When you purchase through links on our web site , we may earn an affiliate commission . Here ’s how it run .
As Hurricane Ike pummels the Texas coast , the only thing standing in the way is a thin stretch of land call Galveston .
Galveston is a barrier island , a minute landmass made mostly of Amandine Aurore Lucie Dupin that extends along a coastline latitude to the land . These islands , common along the Gulf Coast and East Coast of the United States , are some of the most thin and changing landforms on Earth . And they are particularlyvulnerable to storms .
Several hours before the brunt of Hurricane Ike was to arrive, fire destroys homes along the beach on Galveston Island, Texas on Friday, Sept. 12, 2008.
" Barrier island are discover to the open sea , and the wave and storm surges generated by hurricane , " said Bob Morton , a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey ’s Center for Coastal and Watershed Studies in St. Petersburg , Fla. " As a storm makes landfall they ’re the ones that are pass away to receive the strongest winds and the highest wave action . "
National Hurricane Center functionary have warned residents of Galveston toevacuateor else confront " certain death , " though several thousand are thought to be staying put .
Wisdom questioned
Barrier islands like Galveston are particularly vulnerable to tempest wrong because they are made of sand , as opposed to the severe bedrock that underlie bigger island and the mainland . They also tend to have very low elevations , making it easygoing for water to wash out over and submerge the island .
Many have question the wiseness of choosing to build on and produce barrier island , afford their risks .
" Every year there ’s reportage on the unwiseness of ramp up on roadblock island , but people are going to do it anyway , " Morton toldLiveScience . " We do n’t discover from the past tense . If you face at the roadblock island on the Mississippi coast in particular , after both Hurricane Camille in 1969 , and Katrina , what did they do ? They rebuild . It ’s a unadulterated example of a coastal area that did get hit as bad as it can get , and they just go back and rebuild . "
roadblock island tend to be even riskier places to live than coastal orbit , because they bear the brunt of any draw close storm shock .
" If you think about their location , they ’re basically lonely spotter that serve as roadblock for the mainland , " said Clark Alexander , a marine geologist at Georgia ’s Skidaway Institute of Oceanography . " Basically you ’re in a vulnerable spot , because you ’re located where you get the first burden of anything follow in off the ocean . "
Setting up residence in these vulnerable spots is especially perilous .
" From a safety stand , it ’s airheaded , " Alexander say . " Because the lifespan of a typical house is something like 60 years . But if you live on a barrier island , you ca n’t guarantee you ’ll have commonwealth under your house in 60 years . It ’s trying to put something lasting in a place that ’s very dynamical . "
As a resolution of Hurricane Katrina , a number of barrier islands off the Mississippi coast were completely wiped off the map . Even when storms are n’t enough to raze islands altogether , barriers often bear severe damage from storms .
The 1989 Hurricane Hugo wreaked massive havoc on Pawleys Island in South Carolina . Isles Dernieres off the coast of Louisiana was devastated by Hurricane Andrew in 1992 . Often , after these tempest , people move back and set themselves up for catastrophe again .
St. George Island on Apalachicola Bay off the Florida coast " has been washed away five or six or eight times and hoi polloi just keep build back their houses , " Alexander said .
For many multitude living on barrier islands , there is no amount of structural funding that can ward off the worst .
" It ’s important to note that in the large storms , the category 4 or 5 hurricanes , it really does n’t count how well - constructed your building is , " enounce Orrin Pilkey , a prof emeritus of geology at Duke University , of homes on barrier islands . " And it does n’t matter whether you have a breakwater or not . The hazard are pretty ripe that if you have beachfront place , it ’s history . "
Outlook for Galveston
Though Ike might not completely destroy Galveston Island , it could inflict major terms . Already Friday afternoon , the island was being pounded by high Wave and implosion therapy . How much count on how the hurricane develops and what part of the island the center of the storm go past over .
The easterly part of Galveston Island ( also the more densely inhabit ) has a strong 18 - human foot sea rampart in position to avoid some of the incoming waves , so it should be more protected than the westerly half , depending on the extent to which the storm rush overtops the wall .
Galveston was hit hard by Hurricane Alicia in 1983 , and was devastated by the"Great Storm"of 1900 , when grand died . After that disaster , a major effort went into fortifying the island against next storms .
" They went in and literally raise the city , propped up family on stilts , " Morton said . " They make for a huge dredge in from Europe and dredged up cloth and pump it into the land to build it up . It was an amazing engineering feat for the sentence . No other post has done something like that . " The city also erected a groin .
Constantly changing
Other well - know U.S. roadblock island let in the Outer Banks of North Carolina , the islands along the Eastern Shore of Virginia , and even New York ’s Long Island ( though Long Island ’s northerly view makes it less vulnerable to storms than roadblock in the Gulf of Mexico and southern Atlantic seacoast ) .
The ultimate fate of roadblock islands varies , with many gradually withdraw landward as eroded sand is press back to deposit in the lagoon behind it , and ultimately join the coast . But some barrier islands with high dunes can invalidate this portion .
Galveston is not yet migrate toward the coast , but is in what Morton telephone a " narrowing stage , " with sand on both face of the island step by step eroding out . Many roadblock islands wax and wane , with sand shifting around and sometimes reducing the land area , but most inhabited barriers are not at peril of being totally destroy .
" Barrier islands are constantly changing , " Morton said . " The roadblock islands as a whole are some of the most dynamic landforms on the surface of the Earth . "
