http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/6303187.html

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The University of Texas Medical Branch hospital, still recovering from the detestation of Hurricane Ike, will remain on Galveston Island under a plan approved today.
The decision by the University of Texas Board of Regents not to move patient beds, teaching and research facilities inland should be positive news to area elected officials and local citizens who wanted to the damaged operation to remain. The plan, however, depends on new funding from the Legislature over time.
“This board, by this vote, is deeply committed to the future of keeping UTMB on Galveston Island, but this decision is not our decision alone,” said board chairman Scott Caven Jr., referring to the need for recovery money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, philanthropic sources and the state.

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Good news

Great news. Building major government facilities on barrier islands is a win/win situation. Every once in a while the whole thing can be totally rebuilt from scratch!!

The geniuses in Austin should think about building a few nuclear reactors on Galveston Island and Mustang Island and the beach on the Gulf side of St. Joe's is a perfect place for a new international airport.

Meanwhile, my man in the legislature is chairman of the subcommittee trying to figure out how to get the inlanders to assume part of the insurance risk for the folks who just have to live on the beach. Seems like the mean old insurance companies don't want any part of it.

A point you missed is that it is already there--

and the alternative was to essentially abandon a multi-billion dollar facility and rebuild it 15 miles up the road using your money.

I did not miss the point; and a barrier island is still a barrier island and will be until it gets washed away eventually. From a geological standpoint it is a waste of money but it is good for the local economy, such as it is.

best news we`ve had since ike. For us residents of bolivar peninsula, thats the only medical services we have unless driving 1 1/2 hrs to beaumont or more to houston. Since you obviously dont live near water huisache, stay in lubbock or odessa or wherever it is u live and debate dust and tumbleweed.

I live in Corpus Christi and have given a lot of thought to this situation over the years as hurricanes come and go. I try to talk friends out of building on barrier islands and I have tried to talk my state rep out of supporting legislation that makes it possible for people who live on them to get insurance. Insurance companies will not, on their own, insure property on the islands because the risk is too great. So the people on the islands' representatives, largely financed by developers and realtors and builders, go to the legislature and create house-of-cards insurance schemes to get the rest of the state to help finance their folly.

The same public policy that limits building in a river's flood zone should also apply to building on barrier islands. Hurricanes are not going to quit coming just because there is a housing boom on the islands. A hurricane that would have caused $100,000,000 damage to a Florida community in 1970 will cause $1,000,000,000 now because of the new building.

No reason why people in Lubbock or Austin or San Antonio or El Paso should have to subsidize your or my desire to live close to the water.

I bought on the highest point in Corpus so I would be relatively safe. People who build in flood zones should expect floods.

As for your health care needs, there is a reason why you would have to go a good way to get care if it were not for the state building a billion dollar facility on your exposed island. Sane people wouldn't do it if it was their money.

So, how far inland do you NOT build? You do appreciate that there is significant hurricane damage done in places other than barrier islands.

Would a building moratorium 50 miles from the coast be OK, or farther? You do understand that would remove some major cities.

I don't care much about subsidizing the regular tornadoes in N. Texas and Oklahoma or the mudslides and frequent fires in California--no building there too?

You also understand that insurance along the coast is a lot more than other places and that Hurricane Ike is the first real Flood storm in Galveston in over 100 years. So not like it is a regular happening.

good points but take a look at any geology book in the section on marine geology and check out how erosion on the coastlines works and then take a look at photos of the atlantic coastline from fifty years ago and now and compare.

building on these islands is a virtual guarantee they will disappear. building jetties lengthens the life span in the places where they are built but that is about it.

and I would be willing to bet the farm that there was more damage done by Ike than all the tornadoes in the US last year. A lot more.

My sister rode out the last major hurricane to hit the Corpus area from a stilt house at Port Aransas and described the water flowing through the dunes. ON the backside of that island there are now canals and expensive houses. What happens next storm when the water flows through the dunes heading that way? What is to stop the water from passing on to CC Bay? Nothing.

Insurers will not touch it unless their risk is guaranteed by the feds. That should tell you how sane it is to build there. If people want to build, I have no problem with that. I love spending time there myself. That is one of the reasons I live here, but building on barrier islands makes no sense from a geological sense and UTMB Galveston ought to be somewhere safer.

http://www.economics.noaa.gov/?goal=weather&file=events/tornado&view=costs

I think you may be right about damage costs and also have some good points....but...

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Insurers will not touch it unless their risk is guaranteed by the feds.

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All flood insurance is federal--including the big floods in Iowa and the ones in western Washington, etc.
In Texas all Windstorm is state insurance. The lobbyists for the insurance companies have done a good job unloading their risk to the government.

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building on barrier islands makes no sense from a geological sense and UTMB Galveston ought to be somewhere safer.

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except for the fact that it is a multi-billion dollar investment and it is already built.

Similar to when some of the hospitals in Houston flooded a few years ago--they were all built in the wrong place wrt flooding. They were stupid too--had their emergency generators in the basement. They should have been built somewhere else, except they were already there. So, instead of tearing them down they make some changes, harden them so the damage will be minimal whenever the next storm comes.

ok

Ike kept UTMB on the island. Plans where already in place to move it. After Ike no one in Austin wanted to be the evil politicians that moved UTMB after Ike devastated the area.

That is certainly possible. There were frequent rumors.