Julie Agee and her mother, both Galveston residents, are still waiting for word on the condition of their home. They came to Temple late last week seeking refuge at a friend’s house.

“Our evacuation hasn’t been that bad because we got out of Galveston early - it only took us 5 ½ hours to get up here,” she said on Monday.

“We didn’t have some of the problems that others did,” she said, or the problems they had with Hurricane Katrina because for that storm, she got her mother out the day before.

Because she is staying with a friend, Ms. Agee said she and her mother are doing just fine.

“It’s not like we’re in a shelter or anything else so the worst part for us has been not knowing if we’ve got anything left and we’ve got no way of knowing at this point in time,” she said. “We’ll look at the aerial photos of the area and you can’t really tell and they haven’t really flown over the area in which we live.”

Ms. Agee said a friend is going to try to get back into Galveston today to assess damage.

“He’s going to call and let me know. He’s gonna’ do a look-see and see if it’s still there,” she said. “You’re in limbo. You wanna' get home and start cleaning things up but you can’t get in there. You just sit here and you can’t do anything about it.”

Ms. Agee and her 79-year-old mother are both natives of Galveston and understand the vulnerability of the coast.

“I’ve talked to lots of friends who live on the west end (of Galveston Island) and they’ve said if the structures are still standing they’ve got water in them, even if they’ve never flooded before. Even neighborhoods that probably didn’t flood during Hurricane Carla in 1961,” she said. “So that’s a lot of friends who are gonna be in the same position that we are.

“Water in the house is gonna be the least of their worries. Some of them don’t even have a house at all. I have a lot of friends living in Jamaica Beach and that was the area hit the hardest. I have friends that live in the historic east end district and that’s the area I’m having trouble getting any information at all and I can’t get a hold of anyone in the area because they didn’t leave, so I don’t know if they’re all right,” she said.

Ms. Agee, who works at the First Lutheran Church of Galveston, which was established in 1850, said once she finds out the condition of her home, she’ll start contacting members of the congregation to identify their needs.

“That’s what the church is supposed to do, they take care of their members - reaching out to the community and our congregates,” she said. “We’ll couple with our national church and our regional church as well as with the Red Cross and Salvation Army and reach out to the people to see if they need help, how they need help and where they are.”

And, she knows there’ll be a lot to do.

“We’ll do what Galvestonians do best, my dear, and we’ll clean it up and get on with it,” she said.