Recovery, ruin visible in Texas a month after Ike

Beth Hanna picks through the sand and muck and debris Friday, Oct. 10, 2008 trying to recover any of ...(more) A month later, piles of Sheetrock, appliances, furniture and family mementos dot most streets in this island town. Electronic road signs in southeast Texas flash, "Watch for cows next 20 miles," a reminder that few fences remain to hem in livestock. Blue tarps cover 11,000 roofs for 100 miles from Houston to the Louisiana line. And then there are the 37 found dead so far in Texas and hundreds still unaccounted for one month after Hurricane Ike barreled ashore on Galveston Island, leveling trees onto power lines and temporarily crippling Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city and the center of the U.S. energy industry. The storm is the most expensive in Texas history, with an estimated pricetag of $11.4 billion —... [read full story]