» Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst:
Volunteer prepares for devastation as tropical storm lashes Texas’ Gulf Coast
For one Chambers County volunteer firefighter, it’s déjá vu and high water all over again.
OAK ISLAND — Tropical Storm Beta was pounding the Houston area when William White awoke at 6 a.m. Tuesday some 60 miles east in Chambers County and got ready to check on the neighborhoods around him.
White knew the devastation past storms caused. Imelda. Harvey. Ike. Now he wanted to see for himself how the roads here looked and whether anyone needed help as Tropical Storm Beta, ever so slowly, drifted this way.
He was well-prepared to do it. White, 21, graduated from high school in Pearland, then moved to his grandfather’s weekend home in a community called Double Bayou (pronounced by some as double bay-oh) near Trinity Bay.
The young man had wanted to get out of Houston, and his grandfather’s side of the family was from this spot, a historically Black community. Here people refer to Anahuac, home to some 2,000 people, as “the city.” Baytown is “the big city.”
White appreciated feeling like everyone knew everyone — and the car that they drove.
While still a high school student, White joined the Oak Island-Double Bayou Volunteer Fire Department. (Attending their annual turkey shoot fundraiser hooked him; he’s studying now to be a paramedic.) Ahead of Beta, he parked one of their high-water vehicles at
his home.
Living in low-lying Double Bayou — or the nearby communities of Oak Island and Smith Point — came with inevitable risk, after all. A flood from a hurricane as early as 1915 “caused severe hardships,” according to the Texas State Historical Association.
Storm season every year now seemed to White to be worse. He cleared away debris after Hurricane Harvey. He coordinated rescues during Tropical Storm Imelda. He grew wary as Beta’s tidal rise again pushed water over roads.
What he saw Tuesday morning remained just that — water over roads — but he found it hard to gauge whether more flooding was coming.
“I was just praying it wasn’t going to hit, which it looks like it’s still hitting,” he said at the fire station. “It’s been devastating year after year.”
The day before, White and other volunteers checked all three highwater vehicles. Unlike staying up drinking coffee on the porch when Hurricane Laura struck to the east, White ate a dinner of coubion from his uncle and fell asleep as Beta struck to the west.
Now he climbed into his Ram pick-up to grab a strawberry lemonade from the First Baptist Church Outreach Center coffee shop in Anahuac. Bumper stickers on his truck commemorated a local paramedic and child who recently died.
Jana Crawford, who runs the coffee shop, hugged White’s head after he told her what he wanted and sat. He wore his volunteer fire department T-shirt. A poster advertising this year’s turkey shoot hung on the wall.
White is among those who keep a weekly coffee shop tab, enjoying how it serves as a gathering place. But he didn’t stay long. He briefly told her and the others what he was up to before heading out.
“I’ll be back in a little bit!” he said, planning to return with lunch from the Crawfish Place.
“Trust me, I’ll be here,” Crawford said.
White drove south to Smith Point. The sun was trying to push through in some spots, while dark clouds loomed in others. The occasional drizzle fell. He hoped any heavier rain would come the next day, instead of overnight.
County officials would be monitoring the weakened storm as it moved their way, expecting it to arrive mid-day the next day. County spokeswoman Samantha Humphrey hoped it would prove “another near miss.”
In Oak Island, a community White visited, 17-year-old Anna Cao and her family — who had evacuated
“I was just praying it wasn’t going to hit, which it looks like it’s still hitting. It’s been devastating year after year.”
William White, volunteer firefighter
during Laura — were staying this time in their homes. She and some of her neighbors expected their yards to flood. Anna thought she might still have school the next day. Her dad, a fisherman who immigrated from Vietnam, hadn’t gone out at 4:30 a.m. as usual but cooked a few fillets.
At the Smith’s Point Volunteer Fire Department, White aired one of the high-water vehicle’s tires and hoisted himself inside. He passed cars parked at the slightly higher Jeri’s Seafood lot. (This community is known for the annual oyster fry.)
At the Smith’s Point Volunteer Fire Department, White aired the high-water vehicle’s tire and hoisted himself inside. He passed cars parked at the slightly higher Jeri’s Seafood lot. (This community is known for the annual oyster fry.)
White pushed the gas pedal with hip waders as he steered at 11 mph onto flooded Texaco Road, one of some dozen submerged roads in the county.
“Woo,” he said, moving the wheel, as he felt for where the ditch met the pavement.
He photographed one house on his cell phone to send the woman who lived there. Water lapped at the stilts that held up others. The pole of a bird house rose from one flooded yard.
“Literally the bay has taken this over,” White said, reaching a point in the road where he felt he could safely go no farther. He turned around, and water pushed against the truck.
“Hoo,” he said, looking down out the open window. “Here we go with this high water again.”