Melissa Martinez of Galveston, Texas, carries belongings salvaged from her destroyed home in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike on Sept. 23
It is has been three weeks since Hurricane Ike blew ashore on Galveston Island bringing up to 20 feet of Gulf waters over the low-lying land, killing a still yet to be determined number of residents several hundred remain missing and inflicting billions of dollars in damage. The television satellite trucks and cable news stars are gone and the nation's collective eye has turned elsewhere. But thousands of area residents now live in a stench-filled world where the incongruous is normal and the dangerous real.
The slow descent into the Looking...
