HELPING HANDS THE INDUSTRY LENDS A HAND IN THE AFTERMATH OF HURRICANE HARVEY
As I write this, I’m sitting in the Indianapolis airport waiting for my flight to board, headed home from the Scheid Diesel Extravaganza (SDX). Four days ago, the eye of Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Rockport, Texas, with one of the heavier bands of weather hitting Houston. At this point Harvey has dropped more than three feet of rain on southeastern Texas and surrounding areas. Houston, in particular, sees an annual average of 49 inches of rain. This means Harvey dropped almost a year of rain on the area in only a few days. That much rain simply has nowhere to go, add to that the 130-mph winds they’re seeing and well, as we’ve all seen, it’s bad down there and will be for some time. The flight I happen to be waiting for right now is headed to Dallas. I fly often for this job, so I’m no stranger to airports, but as I sit here, it feels kind of like what I remember 9/11 being like watching from my high school homeroom 16 years ago. It’s extremely quiet, and there are a lot of worried individuals glued to their phones or in awe of what’s on the televisions scattered around the terminal. Dallas is only a few hours from Harvey’s ground zero. I’m sure most of my fellow passengers have friends or family who are currently losing their homes and businesses. It’s a scary feeling, being surrounded by all these worried people. I wish there was something more I could do.
Rewind three days ago to Friday, the first day of SDX. I generally spend the first day wandering around saying, “Hello,” to everyone, and while I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, there is a huge diesel following in southeastern Texas and Louisiana. Which meant that a bunch of our diesel family was being pounded on by Harvey. One of the first people I talked to was Dorian from Power Stroke Enginuities (PSE). PSE is roughly eight miles north of downtown Houston. When Dorian and the PSE crew left home for SDX, he told me they didn’t think Harvey was going to be a problem (which is why they were here and not at home). After all, it was only classified as a tropical depression, not the 500-year storm it became. The PSE crew would stay in Indy and race the entire weekend while Harvey destroyed their home. But beyond having their families safely evacuated, there was absolutely nothing else they could do, even if they were at home. The entire city was evacuated as the storm dominated the area.
Shortly after that, I met up with Chad from PPEI. PPEI, along with Chad and his family, is located in the Lake Charles area in Louisiana. While Lake Charles wasn’t getting hit as hard as Houston, it’s kind of like comparing Hiroshima to Nagasaki—they both got hammered. Chad had the same story as Dorian: When he left for SDX, all he expected was a few inches of rain from the then tropical depression. After Harvey gained strength into the powerful hurricane, Chad found himself in the same boat as the PSE crew, his family was safe and there wasn’t anything else he could do but wait. Chad told me he had friends collecting sandbags, but he didn’t think it would help much, as it only took three inches of rain to start flooding the PPEI shop. By the time SDX finished, the shop saw three feet of water. Now that I’m back in California writing from my office, it’s been amazing to watch over the last few days our diesel family help those impacted by Harvey as much as they possibly can. Many in the industry have loaded up their boats, box trailers, and anything else that can help, to head straight into the eye of the storm. Sadly, the PSE shop was decimated by Harvey. But by now, the PSE guys have made at least a dozen runs with their race trailer filled to the brim with supplies to shelters around the Houston area. They didn’t even go home before the first run, actually loading up in Indiana before leaving SDX. I’m really proud of our industry right now. It’s a tough time, but all of you have stuck together and done anything and everything to make a bad situation better. Much respect.