Rebuilding the GeoTubes at Pirate's Beach
Hurricane Claudette in July, 2003 caused significant damage to the geotubes along
the west Galveston beachfront.
Specifically, in Pirate's beach, the geotubes had a 46 inch drainage tube going
underneath the geotubes
at various points to allow for drainage of rain and
flood waters back to the ocean.
Hurricane Claudette's storm surge and waves ripped out all of those drainage
tubes and
destroyed the overlying geotubes.
The repair of the geotubes along Pirate's Beach has been taking place during
August and September, 2004.
This series of photos shows the rebuilding of the drainage tubes and overlying
geotubes
on Buccaneer Boulevard in Pirates' Beach.
On Thursday, September 23, 2004 work which had been underway had to be suspended
due to storm surge and waves from the re-emergence of Hurricane Ivan in the northwestern
Gulf of Mexico near the Louisiana-Texas border.
Equipment had to be moved out of the now
high tides and surf, and work had to
be suspended. Here we see some of the hydraulic hoses
and the sand hopper awaiting retrieval.
A close up of the above photo.To the right, you can see part of the steel pipes
that
are place out into the surf to suck water into the hydraulic pumps.
More of the steel pipe water suction unit.
A lot of heavy equipment was used to retrieve items from the rising surf.
The Ross Web Site helicopter monitored events closely. If you look carefully,
you can see
the Ross Web Site logo on the side of the helicopter.
The foreman (back to us in the foreground) directs one of the heavy units where to dig to
attempt to find equipment which had been fully swallowed by the sand.
More digging. The equipment was very hard to find.
Finally, one of the missing buried units was found.
The next steps involved moving the rolled up geotubes to higher ground.
The water pumping pipe units also had to be moved.
The steel dredge also needed to be moved before it disappeared completely.
On Friday, September 24 normal operations got back underway. A trench was
dug
where Buccaneer Boulevard meets the beach, and the geotubes were unrolled
and
laid out in the trench.The drainage tube is then laid at the junction of
two separate geotubes.
Workmen then attached the two separate geotubes across the top of the drainage
pipe.
One of the workmen was happy to pose for the Ross Web Site cameras.
Attaching the two parts of the geotubes continues.
The hopper is mounted up high. High pressure water is pumped into this hopper, and
sand is loaded into the top. The sand is then forced down into the geotube,
eventually filling it up.
Another unit moves to the top of a sand pile to begin picking up sand to drop into the hopper.
The hopper is here being attached to the geotube so that sand can begin flowing.
Heavy equipment begins to pile up the enormous volume of sand needed for this process.
Here you can see the hopper being filled. This occurs about once every 30 seconds
or
so for the 2-3 hours it takes to fill a typical geotube.
Filling of the geotube on one side of the drainage pipe is well underway.
Filling continues. The water is the outflow from the geotube, leaving the sand behind filling the geotube.
A diesel pumping unit provides the pressure, pulling water in from the pipes which extend out into the surf.
By Sunday morning, September 26, filling of these particular geotubes was completed.
Once the geotube filling work is completed all along west beach, these geotubes will be
covered with sand, planted with local beach grass and will look just like normal sand dunes.
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