Houston, we have arrived

Arkansans come to our neighbor’s help

Still another 1,500 troops from this state’s National Guard have joined more than a score of others already in south Texas to do anything they can to help out in the wake of Hurricane Harvey’s devastation there. Call it helping hands across the (state) border.

Houston is not alone when it comes to coping with this massive blow, and neither are the troops from all over the country who have been sent there to do whatever they can to help, which is a lot. By now the Arkansas contingent has conducted search-and-rescue missions, carried out supply drops, and lent support to Houston’s battered citizens and to other military units working side by side with the Arkansawyers.

A spokesman for the National Guard—Major Will Phillips—notes that Arkansas is one of the many states in a grand coalition stretching as far north as Alaska that have dispatched their citizen-soldiers to lend aid and comfort wherever they’re needed in the hurricane-swept belt. “That’ll free up first responders and local law enforcement,” he notes, “to focus on other areas.”

Along with the Guard comes not just food and water but a plethora of needed equipment to fill Texas-sized motor pools: wreckers, maintenance trucks, water trailers and command vehicles. All of which, the major says, will let Guardsmen “optimize their ability to self-sustain, [and] therefore lend more assistance to Texas.” That should teach a mere hurricane to mess with Texas.

Much like Arkansas, the whole country seems to have mobilized against Hurricane Harvey’s floodwaters. It’s not the first time, and surely will not be the last, that disasters man-made and otherwise have threatened but in the end united the country. And with another hurricane aiming this time for Florida, those of us inland might be needed again soonest.

The Guard, for its part, is nothing if not up to date in its electronic strategy and tactics. In Texas, its guardsmen have used cellphones and social media to communicate when other means have proven unreliable. One unit of the Texas Guard from San Antonio, according to the Washington Post, got lost while out on patrol as night fell, so one trooper used Snapchat to get help get the unit back on track again. God, it seems, still helps those who help themselves—by all the latest means necessary.