Town’s ‘uninhabitants’ recovering on their own
TIVOLI — There’s a certain on-air personality for the Weather Channel who might need a bodyguard if he ever ventures into Bayside, Austwell and Tivoli, not to mention Rockport and Aransas Pass in the Texas Coastal Bend.
It was that meteorologist who repeatedly told his listeners that Hurricane Harvey was making landfall in an uninhabited area of the Texas coast. “Uninhabitants” up and down the coast were listening — until the power went out and 130-mph winds blew away houses, knocked down buildings and sent rivers raging out of their banks.
“If I ever see that guy, I might just wring his neck,” said Arnulfo Perez, fire chief for the Tivoli Volunteer Fire Department. Harvey flattened his fire house and destroyed most of his trucks and equipment.
Tivoli, an unincorporated community between Port Lavaca and Rockport, about 20 miles inland, took a direct hit. The wind ripped up trees, smashed the little town’s modest frame houses and blew down commercial buildings along Texas 35. Not one structure in the community of 479 people was spared at least minor damage. Although one resident suffered a fatal heart attack, no one was killed or injured.
For the first few days, nobody seemed to care about the little Refugio County village, not only because a TV weatherman had ignored its existence but because the world was focused on Houston.
Until social media began spreading the word and help began arriving from outside, the people of Tivoli took care of themselves. Marcus Torres, 53, a burly volunteer fireman, former auto repair shop owner and lifelong Tivoli resident, took it upon himself to get things organized.
“He’s a take-charge kind of guy,” Perez said. “Sometimes I have to tell him to slow down.”
Refugio County had no official shelter for those unable to evacuate, so Torres, whose own house was totally destroyed, got the keys to the Austwell-Tivoli High School on Friday night and with his son Justin helped families take refuge.
He helped organize community barbecues, coordinated relief efforts when it began to arrive, helped organize a search and rescue team in Tivoli and nearby Austwell, arranged for tents and portable toilets and helped set up a relief center for residents who needed basic supplies.
“I’ve been through it before, with Claudette in ’98,” Torres said. “I stayed, because nobody else was leaving. They couldn’t leave, didn’t have money to leave, didn’t have transportation.”
Torres would be the first to tell you that the whole town pitched in — and continues to pitch in. He took charge, he said, because, without a mayor or city council, there was no one else.
“It’s part of my nature,” he said.
Torres’ wife, Angie, is one of several local women running a well-organized community center stocked with donated food, clothing and supplies in an abandoned auto-parts store. Rebecca Tijerina dropped by Tuesday afternoon and found three new toilet-bowl cleaners, a housewarming gift for the family that’s taken her in.
In the spirit of helping themselves, a local company, JML Trucking, sent a truck to San Antonio for cases of water, since the town still has no gasoline, ice or a grocery store. James West, the owner of the Rockport Dairy Queen stores, gave Torres permission to use his Tivoli store as his command post, and locals brought food from home before it spoiled and cooked it at the DQ. Open since Monday of last week, the store has resumed its role as the community-gathering place.
“The only thing we were concerned about was getting the ice cream machine going,” Marcus Torres said, grinning. “We needed our Blizzards.”
The little town is finally getting the help it needs — from FEMA, state and county officials, the Department of Public Safety, the Salvation Army and volunteers from around the country.
“All the volunteers, the work crews, the Marines, all these people who’ve come to help us, I just cried,” said Esther Hernandez, who worked at the local grocery store before Harvey flattened it.
The people of Tivoli will need help for months to come, said Susan Luttrell, director of serving and outreach for a United Methodist church in Mansfield, southeast of Fort Worth.
“I feel like Houston, and now Florida, has the eyes of America on it and these people are going to be forgotten,” she said. “They need people — people to just come and help. Water bottles and clothes and diapers are important, but people here with them is what they really need.”