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Surfside holdout ‘stupid’ for staying
Published September 14, 2008
SURFSIDE BEACH — Ray Wilkinson leaned back in his patio chair Saturday atop the second-story apartment complex, a few rows from the surf crashing against the battered remains of other homes on Surfside Beach.
He took a drag from a cigarette and gave a simple summary of his night withstanding 100 mph winds and almost 20-foot storm surge of Hurricane Ike that besieged the island overnight Friday.
“I’m stupid,” he said. “I had a front-row for Hurricane Ike, but I’m stupid.”
The 67-year old Wilkinson had planned to leave the island early Friday with a neighbor when winds started slapping against his raised apartment complex. But when the neighbor went into town to get supplies for the evacuation, he found Surfside Beach closed when he returned.
Without a phone, Wilkinson had no way of connecting with the neighbor and decided to raise a toast to the storm with a cold one.
He sat on his porch and downed beers to celebrate his stand against the elements.
“It was rainy and the winds were blowing,” Wilkinson said. “There was all kinds of debris. Water started about four steps from the concrete and then it went up to almost the second floor.”
Surfside Beach police attempted to pick Wilkinson up by truck before storm waters kicked up Friday and again later in the day by wading through shoulder-high water, Surfside Beach Police Chief Randy Smith said.
Wilkinson, who had no transportation off the island, walks with a cane. The former Marine keeps fit walking from his apartment to the local Kitty’s Purple Cow restaurant almost every day. But on Friday, he couldn’t move through the rising waters.
Friends honked horns at Wilkinson as they returned to the island Saturday. With each passing cheer, Wilkinson yelled, “Yo!” before taking another drag of his cigarette.
But there was one problem. Without a neighbor to bum a ride and without open gas stations, Wilkinson was unable to restock his cooler with beer after the storm.
“I ran out of beer before the hurricane got here. It hasn’t been fun since,” he said.
Wilkinson reiterated he wasn’t smart by staying in the apartment, but he said he probably would not leave if another storm approached his home of 30 years. He had pinned a frayed American flag that had come unattached from a nearby pole to the outside of his patio as a reminder of the day he dared Mother Nature.
“I don’t run from situations,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not stupid.”
GARY AND KATHY BROUSSARD
A few miles away in Freeport, husband and wife Gary and Kathy Broussard fled their first-story apartment and ran to an upper-level unit rented by friends to get out of the storm’s path. The two retirees were startled by the amount of damage the storm caused at the El Paraiso Apartments complex on Avenue J.
Pieces of aluminum siding and roofing were thrown across the grass, and many windows had been shattered.
“It was very, very intense and the wind shifted and we could hear things blowing out like the windows,” Cathy Broussard said. “We could hear the windows blowing, but we couldn’t see where it was, and there was a lot of debris flying everywhere, as you can see.”
After the storm passed, the couple walked across the lawn to their apartment. They found it in rather good condition. The windows were intact and only a small amount of water had gotten inside.
From now on, the Broussards plan to jump on a bus and get out of town when a storm threatens the area.
JIMMY AND SANDRA OLIVER
Jimmy and Sandra Oliver spent the night in their home on Silver Bay Lane, on the north side of Lake Jackson. A bad experience with the Rita evacuation three years ago made them decide it was worth staying despite the risk.
“We had a nightmare experience with that,” Sandra Oliver said. “We were on the road for 20 hours and never made it past Highway 290 in Tomball.”
They made the trip with children and two pets in the car.
“We just boarded up and stayed,” she said. “I was pretty calm. It was a long night and a long day. We were OK until the power went out and it started heating up with no air conditioner.”
Still, something about a hurricane roaring and banging on the roof outside is a little more unnerving than the temperature, Jimmy Oliver said.
“The wind would sound like a freight train for a while, then it would die off,” he said. “We have two big pecan trees in our backyard, and when those things would fall on the roof, we weren’t sure what that was.”
ALLEN ROBICHEAUX
In Angleton, Allen Robicheaux said he was not worried about the storm as heavy winds blew outside throughout the night.
“I wasn’t scared at all,” he said. “I actually stayed up playing PlayStation 3. I just wanted to ride it out.”
Robicheaux said the storm was comparable to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that hit New Orleans. Robicheaux was visiting a friend when that storm hit.
“Before the flooding came (Katrina) wasn’t nothing,” he said.
Joel South, of Angleton, sat the storm out in his Angleton apartment and said he didn’t worry too much about Ike.
South drove through town after the storm Saturday and found an open gas station at Highway 35 and 288 and decided to fill up.
“I was just driving around charging my phone,” he said.
Though electricity was out in much of the county, South said he was frustrated that some parts of Angleton had electricity when his apartment didn’t.
“That’s irritating,” he said. “It’s like gosh, they have electricity, why can’t we?”
MARK WATTS
Mark Watts, of Angleton, runs a kite boarding business in Surfside Beach and evacuated to Cypress to ride out the storm. He returned to his Angleton home Saturday afternoon to ensure there were no intruders.
“Make sure nobody is ransacking my place,” he said.
After seeing the destruction of Surfside Beach on television, Watts said he was saddened because the beaches, and kiteboarding, are a big part of his life.
“It just sucks,” he said. “It’s really not something I wanted to come back to.”
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