Eyes of the Storm Photographer Robert Mihovil, BJ ’80, a fourth-generation Galvestonian, has taken more than 3,000 photos of his hometown since Hurricane Ike. The story they tell is one the national media long ago abandoned. A shrewd law firm has a huge billboard up just after the causeway leading from Galveston: Ike insurance claims unpaid or underpaid? Call us at 713 dot-dot-dot, dot-dot-dot-dot. Eight months after the colossal hurricane surged saltwater over 80 percent of the island, this is Galveston’s daily struggle. Of the 58,000 people living there before the storm, about 45,000 are left. Those who want to rebuild don’t just need the will — they need the money. And recovering it from insurance can be a 20-round boxing match. Photos and documents are needed, inspectors and adjusters come out, more photos and documents are needed. So some haven’t touched a thing. From those who got scrubbing right away to those who had to leave it all lying there, Robert Mihovil, BJ ’80, sees it all. He’s a freelance photographer and what Galvestonians call a BOI, for Born On the Island. Since two days after the storm, he’s been documenting its aftermath each week. Scoping out the 32-by-2.5-mile island, he’ll lift a finger off the steering wheel to wave to guys he knows working on their house repairs. Mihovil cruises through Payco Marina, with its beached boat skeletons, and on to ruined Offats Bayou, past his friend Mike Burbich’s old house. It looks just like a ranch house, sitting there. Except what’s resting on the ground, Mihovil says, is actually the second level — the first floor was swept right out to sea. On the next lot are the mud-encrusted pieces of a neighbor’s life. A lampshade, a beach umbrella, a Folgers can, an English textbook, a satin sheet, and a toy truck are lying among chunks of ruined foundation. Mihovil’s used to poking through the wreckage — he’s up to 3,000 post-Ike images now — but it still feels invasive sometimes. “When you walk around it’s like sacred ground,” he says. “You’re thinking, ‘These are people’s belongings.’ It’s almost like walking in a cemetery.” Mihovil mentions early that he’s a fourth-generation Galvestonian. His great-grandparents came through the immigration port from Yugoslavia and never left. His father was a tugboat company manager; his grandfather, a chiropractor. Family lore has it that his grandfather survived the 1900 Great Storm strapped to his great-grandfather’s back. Six thousand people (a quarter of the island’s population) weren’t so lucky. For Ike, Mihovil cleared out. He boarded up his house and waited for wife Sally, a nurse, to come home from work at UTMB. They wedged their Labrador, two cats, hard drive, camera equipment, and overnight bags — not to mention their daughter Molly and her makeup, hair dryer, and ice skates — into the car. The Mihovils were among the last to catch the Bolivar ferry (the “back way” off the island) and made it to a cousin’s house in Tyler six hours later. After two days they were back, Mihovil flashing his press creds to get through police checkpoints and onto the closed island. Their friend Ed, a contractor, had already driven by their house and said it looked fine. But the Mihovils opened the door to a swamp. Ed had missed the water line on the side of the house. Fourteen inches of saltwater, mud, even sewage from a failed nearby pump station had seeped in. Between the stench, the mosquitoes, the trapped-in heat, and the shock of it all —everything on the floor ruined — they spent the most miserable night of their lives. Yet by now it’s clear the Mihovils are among the most fortunate families in their ’50s subdivision of single-story houses. They’re one of only two of 28 families on their street who are back. Robert and Sally had added a second story a few years ago. Now they crowd into that upstairs with Molly — the first floor’s been gutted to the frame. That includes the kitchen, so a cooler and a borrowed dorm-size fridge hold the jelly and drinks. Even the backyard grill is hard to use without a kitchen sink to clean utensils. Oatmeal, Pop Tarts, and PB&J sandwiches have been their staples for months and will be for weeks more, until the house is fixed. Mihovil spends maybe three-quarters of his time now dealing with rebuilding, going rounds with the contractors and adjusters. He dedicates several hours a week to the Galveston Community Recovery Committee. And then as often as he can, he takes pictures, mostly glossy ones for shipping companies or government agencies or tourism brochures. He does  occasional portraits but no weddings; place photography is his love. He sees Galveston in the most flattering light possible — the sparkling waves, the tall ship Elissa, the Victorian downtown. Two posters he’s particularly proud of are called “Old World Charm” and “Imagine a Romantic Island.” But he has to shoot what’s there, and right now that’s partly rubble. Certainly, Galveston photographers have seen this before. At UT, Mihovil remembers doing a research paper on an old-time photographer named Paul H. Naschke, who had an extensive collection showing the wreckage from the 1900 storm. “I knew that’s what needed to be done,” Mihovil says. “I’m the local guy, so I knew the places that had probably been hit worst. You know it’s history, so somebody needs to document it so it doesn’t happen again.” Like many others on the island, Mihovil says, he feels like the news cycle washed right over Galveston, on to the presidential election and the economic plunge. And those are paramount for the state and country, he knows. But the island holds his memories, his family, his labored-over house, his livelihood. At 50, he has a few decades left and a won’t-quit optimism; he talks about recovery instead of the chances of another storm. “In two years, we’re going to be back to normal,” he says, “and in five years, we’re going to be back where we ever were.” —Lynn Freehill   A Life Saved: UT Medical Branch The heart of Galveston’s economy may be The University of Texas Medical Branch, and its beating slowed dangerously after Hurricane Ike. The UT System’s Board of Regents held the defibrillator in their hands, but for some painfully long moments, weren’t sure they could restart the blood pumping. And once again, the storm-flooded, low-slung Gulf island felt — well, if not its mortality, certainly its vulnerability. UTMB sits well away from the seawall. But Ike, with its outsized storm surge, forced water from the bay side of the island and into the hospital’s first floor. The kitchens, pharmacy, blood bank, and other support services became swamps. The elite Level One trauma center had to be shut down in the aftermath. More than 2,500 employees were laid off. Many, like Robert Mihovil’s wife, Sally, who’d been head radiation oncology nurse at UTMB, took up hefty commutes to hospitals near Houston in the months after. For her, making it through the ClearLake congestion on the drive north meant waking up at 4:30 a.m. and not coming home to her family until 7 p.m. UTMB already had been losing money, in part because, as the “state safety net” hospital, it cared for so many indigent patients. And then there was an estimated $710 million in hurricane losses and damage to contend with. The regents commissioned a $285,000 report on how to proceed. The Atlanta consulting firm they hired recommended that all patient beds be moved to the mainland. Financially, the firm said, relocating to League City would be the wisest option. In early March, the regents changed course, voting unanimously to build UTMB back up to 550 beds right there in Galveston. But their two-page typed resolution is dotted with whereases and wheretofores. While they are committed to rebuilding capacity, chairman Scott Caven Jr. said, following through depends on adequate funding from FEMA (and a state match for it), philanthropic money from the Sealy & Smith Foundation, and a reliable long-term funding stream for the hospital. “This decision is not our decision alone,” Caven said. “It is heavily contingent on the Legislature, the people of Galveston and GalvestonCounty, and the federal government.” Was it the public meeting that changed minds? The regents had established a Task Force on UTMB Clinical Operations and set up a town hall meeting in February. Some 500 people turned out, although the four regents present — firm in their plan to spend three hours there — were able to hear only about 50 speak, each for 3 minutes. Doctors, nurses, patients, retirees, business owners, and even a judge testified to Galveston’s need to keep UTMB on-island. Reporting back to the full board, committee members praised Galvestonians for sharing their positions courteously. They said hearing the residents made a difference. “Our presence that day in Galveston was not symbolic,” Regent Janiece Longoria said. The board was truly looking, she said, for ways to collaborate with residents and leaders to “appropriately share the load of indigent care.” But while the meeting may have demonstrated public will, keeping UTMB also took political means. The plan the regents approved in the end reflected the funding balance between federal, state, and philanthropic sources that had been pushed by state Rep. Craig Eiland of Galveston (who recently ascended to speaker tempore, the second-in-command of the House). It could take several years to build up to 550 hospital beds. But the rehiring of laid-off UTMB employees has begun. —Lynn Freehill For more of photographer Robert Mihovil's images, visit http://www.mihovil.com