After Harvey, some coastal areas struggle amid poverty

ARANSAS PASS, Texas — At a small rural hospital in this shrimping and tourist town of about 3,000, some patients visited the emergency room twice a day, obtaining insulin and other medications they could not afford to buy themselves. Nurses sometimes pooled their money to pay for patients’ cab fare home.

“It is that kind of place,” said Jen Deselms, a registered nurse who worked in the emergency room at Care Regional Medical Center before Hurricane Harvey hit last month, forcing the facility, which serves about 90,000 in three counties, to shut its doors indefinitely. “We look out for each other and for our community. Not having this hospital will be devastating for the entire area.”

Since the storm passed, doctors and nurses have labored to repair the hospital themselves, mopping flooded floors and hammering twoby-fours to patch crumbling walls. In Aransas Pass and the neighboring beachfront towns that were decimated by Harvey’s first brutal landfall, a tale of two recoveries has emerged. Although often described as resort towns, tourism overlays a culture of rural poverty here. These are places where old shrimpers struggle to get by on their disability checks. Folks who gave up on the cities cram into waterfront RV parks — many now destroyed by the storm — venturing to the coast to flip hamburgers or wait tables in a last-ditch effort to find their place in the sun and the sand.

Schools have shut down for the year, and residents needing medical care will have to travel at least 20 miles across the Harbor Bridge to Corpus Christi, difficult for many in an area with little public transportation.

In nearby Rockport, where retirees show their paintings of shrimp boats and pelicans in art galleries along picturesque Copano Bay and condos line the waterfront, virtually nothing remains unscathed. Nearly two weeks after the storm, electricity was still off, cellphone service was The poor will stay and rebuild because they have nowhere else to go and no way to get out. spotty, and the water wasn’t back on. About 80 percent of buildings in the town were damaged, according to federal estimates.

But the path to recovery will vary. “The poor will stay and rebuild, because they have nowhere else to go and no way to get out,” said Chuck Shamel, an executive board member of the Good Samaritan, a nonprofit group that helps low-income residents with food, bills and transportation. “The rich will be back in a few weeks, when the power goes on and the golf courses open.”

The 76-year-old retired counselor moved here to build his dream home with his wife, Betty, a 79-yearold retired teacher, on several wooded acres near the water. Shamel constructs wooden sailboats and sings opera, while his wife paints and fires pottery in her studio. Although Harvey damaged their house, he expects insurance to pay most of the costs. He is more concerned with those who have less.

Many moved to the coast hoping for a fresh start among the placid bays and sheltering oak trees, but the reality often is harsher. Jobs are scarce, salaries low, and property is expensive.

Ida Jeter, 60, who works cleaning and cooking for nuns at a Catholic shrine, is living in her car. The shrine was damaged, and many of the nuns are returning to their home base in Wisconsin, so Jeter does not know if she will have a job.

“They kicked me out of my apartment because it was so damaged,” she said, bursting into tears. “I have nowhere to go.”