Here is my brother’s email account to our high school listserv:
Sunday night I got a call from Dad. As some of you already know, White Tire has the emergency maintenance contract for Entergy’s truck fleet. He was desperately in need of a generator for the shop, could I please bring Joe’s to him? I agreed, noting that the National Guard might turn me back. He said to tell them that I was part of essential relief efforts. I shrugged: it was worth the shot.
Monday morning I got a call from Tommy Reeves, our store manager who had to evacuate to Huntsville (his house is in Port Neches…). Dad was also desperately short of truck tires, was there any way for me to bring in a shipment? Several adventures later (aside: I hate U-Haul and will not willingly patronize any of their branches ever again), I had a rented trailer full of truck tires, plus the generator, plus gasoline, plus my chainsaw, plus peanut butter and bread (for Mom), plus some other sundries. I had instructions from several friends to check houses if possible, and a desperate plea from my friend Tony to go check his dogs (whom he could not evacuate owing to lack of vehicle space).
Just before leaving Houston, I notice one of the trailer tires is going flat. Booger! I aired it up and hoped for the best —if we can make it to Beaumont, I know a place where I can get it fixed for free 🙂 Also, just before I left, I was joined by my very good friend Big John, who had evacuated to Buna over the weekend but had to find new lodgings. He was accompanied by Freckle-Poo the ancient Dalmatian mix. She got locked in the backyard (with shade!) for the day along with Roxie and Ginger-pup.
We drove slowly, not wanting to waste gas or test our failing tire. I have about 280 miles cruising range on a good day in my Explorer, but towing a heavy trailer it gets closer to 220. Back and again to Beaumont would be about 110, not including any side trips. We were careful to note which gas stations were operational as we headed east. Most of Baytown’s were open, but the westbound side ones were lined up with evacuees, many from Louisiana.
The first thing I noticed was that once you crossed the Trinity River at Wallisville, there is no power. Period. The entire region is off-grid and looks to remain that way for several weeks. The other thing I saw was that the Trinity is nearing record flood stage, owing to the emergency draining operations at Lake Livingstone —that dam was never designed to endure 14 foot waves, which was what the storm produced as the eyewall passed over the lake.
Reminder: no electricity = no gasoline pumps operating…
The damage along I-10 isn’t horrific, and certainly not rising to the level of Pass Christian or Bay St. Louis (the two Ground Zeros for Katrina’s strike). The further east I went, the more obvious it was that Something Bad Had Happened. Most prevalent were the trees. Downed limbs were everywhere, and more and more I was seeing trees entirely blown over. This increased the closer I got to Beaumont.
Starting at FM 364/Major Drive, there are National Guardsman at every exit, sitting under canopies in the shade (NB it was our late-season hot dry spell that saved us from a Cat IV storm, but now it’s back to being a nuisance). I assume they are also on SH 124, otherwise you could just cut over on Smith Road and head into town unchecked. No one without legitimate business is being allowed into the city now. Residents are forbidden to return, as there is no power and no drinking water. Also, phone lines are iffy and many cellular towers were destroyed.
The pictures on the national media were accurate: the Elegante took a major hit during the storm. I am wondering if we can, indeed, still consider it a possible venue for our 20th reunion (which, Lord willing, we will STILL hold in Beaumont). What the media is barely showing is the sheer number of downed trees and power lines. Beaumont is not a young city, and there are thousands of very old trees all over in every neighborhood. Scarcely a one hasn’t lost at least one major limb, and there are an incredible number of trees that literally blew over. Leaves and limbs are everywhere. So are the power lines. Almost every street has at least one downed line lying across it, and even more hazardous are the ones that aren’t so much ‘ down’ as ‘leaning so close to the road that you have to drive around them to keep from clipping your vehicle’s roof.’ THIS IS EVERY NEIGHBORHOOD. Many streets are completely impassible either because of these leaning lines or else from whole trees blocking the road.
Back to my trip: we drove through to the downtown exit and stopped for the National Guard troopers to interrogate us. The only ‘credentials’ we had to prove we were doing what we were doing was our bill-of-freight from the tire depot, but that was sufficient and we were waved through. Downtown is a ghost city, only relief personnel and reporters are present. There are no signals at many intersections. The first sight I saw was that Family Services has lost pretty much their entire roof —well, not so much ‘lost’, it’s right there sitting in the parking lot. There is a lot of glass on the ground, so one must be careful driving. We made it to the shop and got the tires unloaded. (Big John: Damn, this is hot work, throwing around tires in this heat. Me: Welcome to MY world, buster! –no, I throw grades now, not tires, but it brought back many sweaty memories]. No power at the shop at the moment, but a second generator was on its way so we could take Joe’s to Mom’s house. We also managed to fix the flat on the trailer; you don’t need electricity for that, just a source of compressed air (the service truck, also the nitrogen tanks we keep for ultra-high-end tires).
I walked around the corner to look at Wiess park. I wished I hadn’t. I msg’d Joe several phone-pics of various damage scenes, and this one broke my heart. Many of those beautiful 100+ year-old oak trees have been severely damaged. I am guessing that within five years they will be dead of invasive disease and will have to be taken down.
We were almost done when an SUV pulled up and out jumped a DEA agent. He was not there to check us out, but rather he had a bolt in his left-front and could we swap his vehicle? (NB the Fed DA’s office is across the street from the shop, so we do a lot of their vehicles, including DEA). We had no power to the lifts, but we were able to plug his flat and send him onwards. As an aside, if you are running around Beaumont in a vehicle, you will get eyeballed by law enforcement, especially if you are stopped and doing something like loading and unloading at a place of business.
Mom’s house is relatively undamaged —which is to say, there are shingles all over the yard, the Texas Ebony tree is lying at a 30 degree angle to the ground, and the last pear tree is now fodder for my backyard smoker. They have no amenities, but Mom is always well-stocked with canned food and bottled water. Dad repeatedly implored me to take Mom to Houston, and she repeatedly refused to leave without Dad. Dad, it should be noted, is in high form these days, as all this running around gives him a lot to do. It also seems he was on MSNBC yesterday (out walking Jake) and I missed it. They had a generator but someone (not me!) had put diesel in it and it needed draining before it could be used. We off-loaded the remaining supplies, I confiscated several items of food in imminent danger of thawing (including the sashimi-grade tuna from the freezer, heh) and we took off for more errands.
Did I mention there are power lines everywhere in the road? Did I also mention that many back streets are completely blocked by down trees? Well, I’ll mention it again, and that the further from a main street you get, the worse the devastation.
We made it John’s parents’ house near old French HS and the first thing John said, before we’d even rounded the corner, was, “Where’s my pine tree?” There was an ancient (100+ yrs) Southern longleaf pine in his backyard, at least four stories tall, possible five, and it was no longer vertical. We got to this house and the only major damage was to the carport. This was because the big pine had not fallen towards the house but rather away from it. Good news for John! –bad news for his backyard neighbors (their house, plus their work shop), bad news for their across the street neighbors (this was a tall tree).
The other major impression, after an hour of driving around checking on people’s houses, is that Beaumont is truly as I described: a ghost city. I have never seen my home town so dead. You can drive in some areas and not see any sign of life (although there are many people who are still in town refusing to leave yet). Driving up Avenue A towards Washington Blvd, I felt as if I were driving on an abandoned movie set. Another analogy would be the TV adaptation of The Langoliers by Stephen King; it felt like being at the Bangor airport and all the life had been drained from the area. I say that, and while there are not many signs of human habitation, there are huge numbers of dogs running around, obviously abandoned. I saw a pack of pit bulls in South Park and they were looking very pathetic. Tony’s animals were okay, as one of his neighbors had taken to feeding them, but I felt guilty for having to leave them behind.
I might’ve taken them, but I had already taken on a new passenger. My old college roomie, Chuck Squatriglia, is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle. He had been in Baton Rouge with a photographer working on a story about Katrina victims (it also helps that his mother teaches English at LSU), and when Rita became a major story, he was sent to cover it. He had originally planned to come spend the storm here with us, but the storm track shifted eastward. He is currently sleeping in Lake Charles (and yes, it is worse than Beaumont, but not by much) and driving to Beaumont to file his stories (the Enterprise is operational in the sense that they have email)
I met him over at the newspaper HQ and he had a gift for me: a female black lab. He and his photographer were talking to Guardsmen in Cameron Parish (utterly destroyed) when this dog literally jumped into the car with them. She’s obviously a pet, as she had on a collar and knew several commands. I suspect she is someone’s trained hunting dog, as later work with her indicated that she has been well-coached in retrieving behavior. Chuck had no means to evacuate her and all pet-relief operations in the region were closed so could I…? Lousy timing, I just adopted a puppy last week! But I promised to take Rita (heh) to a no-kill shelter if I couldn’t find a home for her. Unfortunately, we just cannot keep her, as Freckles is with us indefinitely and there had already been one major fight (four dogs, one yard, you do the math). But we had Rita for company the rest of the day.
We left Beaumont at sundown to avoid the curfew. There are lines at every open station as you get towards Houston. We were smart and waiting until we were past Baytown to refuel, and so we had no wait. It was a very depressing day. My home town isn’t destroyed, but she’s in a very bad way. It will be weeks before power is restored —and let’s not forget drinking water, either — and until then the city is uninhabitable. Port Arthur is even worse, Chuck tells me.
There is no point is going back to Beaumont just now. That is the point I would make to anyone who asks me. It is unlivable. A good many of our friends and neighbors are now in the same category as the folks from New Orleans. If you have someone staying with you, you probably need to be honest and let them know that they may consider getting a short-term apartment.
