Editor's Column
HGS Bulletin
December 2008
Homage to a Seawall
Michael F. Forlenza, P.G.
Editor HGS Bulletin
It is an occasion of some note when civic leaders from earlier centuries can be credited with foresight and vision in the service of their cities by implementing and funding successful projects. Successful projects can provide tremendous benefits to citizens more than 100 years later. Among these are:
- Construction of the city walls that saved Vienna from the Ottoman invasion in 1683.
- The late-1800s planning and development of New York City’s huge water system that brings fresh water from mountain reservoirs to the city through underground aqueducts.
- Baron Haussmann’s urban redesign of Paris between 1852 and 1870 that included wide, straight boulevards to cut through the medieval street grid.
Construction of the Galveston Seawall is also noteworthy for its enduring service to the city. The Galveston Seawall may seem modest now, but its construction is considered an astonishing feat for that era, not to mention for a city that was all but destroyed by a hurricane.
On the night of September 13th and the morning of September 14th, 2008, Hurricane Ike tore into southeast Texas. Galveston Island and the Bolivar peninsula suffered the brunt of the tempest when winds exceeding 100 miles per hour and the storm surge blasted ashore. The eye of Hurricane Ike passed directly over Galveston Island. The storm surge associated with the hurricane was most powerful on the “dirty side” of the storm, that is, the right side, or north side, in relation to track of the eye. Coastal communities and low-lying barrier islands from Galveston northward to the Louisiana border and beyond were devastated.
A full accounting of the damage in these coastal communities from the hurricane will not be known for many months, but in some areas 90 percent of the structures were damaged or lost. Galveston suffered extensive damage from storm-driven flood waters, but the city, protected behind its seawall survived and has begun to recover. The lives that sheltered there were spared.
The storm surge at Galveston was fortunately less than the 18 to 22 feet that was forecasted. Hurricane Ike’s 10 to 12 foot storm surge from the Gulf of Mexico was largely blocked by the 17-foot high seawall. To many, the seawall may be an ugly concrete monstrosity, but it worked. The seawall performed as promised and protected the city from the full fury of the Gulf. The foresight of Galveston’s early civic leaders paid off.
When Galveston was founded in 1839, the natural topography of the island included very little land with an elevation higher than five feet above sea level. In hindsight, the establishment of a city in such a vulnerable position seems unwise. In the following years, the island endured several strong storms including the hurricane of 1886. Still, Galveston grew and by the late 1800s, was the largest city in Texas and the commercial engine of the region, dubbed the “Wall Street of the South.”
The city’s luck changed in September 1900 when the Great Galveston Hurricane roared out of the Gulf of Mexico. The storm surge submerged the island and claimed 6,000 to 8,000 lives, still the greatest natural disaster in United States history. The city leaders resolved to stay and restore the city to prominence, but protection was needed to prevent a future cataclysm and to give the business owners and residents the confidence to rebuild.
Galveston formed the Deep Water Committee to oversee the task of protecting the city and appointed three engineers to develop a plan. These engineers were Henry M. Robert, retired from the Army Corps of Engineers; H.C. Ripley, formerly with the Army Corps of Engineers; and Alfred Noble from Chicago. Interestingly, while Henry M. Robert is honored in Galveston for his work with the Deep Water Committee, he is more widely known for developing Robert’s Rules of Order. After attending an unruly church meeting in Massachusetts in 1877, Mr. Robert took on the duty of authoring and self-publishing a set of procedural rules to maintain order during meetings. Henry M. Robert was featured in an episode of Dr. John Lienhard’s <