It’s hard to watch the coverage of Hurricane Harvey without feeling
a heavy heart and sympathy for the people in Texas and Louisiana. I’ve had it
on from morning to night since it started a week ago. I could give myself more
breaks, turn off the TV, but that’s hard to do when people in Houston and the other effected areas are still in serious peril due to the catastrophic
flooding. I’ve run into some cynics on political debate sites this week who think
they are too smart to be caught in situations where their lives depend on the
goodness of strangers and the professionalism of first responders. They are
critical of everyone from the Harvey victims, the local officials, the building codes even the media but I take comfort in the fact that the cynics aren't winning any popularity contests. I also
take comfort in the fact that the Good Samaritans far outnumber the handful
of looters in situations like these flood victims are going through. As Chris
Cuomo from CNN says, “Disasters bring out the bad in bad people and the good in
good people.”
So many heroic stories are coming out of this disaster that it
reinforces your faith in the goodness of mankind. People like “Mattress Mack” in
Houston who opened up his two furniture stores and warehouses to shelter
evacuees---his beds, sofas and chairs helping 300+ people at each location. And
the restaurants inside his stores and near-by are cooking meals for them.
People like the 29 year old screenwriter with no training who took charge in a small
shelter in a desperate situation in Rockport. He organized volunteers to plug
leaks, pool food and water and forage the building for things they could use like
hand sanitizers plus look after the frailest people in the group of 125 people.
Heroic people like those with water crafts of all kinds who came in from
every which way to help evaluate people who’d been stranded in
houses with water filling up the first floors or wading in knee-to-waist-high
water. And the people like those who organized conveys headed to the disaster
areas with water, food, clothing and other necessities and to work on restoring
the power lines. The enormity of the on-going needs of the flood and hurricane
victims is hard to wrap your head around. And it's not just Texas. Other states also felt the wrath of Harvey.
The Domino Effect: It comes with no surprise they are now saying gasoline will be in short
supply for the North East due to the largest oil refinery in the nation (at Port
Arthur, Texas) being off line and it will take a week or two to get it up
and running again. Already gas prices here have jumped up and you know building
supplies will be in severe, short supply down the road. Beef prices will also sky-rocket. Louisiana has taken 3,000 Texans into their shelters and Sunday our local Noel Project is expecting 100 stray dogs from Houston that are being moved from their humane society to make room for temporary housing for dogs with known owners staying in evacuation shelters. I live near a FEMA trailer storage yard and I’m
guessing I’ll see them moving out next week. And the process of reaching an agreement on how to pay for the most expensive natural disaster in U.S.
history begins when our lawmakers get back to D.C. next week. By the time the Domino
Effect plays out it will go far and wide, in tiny and large ways.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as of Friday says that 400,400 people have registered for assistance and The Red Cross says it has 258 shelters set up, having moved 400 of their trucks and 1,500 volunteers down to the area with more volunteers being trained for down the road. I’ve lost track of the counties now included in the
Federal Disaster Declaration but FEMA is estimating that185,000 private homes
were damaged, not to mention the infrastructure that will need replacing.
So far FEMA seems to be doing a good job, having learned from the mistakes made
with hurricanes Katrina and Sandy. And every branch of our military
has been deployed to help including Black Hawk helicopters usually deployed in
war zones. Then there are the celebrities who are challenging one another to
match their donations to disaster relief organizations, throwing around numbers
as high a million each. Their challenge chain keeps growing. I could go on and
on about all the heroic, positive and uplifting stories and acts of kindness that catastrophic Hurricane Harvey has inspired,
but I’d rather document Harvey with some of the more iconic photos I’ve seen
this week. ©
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| volunteers coming to help |
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| Houston FEMA Shelter |
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| cattle drive to higher ground |
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| dog evacuating himself and his bag of food |
