com/.  If you are interested in weather, there are some tutorials scattered about and more will be added in time.

LOCATION OF GILCHRIST, TEXAS HOUSE – SOME CLUES.

Please note north arrow. House is marked with a blue dot. Source = Google Earth

Many people interested in a web-log topic forget to check the comments.  A very kind person responded to my questions about the lone house shown in the photo I posted yesterday.  His is one of the comments which you can click upon if you go to the original posting. I have asked the contributor if he minds my posting his comments in the main body of the blog so fewer people will miss it.  I have not yet received a reply but remember, just go to comments and you can read his input.

In my opinion it was especially kind of him to respond in light of the fact that his structure, to the east a little further down the highway and on the other side was swept away.  Even though it apparently was not his permanent residence, it is still very painful to suffer such a loss, particularly, as in his case, when it was a place of many fond family memories.  So, my heart goes out to him.  In my opinion, it would be best for you to read his input before moving on with this.

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Apparently, the reason why I could not find the house in last night’s extensive search is because the aerial views available show the structure before it was vastly improved in what was probably a storm-related remodeling.

His cues for identifying the house were the two whitish areas to the east which are slabs of structures no longer there.  Julie’s Market marks the location of the pad on the same side of the highway as the house.  I have it marked in the image.  Notice the diagonal edge on the northwest corner of the slab and the match for the shape of Julie’s in the Google Earth image.  He points out that the patch of dark vegetation west of Julie’s can be seen in both the picture and on Google maps.

I think his zeroing in on Church Street and the house is accurate and his explanation for why the house looks different now is probably right on.  Remember, this man has spent a lot of time over several years in this area.  I expect that, just like my house in Homestead was rebuilt after Andrew and improved in the process, both structurally and architecturally, this house in Gilchrist probably underwent the same after it was damaged during Rita.  We went from a conventional gable end roof to a Boston hip so, just as this house does, our former house looks altogether different in the aerial image.  The remodeled version of the house which you see in the photograph from yesterday’s post (below) has dormers added.  They could very well be false dormers or dormer skylights.  That is what I was looking for last night during my search.

I also think he is correct about the wall.  When I zoomed down upon it very close with Google Earth, it appears to be wider than a conventional fence.  It might have been made of cement block.  Anyway, it’s gone now but perhaps it did provide protection at a critical time before being undercut.  I think he might have gotten a little mixed up in his reference to Rollover.  I found 4 versions of Rollover and those roadways are adjacent to each other and well east of the house site.  But everything else computes for me.  Of course I’ll leave it to you to decide.

Wouldn’t it be interesting to get input from the actual owner of the house?  I’d like to know what measures will be necessary in order to re-occupy the structure and whether or not he/she or they plan to do just that.

LATE BREAKING INPUT!  A READER FOUND THIS PHOTO IN A SEARCH AND HAS SUGGESTED THAT BEING ON SLIGHTLY HIGHER GROUND MIGHT HAVE BEEN A FACTOR IN SAVING THIS HOUSE!  INTERESTING!  SEE THE IMAGE BELOW:

Please visit the rest of this web-log at http://cloudman23.wordpress.com/.  If you are interested in weather, there are some tutorials scattered about and more will be added in time.