Evacuated Babies Get to Go Home After Harvey

CORPUS CHRISTI — Danielle Hale had been working eighteen-hr shifts for a few days already when her son Conner, so 7, called.

It was August 2017 and she was stationed in a conference room at the Port of Corpus Christi, where she's the manager of safety and emergency planning. Days earlier, Hurricane Harvey fabricated landfall on Aug. 25, shaking the coastal communities of Rockport and Port Aransas before traveling further up the Gulf Declension to stay put over Houston.

Hale'south son — along with her husband and ii other children — evacuated to her in-laws' home near Lake Corpus Christi. She stayed behind to run the port'south emergency operations centre.

"Mommy, I don't want to go abode," Conner told her over the phone. "There are no leaves on the trees."

The Category 4 hurricane had blown through Rockport — where the Hales live — with winds on the verge of 130 miles per 60 minutes. Conner had overheard the grown-ups talking well-nigh the destruction left in Harvey's wake.

The eye of the tempest passed right over Rockport, destroying endless homes and businesses. The Hales' home was amongst those lost.

A year after, Unhurt and her family unit continue to help rebuild Rockport, where residents are still repairing damaged homes and Urban center Hall remains closed. In nearby Corpus Christi, the port continues to fine-tune its emergency preparedness plans. Before this year, Hale was named a StormReady Community Hero by the National Weather Service for her work at the port and also for her contributions to the community in the months after Harvey. She is the seventh to receive the award since it was created in 2002, and the first for actions related to a hurricane.

"She was very diligent and worked actually hard on staying on the designated grade," said Rosie Collin, manager of community relations at the port. "She had her family back dwelling house and personal challenges, just you wouldn't have known it had you seen her. She was then poised and dignified at a time that taxes you lot because yous're so tired. A remarkable, resilient woman."

As the sun came up the morning later the storm made landfall, Hale's married man, Micah, got give-and-take that everything in their littoral neighborhood was destroyed.

With the assist of family unit and friends, the Hales take been able to transition from being displaced to living in an RV to finally moving into a new abode.

At the same time, the Port of Corpus Christi has continued to hone its emergency preparedness plans nether Unhurt's leadership, grooming more than staff to fill up a variety of emergency response roles, and ensuring plans for other types of disasters are thoroughly vetted.

"As we plan for the future, we're highly cognizant of the fact that during hurricane season, nosotros have to be prepared," Collin said.

Every bit managing director of the emergency operations center, Hale ensures that the port's incident direction team stays on schedule and follows emergency procedures, while coordinating with different departments at the port. Afterwards Harvey, she stayed at the port until Aug. 31 earlier regrouping with her family.

Through information technology all, coworkers at the port kept asking her, "How are you here? Go home and be with your family."

But Hale chose to stay. It was her task, only it was also an outlet to keep her mind busy.

"No, this is the place. This is what I was made for," she would tell people. "One of these days, at that place's going to be other members of that squad who are going to go through what I've gone through. And they have to know information technology'southward going to be OK."

Ever prepared

Hale "accidentally" establish a career in emergency response when she moved back to Rockport from Texas A&M University in 2001. After watching her female parent work as an EMT, and surviving the Aggie bonfire plummet of 1999, she felt instilled with a desire to help. And then, she took a task as a 911 dispatcher.

From at that place, she expanded her skills to work every bit an EMT, volunteer firefighter and paramedic. She started teaching courses at regional fire safe schools. Interested in how to make the emergency response arrangement improve, she made the spring from providing ane-on-one treatment to emergency direction. After well-nigh xv years of working throughout the Coastal Curve, she started at the port in October 2016.

The Port of Corpus Christi is a key shipping admission point on the Gulf, handling bolt like petroleum and grain. It is the fourth largest port by tonnage in the country.

In early August, just as Harvey was forming off the declension of Africa, the port was recognized every bit "StormReady," as part of the National Weather Service's community preparedness plan. Past and so, Hale and her team were already keeping tabs on the storm's movement. They activated the emergency operations center earlier Harvey fabricated landfall.

Hale had handled hurricane response before, managing emergency operations during Katrina and Ike. But Harvey was her beginning Category four storm.

Harvey was also the start major storm for Hale's squad at the port. With no hurricanes hitting Corpus Christi since the 1970s, all they had to rely on was past planning and training.

"These folks are being asked to do something that is not part of their day job," Hale said. "But there was no trouble that came into the [emergency operations eye] that we couldn't handle. What they lacked in emergency experience they made upward for in positive attitude and professionalism."

For days, Unhurt coordinated between unlike port departments and showtime responders. Subsequently six days, the port was able to re-open with no casualties or environmental incidents.

Every bit operations at the shipping hub returned to normal, it was time to assess the damage to the customs. For Unhurt, that not only meant figuring things out for her family, but for friends in the surface area every bit well.

Credit: Eddie Seal for The Texas Tribune

"My family is extremely resilient. They know what Mommy does," Hale said. "My entire family rallied and said, 'How can nosotros help?' You lot have an opportunity to go prop people up that need the assist, and subsequently you can go back and take intendance of yourself."

Hale knew of generations of families in her community who had lost their homes at in one case. She would enquire friends questions similar, "What can you practise today until nighttime to be successful? What can you do this calendar week?"

"None of that'south amazing or earth-shattering," she said. "Information technology's just what people exercise to aid each other."

She and her family organized meals on their property and continued people with clean clothes. She still organized the Aransas Canton 4-H Social club's annual fundraiser in the weeks after the storm, fifty-fifty though the order had lost about of its resources.

Hale was surprised to run into these details mentioned in the nomination for her StormReady Hero laurels.

Information technology shouldn't be almost her, she said. Rather, her accolade is a chance to remind people to set for hurricane season and reverberate on the progress her community has made.

"I don't want the people away from this area to lose sight of the fact that there are still a lot of people rebuilding," Hale said. "There'south a tremendous corporeality of opportunity here to assistance us proceed in that. Keep usa in your thoughts. If you become a weekend, come up downwards and go angling if nothing else."

Disclosure: Texas A&Yard University has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a consummate list of them here.

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Source: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/08/17/year-after-harvey-port-corpus-christi-prepares-next-disaster/

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