THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • January/February 2018 37 TheCoastalBend.com 36 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • January/February 2018 TheCoastalBend.com 36 THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • January/February 2018 thecoastalbend.com place, at the northern end of Mustang Island, should the unthinkable happen. And it did. Paulette and Bill Rogers, like a healthy handful of their island neighbors, decided to ride it out in their cottage-style home on the bet that Harvey would slide up the coast and not hit Port A as hard as it did. As the counterclockwise, northeasterly blast of 130 mile-per-hour winds began shaking their house as though it might blow apart, the couple gathered up their five dogs and moved to the small car parked in the garage. When the water breached the garage and started filling the car, they moved to a Ford truck parked outside, and drove toward a high point on Cotter Avenue. A trailered boat floating atop the storm surge, which was estimated at four to six feet at that point, around midnight Friday, collided into the truck and became entangled. Bill was almost swept away as he tried to free the boat, but managed to get back into the truck where he, his wife and their four-legged family prayed their way through the next three hours of terror. All survived—traumatized but unharmed. Miraculously, no persons were killed or seriously injured in Port Aransas or on Mus- tang Island by Hurricane Harvey. One man near Rockport was reported killed, and was the only known casualty in the Coastal Bend. On Satur- day, as devastating rains were just starting to take hold of points north, the one terrestrial route to Port A, up Highway 361 from North Padre Island, was blocked by fallen power poles and lines, trees, sections of fences, roofs, and houses blown away, and floated away, by the storm. Emergency officials from Port A, with the help of first responders from Corpus Christi, began blocking off the route to the public until some semblance of order could be established. While concerns over the physical safety of folks still on the island had been assuaged, the next big concern was looting, and within a day, dozens of Texas Department of Public Safety state troopers had been dispatched to Port A and other coastal locales to protect against mass theft. THE COASTAL BEND MAGAZINE • January/February 2018 37 thecoastalbend.com A largely affluent coastal town that had been abandoned, and then suddenly blown apart by a once-in-a-lifetime storm, could not be a richer target for the shadier elements of our society. A U.S. Border Patrol commander who assisted with security, spoke of looters caught landing by boat near Island Moorings on the Corpus Christi Bay side of the island. By Monday, law enforcement were allowing residents whose Texas ID showed a PortAransas address, required of all persons in a vehicle, into town to inspect and secure their homes and businesses. At that point this charming, happy and bright place where so many retreated in quest of peace and relaxation, took on the image of a police state. It was painful to see, but it was necessary—and we owe a collective debt of gratitude to the DPS troopers, many of whom were among the department’s young- est and newest officers, who left their own homes for weeks to help us secure ours. In the days immediately following the storm, the most visible damage was in the form of blown-off roofs and walls, even entire chunks of some homes, as well as fences and trees and, of course power lines. But really, most of the town seemed somewhat intact. For the three generations of Coastal Benders who have not been through some- thing like this, here was the first big lesson: water destroys everything. If the roof of your three-story home is badly damaged, but not ripped away entirely, don’t get your hopes up. Once the water enters, freshwater from the top and/or saltwater from the bottom, the process of decay and the growth of mold begin. In some structures they will meet in the middle, and in just about every case the walls, whether wooden or sheetrock, are ruined. In most cases the electrical wiring, sockets and connections are also ruined, along with the plumbing, much of the time. So, while the first glances at Port A in the immediate aftermath of Harvey looked bad, but not that bad, the fact was that most of the town was rotting from within. As stormy skies in late August returned to the hot, open skies of early September, so too did ninety-degree temperatures and seventy-percent humidity. It is said that it takes three days for mold to start growing inside a wet structure, and that process was certainly accelerated as the heat returned. Food left inside refrigerators and freezers of evacuated homes and businesses, including seafood stores and restaurants, quickly began rotting. One shop owner said that he was fully stocked for the following Labor Day weekend with twenty-five thousand pounds of frozen shrimp, that was all lost. Another had to hire guys in HazMat suits to clean out a new, thirty-thousand-dollar walk-in freezer stocked with fish and shrimp—all gone in one overnight event. At first, mosquitos seemed oddly absent, given all the standing water, but they were probably being murdered in the crib by the gigantic, biting horse flies that were everywhere. Except for generator power, the lights were off, as was all land line phone service and most cell phone service, which lacked data once some towers started com- ing back up about ten days after landfall. City water and sewer service was out in those early days, and Port-o-Cans began popping up everywhere. All of this was the new reality in Port Aransas. The school year had just started, and Port A kids got to experience a life they may had heard about, once or twice in the news, but could never fully understand until Hur- ricane Harvey delivered one of its many life lessons—what it is to be a refugee. Just as they were saying hello again to schoolmates and teachers, some of whom they may not have seen much over the summer, they suddenly saw none, or few of them—not the people they knew nor the places with which they were familiar, at their schools and churches—it just stopped. Their homes, their bedrooms, where they played and ate and had fun with their family and friends, were demolished. Just piles of garbage, all of which they recognized as what used to be, now ruined. Some families were fortunate enough to have somewhere familiar to go instead, to grandparents or uncles and aunts, or a vacation home or an RV. Many others weren’t quite sure where they would stay beyond the next week, or where their pets will go—or if they can go with them, or not. After parents had a chance to formulate a plan for their kids’ school- ing situation, then there was the experience of being new, or just visiting a temporary school, where you may be welcomed, or not. The Hurricane Harvey Kids and their families lived the lives of refugees. They lost their homes, even if temporarily, and had to flee their towns, even if for a few weeks or months, due to no fault of their own. Just like refugees they hear about on TV. A U.S. Border Patrol commander who assisted with security, spoke of looters caught landing by boat near Island Moorings on the Corpus Christi Bay side of the island.