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Galveston mayor: 'We'll make it through this'Beach erosion a 'big concern'
(CNN) -- Residents of Galveston, Texas, awoke Tuesday morning to the sound of crashing waves, heavy rain and high winds, caused by Hurricane Claudette -- the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. Over a century ago, the town was nearly wiped out by a hurricane, but by now officials fear residents have become complacent. Galveston Mayor Roger Quiroga spoke Tuesday from the shoreline with CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien about coping with Claudette. O'Brien: Mr. Mayor, thanks for joining us. We certainly appreciate it. Just how bad it is right now in Galveston. Give me a sense of how bad it was overnight? QUIROGA: Well, it got a little hairy overnight, but it didn't get as bad as we expected. Things on the Galveston island are kind of bad right now, but they should be getting better as time goes by. The National Weather Service has told us that things should get better after the noon hour. O'BRIEN: You say kind of bad. Give me a little better description of exactly what's going on. Obviously, high winds. We've seen choppy waters and... we can see how strong the winds are. Give me a sense of just how bad it is today so far. QUIROGA: Winds are blowing probably around 50 miles an hour. The west end looks bad because that's probably where most of our lower lying areas are -- on the west end, and highway 3005 is probably cut off right now. The waves are crashing over the sea wall pretty good west of 61st and... to about 99th street. You have to get on the northern-most part of the road in order to get by. We're encouraging people to really try to stay in if they can and wait until this passes by and maybe wait until after the noon hour to come out. O'BRIEN: Outside of telling folks to stay in, exactly how are you preparing for the storm? QUIROGA: Well, we've been preparing for the last few days. Our emergency management office has been open 24 hours a day since yesterday. We've been monitoring the situation with the National Weather Service, keeping in close contact with them. We think that we're doing fine right now. I'll take this minimal hurricane, so they can go ahead and bring this one on and we'll make it through this. O'BRIEN: How are the folks where you are doing emotionally about feeling the brunt of this hurricane as it hits land? QUIROGA: Well, Galveston has the distinction of having the largest natural disaster in the nation's history occur here in the 1900 storm. The last hurricane that we've had in Galveston was back in 1983 and that was hurricane Alicia. So we kind of fear that the people in Galveston have become complacent. We try to educate them and tell them not to become complacent, because we have to take even these tropical storms very seriously, or minimal hurricanes very seriously and we want to make sure that they are well prepared and that's what our focus has been over the last year or so, is to educate the citizens of Galveston and make sure that they have the necessary supplies that they need in case we do get hit by a hurricane. O'BRIEN: Is it too early sir, to figure out how bad financially this storm could be on Galveston? QUIROGA: Yes, it is way too early. I think the biggest concern that we have is probably beach erosion. The beach has been eroding about 10 feet a year here on the island and that's a big concern for us. We've just replenished, part of the west end of the beach with some sand and that sand is all gone now. So that's a big job for the city. The state of Texas really, in my opinion, should be more responsible for giving us more money to replenish our beaches because without the beaches, Galveston's economy will really go south and it will hurt the state as well. So replenishing our beaches is probably the biggest concern that we have at this time with beach erosion. O'BRIEN: Mr. Mayor, I've got to tell you, it looks so bad from where we're sitting, I can hardly even make you out in our shot, you sort of look like a big shadow there. Tell me, the national weather center was concerned about any folks in the waters. Is there anybody in the water right now? QUIROGA: No, there's not anyone in the water right now and we're not going to let anyone in the water. The beach patrol will be monitoring that situation. If people get in the water, then they're asked to get out and [if they] don't get out then we're going to have to get our police force out there to get them out. But I don't think that's going to be a problem because of the real rough seas that we have right now. O'BRIEN: All right. One final question for you. Is noon, basically the time you're looking at as to when you'll be basically in the clear or do you think it might spread after that? QUIROGA: We might go a little beyond that, but the worst should be over by noon unless we have more coming in to Galveston island, but the National Weather Service says we are seeing the worst of it right now and by noon time and it ought to be getting a little bit better.
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