Hurricane Survivors Part 1: Backstory

DISCLAIMER: This is a long post. However, if you are into phoenix rising stories you will probably find it interesting.

As the entire world is probably aware Hurricane Harvey wrecked havoc on the Texas Coast during the last weeks of August and first weeks of September. This is my perspective as a first-hand witness of this unprecedented event.

First of all, my husband and I are no strangers to Hurricanes.

In September of 2005 the eye of Hurricane Rita made landfall in my hometown in Southeast Texas. Hurricane Rita was the 4th most intense Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and THE most intense tropical cyclone ever observed in the Gulf of Mexico. Are you wondering why you've never heard of it? Probably because it made landfall only 3 weeks after Hurricane Katrina, and the media was still entrenched in the devastation in New Orleans. Every hurricane has its specialty and Rita's was the wind. Sustained gusts of 120+ mph hammered the Gulf Coast. My childhood home, a two-story town home in Nederland, TX was a complete loss. An AC unit was ripped completely off the roof leaving a giant gaping hole. The home would have been demo'ed to the ground if it was not attached to other homes and needed for structural support. All personal belongings were trashed, the home was gutted to the studs from floor to ceiling, and then completely rebuilt. I lost a lot of childhood photos to this storm, along with books, school mementos, an antique doll collection, and of course all of my clothes, shoes, furniture, etc. My father is still paying to this day on the SBA loan he had to take out to rebuild his house, because FEMA denied him benefits and his insurance did not pay out enough to repair his home, much less replace our belongings. I was 18 years old, and I was hurt and resentful for a long time.

Sorry no pictures of Rita's devastation...but it was a Category 3 for reference below.

Fast forward to September 2008.

My husband and I celebrated our wedding in May 2008 (4 months prior). We made our home in a fixer upper located, as we lovingly refer to it “under the bridge”. There is a small marina located under the Rainbow Bridge on the border of Port Arthur and Bridge City, TX. At our wedding we requested our guests to purchase Home Depot and Lowe's gift cards as presents so we could put all of the money into our home. September rolls around and we heeded the warning to evacuate from Hurricane Ike on my husband's birthday. Ike's specialty would prove to be a massive storm surge. The waters of the Gulf of Mexico rose nearly 20 feet. Being in a marina, our home was on 4 foot piers. We still ended up with 7 feet of water inside our home. We were left only with the clothes we evacuated with, our wedding album, my husband's birthday gifts, and our three cats. We did not have insurance on our home, because we owned it outright. Stupid I know, we learned the hard way. FEMA gave us $1,000 to completely rebuild our lives. My husband spent 3 days and single handed with a little help from his parents completely demo'ed our home to the ground. He was able to salvage some metal and made us an additional $300. Where were the volunteer armies you see mucking out homes on the media? Where were our other family members to help? I have no idea. We took our $1,300 and gave a finger (you know the one) to the Gulf Coast and moved our lives to NW Arkansas. I was very resentful of the lack of help we received from our family, friends, and the government. However, I had my rock to lean on, and I learned that material possessions are not what's important about life. To this day we steer clear from storing mementos or family heirlooms, and regularly purge our home of things that are not used regularly. We also learned that the only people we can truly count on are...ourselves. Sad, but it has proved true over and over again for us.

This is the marina where our home was.

In 2010 we found ourselves moving back to Texas, and ironically enough, purchasing my childhood home from my father when he decided to retire to the beach. Fast forward to a couple weeks ago, and we found ourselves yet again preparing for another hurricane.

This is where I will leave this post. Check out Part 2 to see how we survived Hurricane Harvey and the unprecedented flooding....