GALVESTON — Lee Martinez arrived home Tuesday to find his refrigerator belly-up in his kitchen, slimy mud coating his hardwood floors, a water line 4½ feet up the wall and two dead cars in his garage.
“It’s nothing — it’s nothing, really,” he said. “What are you going to do? It’s nothing to cry about.”
On Tuesday, Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas allowed residents on the island — four days after Hurricane Ike made landfall — for their first glimpse of the devastated island. The policy was later canceled after emergency responders and state officials got trapped in an 8-mile traffic jam leading to the island.
Residents in cars marked in white shoe polish with the letters “LL,” meaning “look and leave,” snapped photographs from their car windows, covered their mouths in disbelief and shook their heads as they made their way to their homes.
Maria Patina’s first glance of her home was one of pure joy. Patina, listening to news coverage for days, painted a grim mental picture of her house and her two dogs inside.
“I was scared I was going to come home and not find my home,” she said.
But when she saw her home for the first time, and it was still standing, she rushed into the bedroom, grabbed her statue of Jesus and said, “Thank you, God.”
Her house sustained some flooding and wind damage. Her neighbor fed her dogs to keep them alive. Three pet turtles somehow survived.
Patina, her husband and her four sons are living in a two-bedroom home with two other families in Santa Fe. If the city of Galveston allows it, they plan to come back every day to clean the flooded garage and back room and to remove the two trees that toppled in their yard.
Down the road, Paula Muñoz was also readying herself for a long recovery.
Sludge, scattered Coke cans and toppled utensils covered the kitchen floor of the restaurant where Paula Munoz’s parents worked to build a life for their family in Galveston.
But even though the damage to the El Rey Restaurant on 39th Street was worse than Munoz could have imagined, she knew her family plans to rebuild.
“We spent 10 years paying off this place,” she said. “We’ll rebuild, and we’ll do it here. Where else would we go? This is our life.”
Munoz’s parents, who own the restaurant, evacuated to Mexico. She came back, bracing for the damage, with a team of friends ready to clean up.
They had their work cut out for them. They filled six giant trash bags in the first hour, pushed the facedown refrigerator upright and tossed out rotting meat.
“It’s devastating,” she said. “We never thought this could happen to us. You see it in New Orleans, but it’s different when it’s home.”
Adriane de la Cruz came back to find her bedroom, kitchen and living room untouched. Inside her first-floor garage, where unopened wedding presents, boxes and bicycles were stored were sloshed around during the storm and resting in a heap of mud.
“We got lucky,” she said.
Martinez, who lives at 1804 18th St., was not so lucky. Music blared from a small radio Tuesday afternoon as Martinez hung wet clothes on a makeshift clothes hanger and his son-in-law plucked food from the refrigerator. His insurance paperwork dried on the kitchen table. Martinez, who spent the last few days in San Antonio, said he found his home in the exact condition he imagined since he heard reports about a 10-foot tidal surge.
“I thought it would be underwater,” he said. “I thought the first floor would be gone and sure enough, it was gone. Yep, it’s exactly what I expected to find. But the house is still here and everything you see is replaceable.”
