Tag Archives: Hurricane Harvey

environmental news

Happy Trails, Part 38

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I think I’ve just made a command retirement decision.

My wife, Toby the Puppy and I are not going anywhere near the Gulf or Atlantic coasts in August or September.

Hurricane Harvey crashed ashore twice along the Texas coast as a Category 3 monster. First it hit Corpus Christi and Rockport. Then it backed up over the Gulf of  Mexico, downgraded a bit to a tropical storm, then wiped out Houston and the Golden Triangle under 50-something inches of rainfall.

OK, then. The Gulf Coast is out.

Now the nation is awaiting Hurricane Irma, a Category 5 hurricane that is reportedly the most dangerous Atlantic storm ever formed!

Miami and Miami Beach are in Irma’s bulls-eye. Sustained winds are at 185 mph. Residents are starting to flee.

You know what that means? It means we aren’t going that way, either in late summer … not ever!

Climate change is making these monster storms a more frequent occurrence. Do not bitch at me about climate change! I won’t be dissuaded from what I believe, which is that Earth’s climate is changing. I won’t argue with you today about whether it’s manmade or whether it’s part of Earth’s “normal cycle.” The cause doesn’t matter in the context of this decision.

Earth’s climate is changing and that means — for those of us in our household — our happy trails are going to lead us elsewhere at this time of the year.

environmental news

Happy Trails, Part 37

Oh, the best-laid plans can go awry.

For example, we had intended to venture south and east later this year, when the weather cooled, and the Gulf of Mexico hurricane season had subsided.

We have a lot of friends in the Golden Triangle, where we lived from 1984 until 1995. We had plans to haul our RV south to our former hometown to catch up with many of them.

Oh, wait!

Something happened down yonder. Right? Of course!

Hurricane Harvey came through. The storm crashed ashore first in the Corpus Christi-Rockport region along the Coastal Bend. Then the storm waded back into the Gulf, picked up some more steam and returned to the Triangle as Tropical Storm Harvey.

It dumped a lot of rain. It set a continental United States record at more than 50 inches. 

Now I hear that the Texas Department of Transportation is going to embark on a monumental task. It must repair roads and highways damaged by the storm. According to the Texas Tribune:

Prolonged flooding can wash out bridges, knock down traffic signals and signs and cause asphalt to buckle. Last week, the federal government directed $25 million to the Texas Department of Transportation to help the agency begin repairing the region’s vast transportation system.

But that funding won’t last very long, said TxDOT Deputy Executive Director Marc Williams.

“The size and the duration of this storm is beyond anything we’ve ever experienced in this state,” he said.

When do we plan to return to the Golden Triangle? I don’t know. I can’t project when TxDOT will get all the highways fixed. I am not even aware at this moment whether any of the highways over which we might travel are affected.

We do want to get back. We want to see our friends. We intend to hug their necks and express gratitude and thanks that they’re all OK.

I am not one to trifle, though, with Mother Nature. Nor am I going to wish for TxDOT to speed up its infrastructure repair just to suit my wife and me. It’ll take time. We’ll be patient.

environmental news, national news

Houston, we have a development problem

There will be time — in due course — to start thinking seriously about the future of a city that’s been devastated by Mother Nature’s awesome power.

It is beginning already, though.

Houston is still bailing out and digging out from impact of Hurricane Harvey. Residents remain displaced. Many thousands of Houstonians are grieving and wondering where they go from here, what they’ll do to rebuild their shattered lives.

Meanwhile, city officials have begun to start asking: What have we done to exacerbate this tragedy?

Houston is known as a city with limited urban planning guidelines. Over many years the city has quite willingly paved over grasslands and wetlands with pavement. They’ve built highways and bridges, paved streets, laid down parking lots, erected skyscrapers. Residential neighborhoods have sprung up where alligators once swam.

The result of all that has helped produced what we’ve witnessed in recent days. Indeed, Harvey’s savagery isn’t the first such incident to bedevil Houston. Hurricanes Ike and Rita, anyone? Hurricanes Carla and Alicia? Yes, we remember those events, too.

What does Houston do? How does the city cope with the potential for future disaster? I fear it’s too late. The city isn’t going to bust up the asphalt. It’s not going to knock down those buildings and bridges. It won’t shoo away the millions of residents who have flocked to the city.

I suppose the city is now left to ponder ways to control more tightly developers’ designs on future construction. I remember some discussion after Hurricane Katrina laid siege to New Orleans in August 2005 about how the city should rebuild whole neighborhoods washed away. There was some talk of turning former Ninth Ward neighborhoods into wetlands and relocating the residents who fled the storm’s fury.

Houston might need to ponder a similar response to recovering from the damage and destruction delivered by Hurricane Harvey.

A word of caution: Don’t dawdle, Houston. The changing climate might well produce another killer storm soon. I don’t need to remind our friends along the Gulf Coast — but I will anyway — that we are now entering the peak of the 2017 hurricane season.

religious news

Church attendees dig deeply to help Harvey victims

I am going to presume for a moment that this scene played out in church sanctuaries all across Texas — and, indeed, the nation — earlier today.

We attended church this morning at First Presbyterian Church in downtown Amarillo, Texas. The senior pastor, the Rev. Howard Griffin, was presiding over a combined service; First Pres normally has three services each Sunday, but on this Labor Day weekend, the entire congregation gathered for a single service.

The gorgeous First Pres sanctuary was full.

The pastor announced that all the proceeds from this morning’s offering was going to aid a church — First Presbyterian Church of Houston — in its efforts to help the victims of that monstrous hurricane-turned-tropical storm that deluged the Gulf Coast region. The video we watched while sitting in our church pews was heart-wrenching; the devastation along the coast — from Corpus Christi to the Golden Triangle — takes one’s breath away.

Griffin said previous efforts to aid other disaster victims have brought hefty five-figure amounts when the plates get passed throughout the congregation. I am quite certain many of our fellow congregants dug a little deeper this morning to assist their fellow Texans in this time of desperation and despair.

I am also going to suggest that this act of generosity, compassion and godly spirit occurred all across this great nation in houses of worship of all faiths and all great religions.

That’s what we do as Americans. We offer our treasure to those in trouble.

I am one American who this morning was proud to play a small part in what I am certain was a gigantic act of compassion.

Meanwhile, our prayers continue to flow down yonder.

national news

DACA decision now looms even larger for Trump

Americans very well could learn quite soon whether Donald Trump’s display of compassion and good will along the Texas Gulf Coast was a mere show or whether it reveals a side of him few of his believe existed.

That revelation could occur when the president decides whether to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival provision.

DACA has become a kind of shorthand for immigration reform.

My hope is that the president — having visited Houston, Corpus Christi and Rockport — understands this point: Many of those families affected by Hurricane Harvey’s devastation involve DACA residents, individuals who were brought to this country illegally while they were children.

I should add, too, that DACA residents helped build those devastated neighborhoods along the Gulf Coast and are going to help repair them.

These Americans had no say in what their parents did. They have grown up in this country, which is the only country they have known. Rescinding DACA status for these individuals would send them back to the country of their birth — and would deprive them of the only life they have experienced.

Against that backdrop, we know that many DACA families are suffering in cities such as Houston, which has a huge population of residents comprising those who came here as youngsters.

This isn’t entirely about the Texas Gulf Coast suffering. It’s also about whether the president is going to continue to appeal to his Republican Party “base,” which detests DACA provisions; the “base” wants DACA residents booted out, no matter the circumstance.

Donald Trump has a serious choice to make: keep pleasing the “base” or finally — finally! — reach out to millions of Americans who do not favor repealing DACA status for American residents.

It’s not an “amnesty,” as candidate Trump called it during the 2016 campaign. DACA provides a path toward citizenship or permanent legal residence.

Which side of the president will present itself when he announces his DACA decision? Time will tell. I’m hoping the “better angels” have seized Donald Trump’s attention.

national news

Trump earns praise; but beware of future criticism

It really didn’t hurt at all to say something kind about Donald Trump in an earlier blog post.

I had vowed to speak well of the president when I felt it was necessary. His visit — along with the first lady, Melania — to Houston today gave me that chance.

The president has now made two trips in just a few days to the Texas Gulf Coast in the wake of the storm Harvey’s massive, destructive blow to the region. The president took plenty of heat for his first visit, in which he didn’t visit with storm victims. He instead patted politicians on the back for their response.

Today’s visit was vastly different. It was the kind of visit the president should have made when he ventured to Corpus Christi, which had suffered huge wind damage.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2017/09/trump-does-right-by-harveys-victims/

I’ll continue to challenge Donald Trump, however, as we move farther along into his presidency. I don’t intend to change my mind about the man’s fitness for the job and, to be candid, nothing that happened today in Houston and later in Lake Charles, La., has persuaded me differently.

I just feel compelled once again to offer the man a good word of encouragement for returning to the scene of this unspeakable natural disaster. As the picture indicates, the victims of Harvey’s wrath appreciated seeing him, hearing his soothing words and sharing a smile with a president who willing to take a selfie.

To be candid, pictures like this make me smile, too.

local news, State news

Oh, by the way, Texas cell phone ban takes effect

Texans have been fixated on news from the Gulf Coast of late.

Flooding. Heavy wind. Thousands of people displaced. Some tragic deaths. Injuries. Devastation from the deluge.

While we were praying for our friends and loved ones, and while some of us were looking toward Washington and the “Russia thing,” a big day arrived in Texas.

On Friday, the state’s ban on use of cell phones while driving motor vehicles took effect. Texas joined many other states in enacting a statewide ban. It’s not entirely clear if the ban supersedes local ordinances — such as in Amarillo — but the statewide ban does accomplish an important mission. It brings continuity to how the state expects motorists to behave while they are traveling on Texas streets, roads and highways.

I’m proud of our Panhandle legislative delegation. They were strongly in favor of the ban. Indeed, so was Republican state Rep. (and former Texas House Speaker) Tom Craddick, who authored cell phone ban bills in several legislative sessions.

Then-Gov. Rick Perry vetoed a cell phone ban bill in 2011, calling it an undue intrusion from the government into the behavior of citizens. What a crock!

Perry’s successor, Greg Abbott, signed the 2017 bill into law. Which makes a lot of Texans quite happy. Count me as one of them.

This law enables the state to post signage at highway entrances at all corners of the state. It puts motorists coming into the state on notice that they need to keep their cell phones quiet — or use their hands-free communication systems inside their vehicles.

To my way of thinking, that is far better than to asking motorists to risk breaking the law if they don’t know whether individual communities have bans on the books.

Texas legislators did well by approving this law. Gov. Abbott did well, too, by signing it into law.

I just wanted to remind you that the law took effect. Now, let’s turn back to worrying about the flooding victims and “the Russia thing.”

local news, State news

Even in abundance, water is a priceless commodity

My social media networks are telling me that the water is starting to come back ever so slowly down yonder in Beaumont, Texas.

The savage storm named Harvey deluged the Golden Triangle region so badly that Beaumont’s water treatment system was knocked out. Gone. Dead. No drinking water to be had.

Just a few days later, the system is coming back — slowly. I trust it’s also surely on its way back.

One of my friends reports his toilet tank is filling. Another of them posted this note on Facebook: Treat water like it is gold, because it is.

Boy, howdy! We know about that even this far northwest of the flood zone. We in the Texas Panhandle have been grappling with water conservation and preservation issues for about, oh, nearly forever.

It’s not that we have the abundance of water, but rather a lack of water.

My good friends in Beaumont and Houston, though, are getting yet another kind of water-conservation lesson. The Golden Triangle’s woes intensified many times when the water system collapsed under the 40-plus-inch deluge that Harvey delivered.

Those good folks aren’t anywhere close to being clear of the damage brought by Harvey. They’re inching their way toward a return to something approaching a normal life.

It’s going to take lots and lots of time to return to normal water usage — even as those valiant Texans look for ways to slosh their way through the water that surrounds them.

As one of my friends, the one with the toilet tank refilling, noted: Be frugal, Beaumont. Preserve this precious resource for everyone!

Meanwhile, many prayers continue to shower that stricken region.

national news

Trump does right by Harvey’s victims

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Donald Trump makes it hard for his critics to say something good about him.

I’m going to try, though, to give the president of the United States of America two thumbs up. I had pledged to speak well of the president when opportunities presented themselves. One such opportunity occurred today.

Trump and his wife, Melania, ventured back to Texas today to get a better look at the devastation brought to the Gulf Coast by Hurricane/Tropical Storm Harvey. He went to a church that doubles as a shelter for Texans displaced by Harvey’s wrath. He took selfies with children and their parents. He offered many words of encouragement.

That’s what presidents are supposed to do.

Yes, some critics have alluded to the notion that Trump should have done all this during his first trip to the Gulf Coast. They’re suggesting he’s doing this only because of the criticism he took for the photo-op quality of that initial post-Harvey visit.

I won’t go there — although, yes, I’m sure some critics of this blog might point out that merely mentioning the criticism of others projects my own dim view of the president.

Instead, I choose to offer a good word of encouragement for Donald Trump. He took the time to look victims in the eye and offer them the federal government’s full attention and assistance.

These Texans are in trouble, which Mother Nature delivered in awesome proportion. They needed to know that the president of the United States is capable of donning his consoler in chief robe and is willing to express verbally and openly the care and concern of the federal government he was elected to oversee.

This duty is part of the job description. I’m glad the president understood it today.

State news

Tragedy creates plenty of perspective

I’ve been spending the past few days trying to account for the status of some dear friends living in the Houston and Golden Triangle regions of the Texas Gulf Coast.

I can report that most of them are dry. They aren’t flooded. One friend’s home in Lumberton, just north of Beaumont, took about 5 feet of water. I don’t know where he and his family are staying at the moment.

Not all of my friends are accounted for, but I have faith they are still with us.

But one person with whom I worked in Beaumont offered a fascinating message to me that reminds me of how one is able to place their own suffering into its appropriate context.

She reports that she is “dry but sweaty.” She and her husband have no electricity in their suburban Beaumont home. They didn’t take any water, for which I’m certain they are grateful.

She also notes now “incredibly fortunate” she and her husband feel, given the level of suffering that so many thousands of their Golden Triangle neighbors are enduring from the storm that savaged that region.

My family is a good distance from what one could call Ground Zero of Hurricane Harvey’s wrath. One of our sons lives with his family just north of Dallas; another son lives in Amarillo, as do my wife and I, as well as my mother-in-law. We’re all watching this tragedy unfold from some distance.

I wonder, still, how I might cope with no way to cool myself in the oppressive heat and humidity that is normal for the Golden Triangle this time of year. We know about it well. We lived there for nearly 11 years.

I know, though, that my friend’s faith is strong. So is her resolve. Moreover, she also understands that what she is enduring pales in comparison to the heartache that has gripped so many thousands of others just down her street, around the corner.

Tragedy has this way of reminding us not just of what we have lost, but also of what we retain.

I’m continuing to pray for our friends.