Hurricane Harvey 8.27.2017

Hi all!

I hope ya'll are all well and enjoying the end to your summer, which of course alludes to school starting but also Fall starting - which is my favorite time of the year. You've got Halloween, pumpkin spiced desserts, cool weather and cool nights, scary movies...I mean, what could be better?

This summer has been a very memorable one so far for me. I took a summer class for the first portion, and then for the second, I had an amazing opportunity to study abroad to Scotland and take a Shakespeare course and Scottish crime fiction. But this post isn't about how amazing my trip was - trust me, for that I will elaborate much more later.

By now, if you are living in the United States, you have most likely heard of Hurricane Harvey which struck the Texas coast this past Friday evening. A week prior to this, it was just a tropical storm. I had returned from Colorado, from a family vacation, Wednesday night only to find that this so-called tropical storm had progressed into a hurricane. The next day, as I had finally returned to my apartment after two months of travelling none stop, the news confirmed that Harvey had progressed to a category 3 storm and had the potential for being a category 4.

By that point, I was planning on staying in Corpus Christi because my brother couldn't leave, due to personal reasons. I figured we outta all stick together. But after hearing about Harvey's potential, I was able to convince them to come with me to my parent's house, which is about an hour drive north of Corpus. I figured that would be safe, since it was at least 50 miles inland.

For those of you who aren't familiar with hurricanes, they surely can be forces of nature, and the categories given are truly imperative. According to the Saffir-Simpson scale, category 3 hurricanes have winds that range from 111-129 mph. Here is the description to a category 3 hurricane according to the scale:

Devastating damage will occur: Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes.

On the other hand, category 4 hurricanes are catastrophic, with winds ranging from 130-156 mph.

Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Long story short, after staying at my parent's house for roughly 40 minutes, my father called (he is currently in Colorado still) and demanded us to go to San Antonio, which is of course more inland. My older sister who lives there had been calling us relentlessly, threatening to drive down to get us before the storm hit. Thursday evening we all packed up again, with four dogs, and left on a 3 hour drive to San Antonio on a Hurricane evacuation route. The entire trip was surreal. Everyone was in a frenzy. We stopped by the grocery store to find no water, no bread, only a few canned goods. Most of the gas stations we went to were out of gas.

But, finally we made it and settled down. But when Friday night rolled around, man, that was eerie. The news about the hurricane had escalated. The winds were already raging. I found out after unloading that I had left my laptop at my parent's house, which has all my work for capstone and all my creative writing - basically my life's work. Things were essentially not looking good in the coastal city I had called home for years. Seeing videos of people capturing the wind and almost black skies, with the hurricane approaching, was so surreal. To see places I had been before. To see businesses that treated me well. To see familiar streets.

I could barely sleep that night. My eyes were practically glued to facebook. We had drinks - liquor and some wine. We laughed, played video games. But our minds were all elsewhere. We all kept thinking to ourselves, am I going to have a home to go back to? A job to return to? A school? 

The Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi campus is right on the water. It's notorious for being an island of its own. Above all buildings in the city, that was going to take the greatest fall, I told myself. And the news stations kept saying that Corpus was going to take a category 3 hurricane (or even a potential category 4) face on.

But what still rings with me now, something I'll never forget, is this. Some young men were videotaping a live account of Ocean Drive in Corpus before Harvey made landfall. The waves were already crashing against shore, the hurricane imminent. The young men stopped when they noticed a woman sitting under one of the gazebos. One went out to warn the woman about the storm and the surge that would follow, that she was in a very dangerous location. He told her they could take her to a shelter. She was homeless. But all she said was, "I'm right where I want to be."

That Fridat night, Harvey hit Texas at a staggering category 4, and it had shifted to mostly hit another city called Rockport straight on at its peak intensity. The results are staggering. For the people who didn't leave, many lost their homes. I read online accounts of people whose houses collapsed on them. The photographs taken in the aftermath are staggering alone, but I cannot imagine what those people endured that Friday night.

I spent that night awake for the most part, on my phone. Where we were in San Antonio, we never lost power; we never got a drop of rain, really, until Sunday afternoon. But I kept thinking about my apartment. My home. My school. My city.

My home.

Hurricanes are forces of nature, as I mentioned. And for those of you who may have the conception that Texas was ill-prepared, that isn't the case. We were informed the entire time, but storms like this develop spontaneously. As I mentioned, about a week ago, it was only a tropical storm. It wasn't even mentioned in conversation. But now, it's destroyed many people's homes and many peoples' way of lives. Just go to google and search for Hurricane Harvey. It's still affecting places like Houston as I'm writing this, with immense flooding; it's still causing tornadoes to form.

So, if you'd like to help with disaster efforts, there are plenty of organizations who are offering aid to those devastated by Harvey. I will list a few for examples for you to look at, and I encourage you to pray for those in Rockport and Houston, or Texas in general, who are enduring the aftermath of Harvey, and I also encourage you to reach out and help. Things like this can change someone's life in a day. I know it's changed mine, and I wasn't even there. I have an apartment to go back to. I have a job to start. But for others, that's all gone.

For those affected by Harvey, my heart goes out to you. I will pray for you; I will pray for those in Houston, for those in Rockport, for business owners in Corpus Christi or Victoria or Port Aransas. This is a time for us all to help each other and come together. I thank God for the thousands of National Guards who traveled to the coastal cities to help with survivors and to help stop looters. I thank God for H-E-B, Texas' favorite grocery store, which gave out water bottles and other provisions to those who needed it, as soon as the storm brewed over, and who also worked endlessly before Harvey made landfall. For those living in places like these right now, I encourage you to go outside and help someone in need. If you can't do that, I encourage you to donate to those who truly need it.

How to help Hurricane Harvey victims: 

Coastal Bend Disaster Recovery Group
Texas Diaper Bank
Coalition for the Homeless
Global Giving
Austin Pets Alive