House Stands Alone After Hurricane Ike
Hurricane Ike devastated parts of the Texas southeast coast from Galveston to the Texas/Louisiana border. The house above appears as the only house standing in aerial shots of Gilchrist, Texas which was destroyed by the surge from Hurricane Ike. The lone house did sustain damage as you can see on the before and after pictures here on Anderson Cooper's blog. The house also sustained water damage but even so it clearly fared much better than the houses around it. A CNN story says $300,000 was spent on the house so that it could survive a powerful hurricane. The main feature appears to be very high columns to the get the house's bottom floor well above sea level. Adams, a retired electrical designer, had a Galveston, Texas, engineering firm oversee a contractor as his new house was built. The columns put the house's bottom floor 14 feet above ground, or about 22 feet above sea level. Despite that, Ike's storm surge managed to get in. "Can we always beat Mother N...