Coast still in Harvey’s grip
From Rockport to Port Arthur, life revolves around storm
ROCKPORT — All along the Coastal Bend, Hurricane Harvey has been impossible to forget.
A year later, reminders of the storm are everywhere: in the blue-tarp rooftops, temporary stop lights and boarded-up buildings. The word “Harvey” is scrawled in a restaurant bathroom, on a ruined camper, on a business wall.
While Beaumont and Port Arthur pick up the pieces east of Houston, the tourismdependent area 170 miles southwest is trying to present itself as open for business. They hauled off what seemed like endless mountains of debris. They fixed up hotels, restaurants and stores. But the storm’s effects still grip the communities, where people are ever-pushing to rebuild.
Harvey made landfall near Rockport and Port Aransas at 10 p.m. on Aug. 25, 2017. It lashed the beach communities with 130 mph winds and, in some places, a 10-foot storm surge. The damage was violent. In Houston and beyond, it began to rain.
Every day here, people face Harvey anew. Elvira Robles, 76, wakes up in a recliner in a dark mobile home,
where it’s hard for her to get around with her walker. Chris Lusk, 28, brushes his teeth in the kitchen sink before going to work on damaged homes.
Hoss Corry, 52, launches a boat next to the ruined pier where he fished for trout as a kid.
“We think about Harvey every time we drive around town,” said Steve Chenault, 41, who works with Corry catching crabs.
The vast implications of Harvey only continue to reveal themselves. Walls crack. Tears fall unexpectedly.
People moved here for the water and the gentle Gulf breezes — which wrecked them.
“It’s very much a struggle in every aspect,” said Michelle Simmons, 52, who owns a Rockport store called New Beginnings. “Everything is different.”
When he wakes up, Port Aransas Mayor Charles Bujan checks the forecast in the Gulf. His family has lived in the city for generations. He looks at the water with caution.
Harvey impacted just about everything on the spirited island, home to 4,000 people before the storm. It damaged the quirky businesses and colorful homes, plus a slew of city buildings and miles of gas pipeline. It changed the shape of the island itself.
City officials estimate between $500 million and $1 billion in overall damage. The storm took a toll on residents also — a toll the mayor worries will never heal. “(I)t took a part of our lives,” Bujan, 74, said.
The mayor wore boat shoes and spoke in his City Hall office. A typed note covered part of the clock behind him: HARVEY’S EYEWALL ROARS ASHORE ON ST. JOE 8/26/2017 TIME 0307.
In Port A, as it’s known, people trade Harvey stories, including the one about the Nixons, who weathered the storm on their shrimping boat. They point to altered landmarks: the beachside condo Cline’s Landing, now gutted; the Rock Cottages, where piles of rock sit; the beloved Salty Dog Saloon, which served the namesake gin and grapefruit drink, still closed.
Like the smashed boat storage facility in Rockport, set for a soft reopen on the storm’s anniversary, it was the Pelican Club in Port Aransas that became the local poster child of destruction. The restaurant sank into the ground, collapsed in on itself. It looks stuck in time as an insurance battle unfurls.
Next door at Fisherman’s Wharf, John “Mike” McNatt, 62, watches people photograph the building daily.
“That’s the personification of Hurricane Harvey right there,” he said on a recent afternoon.
Out back, he could see palm trees that bent in Harvey’s wind.
The city is changed, and the evidence is everywhere, including the business marquees. NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS, the signs read. With the loss of apartments and mobile homes, it’s hard to find an affordable place to live. Employers lack workers.
Jody Sackschewsky, 59, the Fisherman’s Wharf bookkeeper, works in the refurbished upstairs. She recounted how the grocery store now was filled with construction workers instead of familiar faces.
“You don’t know where everybody went,” she said.
It was crowded, at least, in Shorty’s, the long-standing local bar. Within eight days of Harvey, they were open for business.
“As soon as we could get ice and beer, we were slinging it,” said Jason Jenkins, 38, who works now at the hard-hit marine science institute.
This bar, Jenkins said, is their church — a place to which they can always return. Here, in the small, dark space, there is a sense of normal. The same caps caked in dirt hang from the ceiling. The warped floorboards are smooth again. A soft wind blows through the door.
Ten miles up the coast, in Rockport, some two dozen officials and stakeholders paused amid a grueling year to congratulate themselves. It was the last meeting of the Long Term Recovery team. They went around the room: 83 percent of businesses reopened. The school district was repairing its rooftops and planning a new gym.
“I think we ought to give ourselves a hand,” said William Whitson, 59, a lead technical consultant, and they did.
Full recovery in Rockport — with more than twice the population of Port A before the storm — could take as long as 10 years, according to the mayor. He estimated the loss in property value at $221 million. Though sales tax was up because of construction, the city applied for a $5 million loan to supplement its budget.
“I think we’re ahead of where we expected to be,” Mayor Patrick Rios, 67, said.
Still, it was easy to worry. Affordable housing was razed and not rebuilt. On the wealthy Key Allegro, a fraction of full-time families remained. The battered bridge to reach it was reduced to one lane.
Rebuilding raised the question of what kind of community to recreate. One recent evening, residents in flip-flops and fishing shirts filled a makeshift City Council chamber to debate it. The city faced an influx of RV parks. The council was taking control from a board regulating the look of downtown.
“If we lose downtown, Rockport’s just another town,” warned Debbie Parker, who runs a winery there. (She is also raising money to replace the iconic, oceanside sculpture of a blue crab.)
“This is our future here,” urged developer and builder Alan Lee Copeland, 62, who owns property downtown.
The quaint downtown Rockport they wished to protect already was different. A bar called Rock Bottom opened in recent months, named in reference to Harvey. The Rockport Center for the Arts, which lost its main building, relocated down the road.
Coast Modern, a frame and art shop, relocated too. Recently, Michelle Bell walked in, toting a framed lithograph she purchased decades ago in Dubai.
The store owner, Mike Catlin, took apart Bell’s frame. Like much of his work now, this task was related to Harvey. The mat was warped. Catlin chose a new, gray one and slid a sliver of gold along the inside edge.
“I want to give you at least a visual,” Catlin said.
He wore a short-sleeve buttondown shirt with cartoon shark heads.
Bell, 65 and retired, leaned over to look at it through groovy sunglasses.
“I like it,” she said. “I have more I need to bring.”
And so, up and down the Texas coast, cities large and small reckon with what the monster storm took.
In Beaumont, officials estimate Harvey flooded about 2,250 structures, or 6 percent of the total. They believe two-thirds have been repaired. The city is also looking to protect its drinking water system, which Harvey temporarily knocked offline.
In Port Arthur, about 85 percent of structures were damaged, Mayor Derrick Freeman estimated, affecting practically everyone and testing residents’ commitment to the city, where Freeman is working hard to keep the population above 50,000.
“We are ready to be known for something greater than Harvey,” he said.
Its anniversary will be lost on no one.
In July in Port Aransas, Gene Frost was waiting for his home to be torn down. The storm had pushed it off the tall poles that once held it up and left it at a near-45 degree angle on a pile of everything he had. For 11 months, he dug out the pieces underneath but he was 60 and could only do so much. A local organization’s offer to build a home felt impossible to decline.
“Is it going to kill me?” he asked days before the scheduled demolition. He nodded yes. But maybe then he could move ahead.
Kate Upchurch, 16, that morning walked across a backyard on Weeping Willow, where once-dense oak trees looked skeletal. She signed up with the Episcopal Diocese of Texas to volunteer here. Roger Hoover, 51, of Missouri City, led the group.
“Just hold tight,” said Hoover, nervous as he passed her the heavy chainsaw.
She braced her legs, gripped the tool and pushed the roaring blade through the tree.