Leaving Harvey behind

Has it really been just one year since Hurricane Harvey hit us?

For many in Port Aransas, it seems more like a lifetime ago. So much has happened these past 12 months.

Mushrooming from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just about 40 hours, Harvey struck on Aug. 25, 2017, with 132 mph wind gusts and a storm surge of six to seven feet. The hurricane inflicted heavy damage to hundreds of buildings in Port Aransas, eventually requiring many millions of dollars to repair or replace them.

It was the worst blow the town had taken in at least 47 years, when Hurricane Celia hit in 1970.

After Harvey roared through, Port Aransans – with help from hundreds of first responders and volunteers – immediately threw themselves into the monumental task of rebuilding their homes, their institutions, their businesses, their lives.

It’s been a year full of heartache and triumph. Today, while a lot of people are enduring the frustrations of still not being able to fully repair their homes and move back in, many others have managed to accomplish that, and they’re settling into their newly reconstituted normal.

The Port Aransas Independent School District has gotten all three of its campuses open again. The City of Port Aransas has made strides toward rebuilding public facilities.

Tourists, who supply this town’s economic life blood, have come back, enjoying the beach and going fishing, just like they always have. Despite the fact that a number of lodgings remain closed, many Port Aransas businesses have reported they just had their best July ever, according to Mayor Pro Tem Wendy Moore, who interacts with many merchants while doing her job as a banker here in town.

“One year later, I think we’ve made remarkable progress,” said Mayor Charles Bujan.

“But we’ve still got a long way to go,” added City Manager Dave Parsons.

The battle’s beginnings

The town’s efforts at recovery began with four city officials emerging on Aug. 26 from a building at the University of Texas Marine Science Institute, where they’d ridden out the hurricane.

They were Parsons; Abel Carrillo, the town’s building official; Rick Adams, emergency operations coordinator; and Tim McIntosh, EMS director.

With shock and sadness, they gazed upon a town where Adams later would estimate that more than 2,500 homes were heavily damaged or destroyed.

And that’s not even counting condominium homes. Adams estimated that 1,800 to 2,000 condo units were heavily damaged or destroyed.

Port Aransas had no power, no cell phone service and no running water. It had natural gas leaks, live electrical lines on the ground and immense amounts of debris, including boats, blocking many roadways.

Hanging in the air everywhere was the smell of moist rot as rain-soaked debris baked in the summer heat.

After picking their way through the north end of town, the men set up an emergency operations center at the Civic Center. The building would become the command post for city officials and law enforcement for weeks to come.

Dozens of officers from a wide variety of law enforcement agencies flooded Port Aransas. Firefighters from fire departments all over the state came in to assist.

With Port Aransas police and DPS troopers, the Texas Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue Team conducted a door-to-door search but found no one killed or suffering major injuries as a direct result of the hurricane, despite the fact that several dozen people had disregarded Mayor Charles Bujan’s evacuation order.

Re-entry

With evacuated residents clamoring to be allowed back into town to check their properties, Bujan made the decision to allow residents back in beginning on Aug. 28, three days after the hurricane hit.

Workers on heavy equipment hurried to clear the streets, but hazards remained. City officials issued warnings that people would be entering at their own risk.

Bujan set a dawn-to-dusk curfew in which everyone had to leave town each day after tending to their properties.

Many found their homes so heavily damaged that they were unlivable. Some responded by moving away from Port Aransas permanently. Most, however, took up temporary residence in motels, apartments, rented houses and in the homes of friends and relatives outside town.

The populace began months of efforts to obtain insurance money and hire contractors to get repairs done.

An army of workers labored to restore utilities for weeks after the hurricane hit. Some 90 percent of the town’s power reportedly was back by Sept. 11. Water was running by Sept. 5, though it still had to be boiled before use for a few more days. Cell phone and internet service was slower to come back, taking several weeks to get going.

FEMA, the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) and the Small Business Administration set up shop at the Community Center and remained for months, meeting with residents. The Texas State Guard handed out ice and other provisions.

Beginning almost immediately after being allowed back into town, Port Aransans began clearing their properties of debris and pulling hurricane damaged furnishings and surge-soaked drywall out of their homes. They piled it all up curbside, creating a twisting, head-high ribbon of rubble that extended block after block through neighborhoods.

Volunteers from all over Texas and beyond swarmed into Port Aransas by the hundreds to help out. For days on end, church groups, civic organizations and folks acting simply as individuals helped residents clear their property. They handed out free water, food and household goods. Later, Winter Texans loyal to Port Aransas would make their annual pilgrimage to town pitch in to aid in recovery.

Within 10 days after Harvey’s strike, a city contractor began running large trucks all over town, picking up thousands of tons of curbside debris and depositing it on a large vacant lot on State Highway 361, creating what some began calling Mount Trashmore. The debris later was trucked to a landfill outside Robstown. As of Thursday, Aug. 16, Mount Trashmore had played host to about 547,000 cubic yards of debris since Harvey hit, according to a consultant helping the city with hurricane recovery.

Despite heavy damage to its building, the Family Center IGA re-opened by mid-September, a major development for a town that has only one grocery store.

The Port Aransas Independent School District remained closed for weeks, forcing all 500+ students to find new schools in which to enroll. With many Port Aransans staying on the relatively unscathed North Padre Island, a sizeable chunk enrolled at Flour Bluff ISD.

Back home

While many couldn’t live in their heavily damaged homes, many others found their homes mostly undamaged and were able to move back in relatively quickly. New construction, built with modern building codes, tended to stand up to Harvey’s onslaught best.

One by one, people began taking up residence in Port Aransas again and restarting their businesses and their lives.

PAISD brought in portable buildings and got classes going again on Oct. 16. After hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs were done, students got back into their regular buildings at Port Aransas High School and H.G. Olsen Elementary School on Jan. 8. Brundrett Middle School wasn’t ready until classes started again recently for the 2018- 19 school year.

The city council has taken a variety of actions to address recovery. That includes hiring a firm, Broaddus, to help guide the city through massive, months-long process of rebuilding city facilities while satisfying FEMA requirements for reimbursement all along the way.

The council approved $6.3 million in certificate of obligation bonds to rebuild the docks at Dennis Dreyer Municipal Harbor, hoping to get the economically important site up and running again as soon as possible. Docks are under construction now.

Many City of Port Aransas facilities such as the police department and EMS building were totaled by Harvey, but city officials are laying the groundwork for building new headquarters. The city envisions purchasing half a city block on Ninth Street to build a complex that would house the public works department, the EMS, the city gas department and the fire department. (See story, this issue.)

The post office in Port Aransas operated for months in portable buildings before repairs were made and the regular building was put back in operation.

The U.S. Coast Guard continues to operate in Port Aransas, but the agency is planning to do quite a bit of demolition and rebuilding over the next few years.

Over a period of months, many thousands of dollars were raised by non-profit organizations, businesses and individuals, and the money was donated to Port Aransans who needed help getting back on their feet.

Scores of hurricane-damaged buildings have been bulldozed, including some that arguably were historic.

Large numbers of building contractors and subcontractors have been at work for months in Port Aransas. The city’s building department issued 5,539 permits from Aug. 25, 2017 (the day Harvey hit) to June 28 this year.

That’s more than three times more than the number issued during the same period one year prior. Some 1,531 permits were pulled during that period.

An estimated 60 percent of Port Aransas homes have been repaired or rebuilt, according to the city’s planning department.

Despite all of the construction activity, many Port Aransans have expressed frustration with what they’ve said has been slow work by the people they hired to rebuild their homes and businesses. They’ve also been angered by what they said has been unfairly slow and low payments by TWIA and private insurance companies. Dozens of arbitration proceedings and lawsuits are ongoing.

About half of all Port Aransas accommodations are back in business, and most shops and restaurants have opened their doors again.

Despite a shortage of accommodations in town, Port Aransas saw good crowds of visitors during Spring Break, SandFest and summer weekends. Many camped on the beach or made day trips while perhaps staying in hotels in nearby communities.

“On weekends, it’s packed,” Bujan said in a mid-summer interview. “On holidays, it’s packed. That’s a measurement that says to me: Hey, you’re on the road.”

But city leaders caution that the rebuilding process will continue for at least a few more years. Management at large condominiums such as the Dunes, on Lantana Drive, say reconstruction will last another year.

And a look around the hardest-hit parts of town, like on Gulf Street or Sixth or Seventh streets, show how much more work still is to be done.

“You think, oh my God, the debris is gone, but you see the carnage that’s left over,” Parsons said. “There’s so much vegetation that’s been cut out, and missing homes and beat-up lots. … Wow, we still have a long way to go.”

It’s not just the physical part of Port Aransas that was hurt by the hurricane. Harvey also wounded the town’s collective psyche.

We’ve wept for our losses, then counted our blessings, then wept for our losses again.

“I’m concerned about the emotional impact this has had on our citizens,” Bujan said. “They have post-traumatic stress syndrome. I talk to them daily. Nothing I say to them makes them comfortable. …. They’re still afraid.”

Many people probably won’t feel at ease for years to come, the mayor said.

“I was just talking to someone last night who said, ‘I’ll never look at the Gulf of Mexico the same way I did before Aug. 25. I’ll always look at it with a sense of uncertainty. I’ve lived here all my life and never saw anything like this.’ This was the big one,” Bujan said. “It’s a life-changing event.”