My wife and I are in Houston. Houston is not a vacation destination, but we are here on personal business.
On Saturday, we took a side trip to Galveston. Hurricanes were on my mind. Galveston was the sight of a devastating hurricane in 1900. Further, Tropical Storm Fay is currently lurking in the Gulf of Mexico and its progress is a lead story on the nightly news here.
Halfway to Galveston down I-45, we stopped at the Armand Bayou Nature Center. This preserved area is a series of bayous, providing a natural buffer of a couple of miles between land and coast line. As we walked through the area, a thunder storm hit. It rained hard, but there was a sense of security in the bayou as the rain was quickly absorbed by the forest and marshes.
Once the storm relented, we returned to the car and continued down I-45 to Galveston. The sky was turning ominously dark. By the time we passed Texas City, there was lightening in the sky and a hard rain was falling. Texas City was a series of houses built immediately adjacent to the water line without any bayou to serve as a buffer. And it is flat, with no high ground to which to escape.
By the time we reached Galveston, it was raining so hard we could barely see out the car window. House gutters were overflowing. Streets quickly flooded. Without the natural buffer provided by a bayou and on perfectly flat terrain, Galveston did not feel secure in a storm situation.
The insurance connection of this story is that as we drove along the main street of Galveston, there were several prominent billboards advertising services provided by insurance agents. The billboards promised to fulfill all insurance-related needs. With the rain pouring down and the streets filling with water, I was happy I didn't live in Galveston. But if I did, I have no doubt my first visit would be with one of these insurance agents to purchase flood and hurricane insurance.
