Hurricane Harvey

[babsbag]

ARC did a horrible job in CA after a big fire destroyed many many homes. They were given bags and bags of clothes and they didn't want them. They just threw them in a pile at the fairgrounds, outside. Didn't try to sort them or offer them to people. A local lady and her friends took on the job and the victims were so thankful that someone cared. ARC tried to chase her off so she had to "steal" the clothes.

Saw another post and picture from a lady in TX that was picking up 2 vans full of unwanted pet food that ARC told their volunteers to throw in the dumpster. A volunteer called a rescue and they came and got it to distribute. The volunteers were told..."we can get more for Florida and no one here needs it".

I have a friend that was an ARC volunteer. She said "do not donate to them, but be kind to the volunteers, they mean to do good, but often aren't given what they need"

 

[Pastor Dave]

I agree with your friend. Once upon a time I was a CPR and community first aid unstructor for ARC. They didn't make it easy to give the classes. Conditions were less than ideal. After being in a class session for so many hours, they had us break down the dummies, mix up bleach water, and sanitize everything before we could leave. Then we had to pack them up and any material used, and tote it back to HQ to store away. Needless to say, I quit volunteering after a while.

 

[Baymule]

@greybeard JMO but it looks like you are blessed that it wasn't any worse than it was.

In 2011 when Texas had a terrible drought and horrific fires, a Facebook group of volunteers started cooking for and feeding the fire fighters. The grocery store chain, HEB heard about it and supplied all the food. FEMA showed up and tried to shut them down. FEMA was ignored by some determined Texas women intent on taking care of hungry worn out fire fighters that were trying to save homes. FEMA finally convinced the volunteers to wear the same colored T-shirts so they could be identified as volunteers. HEB and a Facebook group just kinda shoved FEMA aside and did what they needed to do.

I found the post!


This is a great commentary on Texas folks vs Big govt.

Here are some stories about the Tricounty fire in Montgomery, Grimes, and Waller County, Memorial week, 2011.

My neighbor across the road has a sister named Kenna. Memorial Day, when she saw the huge column of smoke over our homes, she left a birthday party at my neighbor’s house to meet with her friend Tara at the Baseball complex in Magnolia. She called the owner of the complex and got permission to use the warehouse there as a staging area for donations for the fire fighting effort.

They put a notice out on facebook that they were going to be taking donations on their facebook pages. That night as they were setting up tables and organizing, News 2 Houston came by and saw the activity, investigated and left with the phone numbers and a list of suggested donations.

The facebook notice propagated faster than the fire. By dawn they had 20 volunteers, bins, forklifts, and donations were pouring in. I stopped by with my pitiful little bags of nasal wash and eye wash, and was amazed. There must have been 20 trucks in the lot, offloading cases of water, pallets of Gatorade , and people lined up out the door with sacks of beef jerky, baby wipes, underwear, socks, and you name it. School buses and trailers from many counties around were there offloading supplies, students forming living chains to pass stuff into the bins for transport to the command center and staging areas. If the firefighters had requested it, it was there. What do you give the guy out there fighting the fire that might engulf your home? Anything he or she wants. Including chewing tobacco and cigarettes.

Kenna moved on to the Unified Command Post at Magnolia West High school. She looked at what the fire fighters needed, and she made calls and set it up.

Mattress Mac donated 150 beds. Two class rooms turned into barracks kept quiet and dark for rest. The CEO of HEB donated 2 semi trailers full of supplies, and sent a mobile commercial kitchen at no charge to feed all the workers, but especially our firefighters, 3 hot meals a day. An impromptu commissary was set up, anything the firefighters had requested available at no charge.

As exhausted firefighters (most of them from local VFDs with no training or experience battling wildfires) and workers came into the school after long hours of hard labor, dehydrated, hungry, covered with soot and ash, they got what they needed. They were directed through the commissary, where they got soap, eye wash and nasal spray, candy, clean socks and underwear, and then were sent off to the school locker rooms for a shower. HEB then fed them a hot meal and they got 8 hours sleep in a barracks, then another hot meal, another pass through the commissary for supplies to carry with them out to lines, including gloves, safety glasses, dust masks and snacks, and back they went.

One of the imported crew from California came into Unified Command and asked where the FEMA Powerbars and water were. He was escorted to the commissary and started through the system. He was flabbergasted. He said FEMA never did it like this. Kenna replied, ”Well, this is the way we do it in Texas.”

Fire fighting equipment needed repair? The auto shop at the High School ran 24/7 with local mechanics volunteering, students, and the firefighters fixing the equipment.

Down one side of the school, the water tankers lined up at the fire hydrants and filled with water. Down the other side there was a steady parade of gasoline tankers filling trucks, dozers, tankers, cans, chain saws, and vehicles.

Mind you, all of this was set up by 2 Moms, Kenna and Tara, with a staff of 20 simple volunteers, most of them women who had sons, daughters, husbands, and friends on the fire lines. Someone always knew someone who could get what they needed- beds, mechanics, food, space. Local people using local connections to mobilize local resources made this happen. No government aid. No Trained Expert.
At one point the fire was less than a mile from the school, and everyone but hose volunteers were evacuated. The fire was turned.
The Red Cross came in, looked at what they were doing, and quietly went away to set up a fire victim relief center nearby. They said they couldn’t do it any better.

FEMA came in and told those volunteers and Kenna that they had to leave, FEMA was here now. Kenna told them she worked for the firefighters, not them. They were obnoxious, bossy, got in the way, and criticized everything. The volunteers refused to back down and kept doing their job, and doing it well. Next FEMA said the HEB supplies and kitchen had to go, that was blatant commercialism. Kenna said they stayed. They stayed. FEMA threw a wall eyed fit about chewing tobacco and cigarettes being available in the commissary area. Kenna told them the firefighters had requested it, and it was staying. It stayed. FEMA got very nasty and kept asking what organization these volunteers belonged to- and all the volunteers told them “Our community”. FEMA didn’t like that and demanded they make up a name for themselves. One mother remarked “They got me at my boiling point!” and suddenly the group was “212 Degrees”. FEMA’s contribution? They came in the next day with red shirts embroidered with “212 Degrees”, insisting the volunteers had to be identified, never realizing it was a slap in their face. Your tax dollars at work- labeling volunteers with useless shirts and getting in the way.

The upshot? A fire that the experts from California (for whom we are so grateful there are no words) said would take 2-3 weeks to get under control was 100% contained in 8 days. There was so much equipment and supplies donated, 3 container trucks are loaded with the excess to go and set up a similar relief center for the fire fighters in Bastrop. The local relief agencies have asked people to stop bringing in donations of clothing, food, household items, and pretty much everything else because they only have 60 displaced households to care for, and there is enough to supply hundreds. Again, excess is going to be shipped to Bastrop, where there are 1500 displaced households. Wish we could send Kenna, too, but she has to go back to her regular job.

 

[greybeard]

I took a few pics today. Realized as soon as I got out on the place and turned the camera on that I had forgotten to put the SD card back in when I transferred some other pics to my laptop earlier in the morning, so I could only take a few.

This was taken leaving the pond dam, and going up the hill where I had left the charolais cattle the night the river had begun to rise bad. It had never seen floodwater on it in all the years we've had the place (since 1964). There were 27 head there right before dark. (My beefmaster herd was smaller and I had them on another high spot not far from the house next to the National Forest. It is the 2nd highest point on my property.)


For all the time I've been here, that hill was red iron ore clay. You can see, that the topsoil is now washed away, tree roots exposed as the cattle milled around and their hooves loosened the grass and the topsoil and it washed off. It's now sandy with big quarter/half dollar sized gravel on it. (no, I don't know where the tires came from) At some point in the early morning hours, the Chars decided to leave this hill and try to cross the pond dam, which was then running water 4' deep and had to traverse a low spot between the hill and the dam, which is barely visible off to the right in the picture. To the left of that high spot, is a wire gap between my place and my sister's property. The cattle got washed over or swam over that gap gate. It's still there and fastened on both ends, but is pushed down about 3' high.


Opposite fence which separates my property from my brother's property. I built it from scratch in '08 I think it was. 2200' long, built to keep my cattle off what is now his property but belonged to my sister when I built it and I knew she was going to sell it to the first person that offered on it. Works great for holding cattle in, but with the wire on my side of the posts, not so great for holding debris out. Water was running from left to right in the following pictures. But, there isn't a broken wire on it. People can say what they want about how hard hi tensile barbed wire is to work with but it doesn't give.The tposts may lean, but that Bekaert (made in Ky, USA) wire holds. I am SOO glad I didn't use fixed knot field fence on this one.


When I built the fence, I planted a sawed utility pole every 150' and they help hold the wire in place and keep the tposts from just leaning completely over. I need to add some of those same size posts on MY side of the wire, as I noticed there are a few staples pulled out. Same fence, a little farther down toward the river.


I've come to the conclusion, that as far as fences go, a really big flood is less damaging than a flood such as we had in May 2016. In a big flood, the really big stuff goes over the top of the fence, where in a lighter flood, it gets piled up on the fence. Most of this stuff is small limbs, twigs and leaves, which I can clean right off with a leaf rake or pitchfork.

Last pic I was ble to get is one of the washout on the backside of my pond dam. The rr crossties floated there from a stack I had 2 fences over. I have crossties, phone poles, barrels, pallets and big timbers everwhere yet. Not a very good picture, but the washouts are pretty severe and something I'll have to repair before winter rains set in.

Strangest thing I've seen so far is a dead squirrel on one of the fences. A dang squirrel can climb anything and is the last thing I'd ever expect to see drowned. Many places in the pasture on the East side of my pond, I saw debris over 7' up in trees and big yaupon.
This was certainly a flood for the record books.

 

[babsbag]

You should be proud of your fences; they certainly took a beating. Maybe the squirrel got caught on something and drowned.

 

[Baymule]

WOOOOW....... You will be busy for awhile cleaning up all that mess. I guess the good part is that fall/winter are around the corner and at least it will cool off. But, then here come the winter rains like you said.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Glad there wasn't any major breaches, but that is going to be several big piles to be burned...not to mention the amount of garbage to be hauled off. Have ya found your missing cattle yet? It looks like ya got your tractor running....that's a good thing....

 

[Latestarter]

You said the water got 6'+ above the door handle in the shop. How high did it make it on the house stilts? I believe you said the house was 6' up above ground and the pics you posted when you were leaving showed at least a foot of water up on the truck tires parked outside the house. Glad the fences held for you. Better to only need to do clean up and some repairs vice re-fencing and major repair/replacement of infrastructure/bldgs. Hope you didn't lose too many animals. Al things considered, I guess you made out better than many... small consolation... Glad you're still around.

 

[greybeard]

ou said the water got 6'+ above the door handle in the shop. How high did it make it on the house stilts? I believe you said the house was 6' up above ground and the pics you posted when you were leaving showed at least a foot of water up on the truck tires parked outside the house.

That was a typo. It should have read there was a debris line on the shop door 6"-8" above the door knob...NOT 6'-8" above the knob.

I didn't know till a few days ago, but wife had taken a few pics on her phone the morning we left. (I had only taken 2 pics--one from back porch and one from front porch)
This pic was taken late the day before we left in the boat.

Same area Next morning..look at the gates in both these pics:

Back porch the evening before, the boat just sitting there unmoored to anything:

Next morning after I had already waded out to the garden fence and retreieved the boat and bailed the water out and tied it to the railing:

When we returned a day later, the BBQ was laying on it's side in the grass but I suspect something heavy had floated into it and knocked it over. Pretty sure the water didn't get high enough to float it.

 

[CntryBoy777]

Y'all sure did the right thing in leaving....I don't think I'd have made near as long as ya did.....things getting back in order?....ever locate your missing cattle?