After seeing the Baby Grace case featured elsewhere on the nets, I ventured over to the Galveston Daily News to see how the rebuilding was going over in Galveston after their devastation from Ike back in September 2008.

The headlines looked remarkably akin to ours during recovery. Topics included the impending FEMA buyouts for homeowners, DiBella’s Italian Restaurant burned after they had just reopened it, the police department has been caught stealing from Del Monte containers in the Port and drugs are missing from their evidence rooms, the Hospital is closing, their City Council is looking into creating a bridge organization to work with the city and homeowners, there are meeting for homeowners on resources for rebuilding, FEMA’s has an idea to put up mobile home communities but unlike here, it is not gaining much interest. Their water has been declared free of legionella and is potable. There are some issues with wild hogs.

They have also had their own version of the dreaded planning process, a series of open-house community meetings, they even have the sticky note game we all played out at City Park. Their priorities are little less edgy since everyone here seemed to be panting that the crime be addressed as much as housing. The final Galveston list consists of; transportation, housing, human services, economic development and environmental issues.

They have their very own horrific crime story going on with the Baby Grace case. We had the grisly Bowen murder of Addie Hall. Galveston is even tearing down their housing projects! They don’t have the Saints game to cheer them up but the The Gatlin Brothers are performing at The Grand 1894 Opera House on tonight and the Cub Scouts are in competing a pine derby.

The parallels are many but on a smaller scale and they haven’t spent two entire years planning but I am sure residents are just now settling into the fact that their life is going to be a big sea of recovery uncertainties for a long, long time . . . and I feel for them.