Many cite faith, will not flee hurricane

SURFSIDE BEACH, Texas — At first, even the threat of “certain death” was not enough to persuade Bobby Taylor to flee this small town directly in the path of Hurricane Ike.

His wife, Elizabeth, had already decided to leave before police drove a dump truck through flooded streets, urging people to get out. Those who refused were told to write their names on their arms in black marker, so their bodies could be identified later.

Elizabeth came back to persuade her husband to leave and was waiting for him when he waded in waist-deep water up the main street. “Now I’ll pray for our neighbors,” she said.

Citing faith and fate, tens of thousands more ignored calls to clear out, authorities said. The National Weather Service warned that people in smaller structures in some areas “may face certain death.”

The choice to stay — always questionable, sometimes fatal — was an especially curious one to make so close to Galveston, site of a 1900 storm that killed at least 6,000 people, more than any other natural disaster in U.S. history.

By afternoon, Mayor Larry Davison said only one person was believed to be left in Surfside Beach, a Gulf Coast town of about 800 people 30 miles southwest of Galveston.

“It’s going to be fun,” Jerry Norton said as he snapped a cell phone image of a flooded road. He said he was sending the picture to his children and grandchildren who fled inland to Austin.

Norton said he had filled his bathtubs with water — for drinking, but also for flushing toilets in case the sewer system breaks down. He bought groceries and secured doors and windows.

“If my stuff is going to get washed away, I’m going to watch it get washed away,” Norton said.

Others quieted their own concerns and rolled with it.

Clarence Romas, a 55-year-old handyman, said he would ride out the storm in his downstairs apartment with friends.

As for the “certain death” warning? “It puts a little fear in my heart,” he admitted, “but what’s gonna happen is gonna happen.”