b'North Beach following the Great Hurricane of 1919, in which almost 1,000 Corpus Christians diedShould it cost a million dollars to own a home on an island that is hurricanemiles south of Corpus Christi over the King Ranch and did little damage to populated proof? Maybe. I dont know. But if that is the standard in Florida since the 1990sareas. A sharp turn to the north and thousands would have died in the Coastal Bend, for all new and retrofit construction, its no longer a feature. Its just how its doneand the level of devastation could have destroyed the citys future for good.now, and not every island home in Florida costs $1 million. Think of how a 1977During the second half of the 19th Century, Galveston was the biggest city in Mercedes-Benz had airbags and anti-lock brakes, a decade before the first AmericanTexas, a center of international trade and entry port for immigrants, and at one car did, and two decades before those safety features were required by law for allpoint, home to eighteen daily newspapers. Galveston competed with the Port of New vehicles. First buyers paid the price for having the best, and safestfirst. No differ- Orleans in cotton exports, and was among the busiest ports in the United States. The ence here. Great Hurricane of 1900 ended all of it, and it took thirty years for the city to recover Just like airbags and antilock brakes, and even high construction standards inas a tourism and fishing destination.Florida, the industry will not universally do it on its own. Some builders will raiseIt is clear that Texas must pass a law requiring the same building standards for their waterfront construction standards in Texas, in response to demand from buy- waterfront home construction as those passed in Florida after Hurricane Andrew. It ers who do not want their own Harvey experience again, or at all. However, theis clear that the Texas windstorm programslash and versusthe federal flood in-T Until then, those standards will remain a feature,a.k.a. asurance programversus private homeowners insurance, is an unmitigated disaster building industry will not fully evolve until Texas passes a law requiring the Florida building standard.that, (1) is formulated and written by and for the insurance companies, and (2) is the luxury. result of the virtual disinterest we have in state politicshe first public record of the idea for a seawall on the Corpus ChristiExactly one week after Harvey struck, Texas House Bill 1744 went into effect. Bayfront was published in an 1890 editorial in the Corpus Christi Call- The bill changed the Texas Insurance Code regarding the handling of windstorm er, and it was advanced by one of the citys founders, Nueces Countyclaims, including provisions that require owners to formally notify their carriers Judge Walter Timon in 1909, but it fizzled. After the devastating hur- before pursuing litigation, enacted a 120-day time limit after the Texas Windstorm ricanes of 1916 and 1919, the latter of which killed hundreds of CorpusInsurance Association (TWIA) accepts coverage for your storm damage to challenge Christians, and saw the new 1914 Courthouse turned into a make-shift,their offer, or its automatically accepted, along with a few other goodies for the pri-mass morgue after a ten-foot storm surge swept the city, the idea of a seawall finallyvate insurance industry in Texas, of which TWIA is a part. We should ask our elected began to gain support. Nine years later, the City of Corpus Christi hired famed sculp- representatives to state government how they voted on that measure, and why. It tor and architect, Gutzon Borglum, the man who created Mount Rushmore, to designis clear that, like Florida did after Hurricane Andrew, Texas must fully reform its a seawall along the bay front. His plan included a 32-foot statue of Jesus Christ, anwindstorm insurance system.homage to the citys name, placed inside the rock jetties that protect the marina.As for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), whose director, City planners and citizens didnt care for the plan, especially the statue, so it was putWilliam Brock, said on CNN that a lack of trailers for homeless storm victims in off for another decade. Construction finally began in 1938 and the seawall was com- Rockport was in part due to their cost of, $200,000 to $300,000 each,just stop.pleted in 1941. Fifty years after the idea was first presented, and twenty-two yearsTake the money, most of which, as we all saw, is spent on staff and facilities, after almost a thousand people were killed in a hurricane, most of whom drowned,and not on storm victims, and give it to people in the communities that are affected. Corpus Christi completed its fourteen-foot storm surge barrier. After the storm, a group was formed called Homes for Displaced Marlins (Bring-About a dozen or so photos of the mass destruction that Hurricane Harvey de- MarlinsHome.org) in Port A, with the goal of providing trailers to displaced families livered to Port Aransas are published on these pages, but there are hundreds andwhose children are enrolled in the Port Aransas Independent School District. By the hundreds more, including from North Padre Island. Sadly, we did not even make itend of the year, the group had provided almost three dozen new trailers to homeless to Rockport, Aransas Pass or Ingleside. If we, in our minds, apply this level of devas- families, for about the cost of four FEMA trailers that never arrived.tation to the heart of Corpus Christi, and consider for a minute the result if HarveyWe shall officially echo the sentiments of one Ms. Samantha McCrary of Rock-had made landfall at Packery Channel, rather than at the Port A ship channel, andport, Texas, when asked by a CNN reporter, If you could talk to the head of FEMA, directly hit North Padre Island and Flour Bluff, and then traveled into town up SPID,what would you tell him? to which she replied (children, cover your ears), Id tell and into the south side, and downtown, then Portlandthen you may begin to thinkhim to get his head out of his ass.that God really saved Corpus Christi when Harvey made that little turn that sent itThe future of the Coastal Bend, which so many of us love and cherish, is solely twenty miles north. in our handsas citizens and as votersbut we must learn from this experience and Just because the Coastal Bend escaped a major disaster from a hurricane forcreate paths to real, tangible change in laws and practices. If we let our tribal polit-almost fifty years, there is no guarantee that it will not happen again in 2018, or anyical instincts get in the way of effectively dealing with the reality that we are living, year. Hurricane Allen in 1980 was one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded,nothing will be learned from the Hurricane Harvey experience, except how much spending more days as a Cat 5 storm than any in history. It went in about a hundredmore painful it was than any of us could have imagined. TCBTheCoastalBend.com THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINEFEATURED: The Stories that Mattered 51'