CRYSTAL BEACH — Tricia McCulloch had a lingering nightmare from Hurricane Ike.
McCulloch is an employee of the Galveston Police Department who normally works on payroll and other financial matters. But during the hurricane, she was one of dozens who helped answer distress calls at the temporary emergency operations center at the San Luis Hotel.
At 2 a.m. Sept. 13, 2008, as the hurricane made landfall, she received a cell phone call from a woman on Bolivar Peninsula.
The woman and her family were in their Crystal Beach house on pilings more than a dozen feet off the ground. The rising water was nearing the floor.
McCulloch tried to dispense advice, but the line went dead before she could get the woman’s full name or address. Rescue attempts on Bolivar Peninsula were impossible. The tidal surge was about to reach 20 feet.
“For me to not know if she lived or not, it’s a nightmare,” McCulloch said in an October interview.
“I don’t know where she’s at. I need to know. I need to know something.”
After McCulloch’s plea for help aired on KHOU-TV news, she received a phone call from a man who said the September caller was his mother, Connie Travis.
She and her family had ridden out the storm in their house at Crystal Beach. They survived in a neighborhood where entire homes were washed away and where two of its residents still are listed among the missing.
Mystery solved, but the story wasn’t really over.
McCulloch and Travis recently met at Crystal Beach.
The reunion happened at the same house where Travis made that 911 call. The home survived that 20-foot storm surge.
And a year later, the women believe the intensity of that raging storm made it difficult to understand each other that night in a brief but sometimes frightening conversation.
Travis had been trying to reach anyone to let the world know there were still survivors on Bolivar Peninsula.
She said she also was trying to get a message to her children, before the cell towers went dead, that she still was alive.
“I wanted their families to know that not everybody was dead,” Travis said.
“And I’m sorry I scared you. I’m so sorry I scared you,” she said, holding McCulloch’s hand.
Kevin Reece is a reporter for KHOU-TV. This story is provided through a content partnership between KHOU-TV and The Daily News.
