GALVESTON, Texas (AP) — With power still spotty nearly a week after Hurricane Beryl reinvigorated Texas, Nick Guide vacuumed water from Galveston’s seaside inn his family has run since 1911. Blue tarps covered much of the torn-off roof. Guide picked up cleaning shifts for hotel and restaurant staff who couldn’t afford to lose shifts to the prolonged power outage.
The Fourth of July weekend was meant to kick off a lucrative tourist season for the popular resort’s lodging industry, but a week later, with only a few dozen visitors on its usually packed beaches, the guide felt an urgent need to get the message out that Galveston, Texas, was open again.
“We’ve dealt with storms in late August and September,” Guide said, “but when a storm comes in early July, it’s a different story.”
Galveston, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) southeast of Houston, has certainly weathered its share of natural disasters. Etched in people’s memories is the ferocious 1900 hurricane that took thousands of lives when the island was emerging as the state’s jewel. More recently, in 2008, Hurricane Ike raged, flooding the historic downtown with a 20-foot storm surge and causing more than $29 billion in damages.
But even storm-addled neighbors in the greater Houston area were caught off guard by Beryl’s sudden arrival. The Category 1 hurricane, which struck unusually early on the calendar, halted the island’s tourism-based economy at a time when local restaurants are reaping the benefits of an influx of beachgoers. Businesses and residents are hanging in there despite widespread power outages.
Just west of hard-hit Jamaica Beach, Way West Grill & Pizzeria was still without power Saturday afternoon, leaving owner Jake Vincent in limbo. He’d been told power would be restored by July 19, but he was hopeful it might come back sooner.
The loss destroyed all of their inventory, including a truckload of mozzarella cheese, an eight-foot box of french fries and an estimated 3,000 pounds of pepperoni.
Vincent had hoped that this year would finally bring a “bright light” to the family-run restaurant he founded in 2018, but he’s no longer hopeful. He said the majority of annual sales are concentrated in the three summer months, and “tourism is probably over for this season.”
“That complicates things,” he says. “You have to save all your summer money to get through the winter.”
Downed power lines and orange construction cones were visible along the road that links tourist-filled beach seafood shacks to colorful short-term rentals on the west end, and workers from CenterPoint, a Houston-area power company, sweated on lifts as they worked to restore power to line after line.
With the power still out Saturday morning, Greg Alexander shoveled debris to the edge of a road in his Jamaica Beach neighborhood, where water was pouring in through the windows of his home, even though he was already sleeping on the balcony level of his home, as Beryl’s crosswinds blew rain onto his bed.
For Alexander, it’s just part of life here: His family moved to Galveston permanently in 2017 after Hurricane Harvey brought 38 inches of water to their Lake City home. Without electricity, “I appreciate the air conditioning in my car more than ever,” he says.
He has no plans to leave, and the ordeal will only make the community stronger, he said.
“The people of the West End are different from the rest of the population,” he said.
Steve Bloom and Debra Pease were still without power Saturday, but they were finding heat elsewhere. Bloom said he’d already booked a hotel in Houston this week so his daughter could use their beach house in Galveston. They planned to spend the first night in Galveston and then sleep in nonrefundable rooms the rest of the week.
Steve Bloom, 72, said he’d never seen a hurricane come in as quickly or intensify as Beryl, but joked that just one factor could force him to move from the island where he was born and raised.
“If they demolished all these houses, we’d be in the front row and property values would probably double or triple,” he said, before clarifying, “No, I hope that doesn’t happen.”
For Ann Beam and her husband, who come down from San Antonio every July to celebrate her birthday, the aftermath was far worse than the hurricane itself.
After the storm passed on Monday, they opened the windows and enjoyed the nice breeze, but Tuesday night was “full of mosquitoes,” she said, as hundreds of the bugs infested the house and they slept in their car with the air conditioner on full blast.
She said they also purchased a wading pool to cool off in before the power was restored Thursday night.
“We just tried to look at it as an adventure,” she says. “Every day was a new hellish day.”
