(September 15, 2008)

ROBSTOWN--Hurricane Ike left its mark behind in San Patricio and Aransas county. The surge that the storm carried even way down here to the Coastal Bend caused plenty of beach flooding and damage to low-lying areas.

Hurricane ike made landfall early on Saturday morning. but more than two days later in the north part of the Coastal Bend, there is still some evidence of the storm surge.

"I rode it out," said Stan Bane, a Houston resident, who was visiting Aransas County. "It was bad. It sounded like a warzone."

Bane left Houston after Hurricane Ike slammed into the area. Once he got to his vacation home in Holiday Beach in Aransas County, he was surprised to find this: high water from the storm surge.

Bane said the water rose about three feet over the weekend. Now it's dropped a little bit, but it's still higher than normal, causing some damage to his property.

"Just some dock damage some boards came unloose," said Bane. "Just mainly the cleanup because of the filthy water and stuff like that."

Joe Reyes evacuated to Lockhart and he found about six inches of water in his storage area when he returned home.

"I tell you it's a relief because I was expecting to have all this flooded in here," said Reyes, who has lived in Holiday Beach for about eight years. 

Brush clean up crews were working in Ingleside on the Bay due to beach flooding and the storm surge left a mess behind in the small town.

"It's a little frustrating," said Harry Duffield, a resident of Ingleside on the Bay. "It's been this high before. So it what's I expected I didn't expect it to be any higher than that."

"We most definitely dodged a bullet," said Aransas County Judge Burt Mills shortly after he took a helicopter ride over the county to assess the minor flooding in the area.

"We fared very well, said Judge Mills. "You could see where the water had been and you could see it going out."

Now that Hurricane Ike has passed, residents expect to see a lot of mosquitoes with all this standing water around the Coastal Bend.

--Manuel De La Rosa, Area 3 News, mdelarosa@kiiitv.com