State parks put to use and sit idle
Some serve as shelters for Harvey evacuees; others are closed due to damage from storm
A week ago, tens of thousands of Texans had plans built around spending the Labor Day holiday weekend enjoying one of Texas’ 95 state parks.
More than 5,000 people currently camping or otherwise ensconced in state parks were not among them; they’re there not because they planned it but because the parks offered shelter in the wake of the storm.
All those Texans’ plans, as well as 23 now-closed state parks, took a devastating hit from Hurricane Harvey.
As of Wednesday afternoon, 5,036 Texans driven from their homes by Hurricane Harvey have found temporary refuge in 37 state parks open to those fleeing the apocalyptic storm that has savaged a swath of the state from Corpus Christi to Port Arthur and far inland.
“That number is just going to grow, sadly,” said Brent Leisure, director of Texas Parks and Wildlife Department’s state parks division. “This is an unprecedented event. We’re just glad our parks can be a place some people can go in these horrific situations, and our parks staff welcome them.”
The state park system waives entry fees and camping fees for
evacuees fleeing natural disasters, a policy that dates back at least to 1988 when Hurricane Gilbert slammed into South Texas, Leisure said.
The flow of evacuees to state parks in the wake of Hurricane Harvey likely will exceed the almost 6,000 who sought shelter in the state parks following Hurricane Ike in 2008.
“The parks are places where those evacuees — our fellow Texans — can get a warm shower and have a safe place to stay,” Leisure said, adding about 60 members of the State Park Police are on duty at open state parks. The 90 or so other State Park Police have joined more than 200 Texas game wardens working in Houston and other areas hit by Harvey’s biblical flooding.
As happened with Ike, Garner State Park has drawn the largest number of evacuees. As of Tuesday night, 850 Harvey evacuees were staying in the park on the Frio River near Concan, about half the number the park sheltered after Ike. San Angelo State Park near San Angelo and Lake Casa Blanca near Laredo also are holding large numbers of evacuees, state park officials said.
“Staff at those parks and our reservation system staff are doing the best they can to accommodate folks evacuating,” Leisure said. The park’s online and phone reservation system is being stressed by the flood of park users looking to cancel reservations in the wake of Harvey and evacuees searching for parks with openings. But the system is working well, Leisure said. 37 open, 23 closed
The agency’s website — tpwd.texas.gov/stateparks/ — has constantly updated information on the status of each state park, a list of the 37 parks open to evacuees and access to the reservation system.
As of Wednesday evening, 23 state parks are closed to all visitors, and that number almost certainly will grow as rains from Harvey swamp eastern Texas, Leisure said.
“Where it’s safe, we have people out looking at damage and conditions,” Leisure said. “But it will be awhile before we know what we’re looking at.”
Goose Island State Park near Rockport is one of the hardest-hit parks. The popular bay-front park “really took it on the chin,” Leisure said. Roadways and structures suffered a tremendous amount of damage, he said.
“But the really disheartening thing is the loss of so many of those wonderful old coastal live oak trees,” Leisure said.
There is some heartening news from Goose Island, however. The “Big Tree,” a giant, 1,000-plusyear-old coastal live oak that is an iconic symbol of the Texas coast, survived the storm.
“It looks pretty good, considering,” Leisure said of the second-largest coastal live oak in the state. “But so many of the trees around it are just gone.”
Mustang Island State Park between Port Aransas and Corpus Christi also is closed.
Several Houston-area parks are among the almost two-dozen state parks currently closed because of storm or flood damage. Hugely popular Brazos Bend State Park near Rosharon is likely to be closed until at least some time in October as flooding from the adjacent Brazos River had drowned the site.
The flooding Brazos also claimed Stephen F. Austin State Park near Sealy, with the park’s status currently listed as “closed indefinitely.”
Village Creek State Park near Lumberton also will be closed for an unspecified time. The park’s namesake waterway, swelled by record-setting rains, has risen to levels exceeding any measured in more than a century.
The storm also has closed San Jacinto Battleground and Battleship Texas. The site, at the confluence of Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River, is under several feet of water.
“From the air, the Battleship Texas looks like it’s in the middle of a sea,” Leisure said.
The century-old Texas, long suffering from leaks caused by the deteriorating effects of the saltwater in which it sits, is being protected by state park staff who have stayed on the vessel since before the storm arrived, operating the pumps and the generators that power them, preventing what would be catastrophic flooding.
Other closed area state parks include Sheldon Lake on Houston’s east side, Sea Rim, Galveston Island, Palmetto, Goliad, Lake Livingston, Huntsville and Martin Dies Jr. (Dam B).
Some parks, such as Lake Somerville’s State Park’s Birch Creek Unit, Bastrop State Park and Caddo Lake State Park, are closed to all but evacuees. Tough stretch for parks
Harvey’s crushing impact on the mid-coast and the epic flooding it produced and continues producing across much of southeast and eastern Texas is the latest in a series of natural disasters that have strained Texas state parks over the past six years. Record-setting drought in 2011 and the wildfires that resulted burned thousands of acres of state parks and destroyed building, campgrounds and other infrastructure. That was followed by record-setting flooding in 2015 and 2016 that resulted in closure of more than 30 parks, some for months.
Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature appropriated $49 million to address remaining rebuilding needs in eight state parks devastated by the 2015-16 flooding. Those rebuilding needs just grew monumentally.