There’s nothing like a jolt from Mother Nature
to give you the world’s largest reality check. For 3 weeks in September, my staff and hundreds of volunteers provided case management for more than 30,000 victims of Hurricane Katrina. We had a group of diverse, caring people ranging from social workers to car dealers to high school students and well-heeled social types. They sat, they wrote, they listened and quite often—they cried. We oozed empathy. We all knew that “there but for the grace of god go we”. We felt very good about ourselves indeed. Then, from across the Gulf, came another monster, and by September 21, it had us in its sights.

I have lived in Beaumont my entire life (a mere 53 years). I evacuated once when I was 8, so my plan was to take my mom to my sister’s in Jasper, come home and ride out the storm. That was the plan of most of my neighbors as well. At 5:30AM on September 22, God decided to show us what real empathy is. The dreaded words were uttered—MANDATORY EVACUATION. Our assigned time was noon and like good little soldiers, we packed up “stuff” expecting to be gone 3 or 4 days and hit the road with 400,000 of our closest friends. A mere 11 hours later, I had traversed the 60 miles to my sister’s home in Jasper. Bad news was that about 8 hours into the trip, Jasper was given the mandatory evacuation order. The really bad news was that there was no where to go and no gas to get there so we made the decision to stay and pray. The winds began about 8 Friday night, we lost power at 9. For the next 12 hours, we vacillated between awe and sheer terror. We listened as pine trees groaned and then fell all around us and took to the hall and under the beds when the tornados started and the guy on the local radio station began screaming that we should “hide and pray”. At 10 Saturday morning, we ventured outside and fully appreciated what Dorothy felt like in the Wizard of Oz. We said silent prayers to our guardian angels. There in the midst of a multitude of fallen pines sat my sister’s house and 3 cars completely untouched.

Over the next 5 days, I gained an insight into homelessness that will forever change me. I was totally dependent on someone else to provide me with the essentials of life. I had no control. We spent 5 days in the woods in 103 degree temperatures with no electricity, sporadic water, no phone and no flushing toilets. I slept in my car because it was cooler than the house. We did not have enough gas to leave and no one could get gas to us. We waited in lines daily at the rodeo arena for water, ice and MRE’s and we washed our clothes and put them on the fence outside to dry. It was the great equalizer. It’s hard to be stylish when you haven’t showered for 3 days and it’s hotter than hell.
Many of our residents still cannot return. I was lucky. After 5 days, my niece brought me enough gas to go the 110 miles required to find a town with electricity and gas. But it was 10 more days before I could go home. I drive around town and I feel guilty. Thousands of homes in our area are destroyed. Just a few blocks from my house sits the remnants of what used to be a lively family home. Now, there is only a pile of rubble on top of some Little Tyke toys. Several hundred families lost their apartments and don’t know when they will be able to return. Pt. Arthur believes that it has lost 20% of its residents—maybe forever. We lost the two major hotels in Beaumont— 52% of the hotel rooms in town. One hotel hopes to reopen before Christmas and the other will not be available until February. Sabine Pass in the southern most part of Jefferson County lost 95% of its buildings. Because it is below sea level, FEMA doesn’t want to provide housing assistance for people to remain there. Many people are living in tents. Central Mall in Pt. Arthur has 2 stores open—Target and portions of Sears. The remaining stores are closed and many will not reopen. It will be years before we are OK. In my lifetime, it will never look the same.

I am extremely proud of our residents and leaders. We took care of our own and we did it in a civilized manner. We got our most vulnerable residents out safely and we had no deaths during the storm. We had no looting and no one feared for their safety in the aftermath. We are united in our commitment to come back even better and hopefully we will all remember what it was like to not eat when we were hungry or have a place to sleep.

Candye Anderson is the Community Development and Services Director at the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Center (SETRPC) in Beaumont, TX. Candye also serves as a Texas Homeless Network board member.