Return to TFB Main Page
Return to Current Edition
Texas Agriculture Archive

October 7, 2005

^{The Wrath of Rita
Want to help?}

An ugly lady named Rita visited Deep East Texas. The result? Devastation.

By Mike Barnett
Editor

Hurricane Katrina's death toll and destruction in Louisiana had media pundits proclaiming a sense of relief that Hurricane Rita didn't live up to her Category 5 (downgraded to Category 3 just prior to hitting the coast) expectations.

Folks in East Texas, devastated by the storm, have a different story to tell.

Luckily, the death toll was small. Katrina woke coastal residents up to the fact that these storms are life threatening, and millions evacuated as the massive storm approached the Texas/Louisiana coast. Most of Rita's media coverage has focused on the western coast of Louisiana, and the Port Arthur and Beaumont areas.

Destruction in these areas is massive. But the devastation to homes, property and livelihoods in the Deep East Texas rural counties is real, too, and the scars left by this ugly lady will have a lasting impact on those that stood in her path.

This is the story I will attempt to tell in this issue of Texas Agriculture, the first after the storm. We were on deadline when the storm hit. Communications to the devastated area were impossible. We did the only thing we knew to do to cover the storm's aftermath. Publisher Gene Hall and I, accompanied by the Texas Farm Bureau television crew, jumped in the pickup and headed to East Texas, hoping we could get through and relying on luck and instincts to find the right people to talk to. We left at 4 a.m. Tuesday morning, Sept. 27, and returned home at 1 a.m. the next morning. Here's our story.

•••

John Hall, father of Texas Agriculture Publisher Gene Hall, runs 60 head of cattle in Newton County and was in the direct path of the storm. Hall's place is located 50 miles (as a crow flies) north of the Beaumont/Port Arthur area. Electricity went off about 9 p.m. Friday night, Sept. 23, was still off Sept. 29, and is not expected to be on any time soon. Hall estimated winds of 100 miles per hour. Downed trees and broken limbs littered the landscape of his once- showcase homestead.

"I've never seen such devastation over a widespread area like we have now," Hall said. "Every power line in the area is down, trees are down everywhere. A lot of utility poles are broken off. There's roof damage everywhere. I lost a roof off my barn. I lost the roof off my carport. The house stood pretty well."

East Texas residents, Hall said, are undergoing a reality check following Rita's visit.

"There's no stores open. You can't buy anything. Money is useless because you can't spend it anywhere," he said.

Young people are getting a taste of the "good old days," before electricity was available to the area. However, changing times have rendered those "good old days" obsolete.

"We don't have what we used to have," Hall recalled of the days before electricity. "We used to have an open well we could draw water out of and that type of thing. We depend on electricity now to do everything, wash clothes and all of that."

"We're about to run out of blue jeans to wear," he chuckled, maintaining his sense of humor amid the hardships imposed by the storm.

Hall considers himself lucky with no loss of cattle. Trees blew across fences in 10 or 12 places, but none got out.

"Maybe they were too scared or something," he added. "I managed to get enough fence patched up so they can't get away now."

Hall, who rode out Hurricane Audrey in 1957, said he would not stay and tempt another storm after Rita's call.

"I imagine I'd saddle up my mule and head north...or west...or somewhere," he said.

•••

Hard-hit Kirbyville, which lies a couple of miles across the Newton/Jasper county line from Hall's place, is typical of many small, rural towns in East Texas that dared Rita's wrath.

Most stores are closed. Electricity is non-existent. Gas and diesel supplies are desperately short. The town is struggling to get its water and sewage systems back on line.

"Friday night, when the storm blew through, me and one of my councilmen slept up in the high school gymnasium, up under the stands on the north side," said Giles Horn, mayor of this town of about 2,000 people. "And we could hear the wind a howlin' through a concrete wall. It was bad."

Much of the town is in ruin. Houses have roofs ripped off, and many with trees fallen on them or through them. Downtown businesses have been destroyed. The local Family Dollar Store was looted. Utility poles are snapped. Residents face months of cleanup.

"As far as I know, there's not a single area not touched," Horn said. "There are some isolated instances where there was very little destruction. But overall, 98 percent of this town was affected."

On Sept. 27, Mayor Horn was awaiting crews to restore the electrical system. He was also struggling to get the town's water and sewer systems back up. At the same time, concern for the townspeople was etched on his brow.

As we talked to the Mayor on the sidewalk of the main business district, local residents would stop, asking where to find water.

"Go down to the First Baptist Church," the Mayor would yell, waving them down the street. "Just keep on going."

Local businessman Donnie Maddox, owner of two Kirbyville feed stores, was totaling up his losses that same afternoon. One of his stores was completely destroyed. He lost 90 percent of his sack feed, and much of his tack was damaged by rain water.

"We'll get some salvage use out of it," Maddox said of the tack. "Wet feed's hard to do anything with."

Maddox said he hadn't heard much from local ranchers, whom he speculated were "busy chasing cows and building fence and will be for a while.

"Hopefully, things will settle down in a month or so and we can all make a living," he said, looking toward the future. "If it don't, it's going to be a hard row to hoe."

However, immediate prospects for this feed store owner, he admitted, were bleak: "It's hard to feed a cow you can't find."

•••

Hard-hit too, was Zavalla, located about 35 miles south of Lufkin and 30 miles west of Jasper. There, we ran across Zavalla Fire Chief Richard Brunk, who was distributing much-needed supplies to a hungry and thirsty town population.

"Right now, we're getting food, water and ice to people out here in this community. Over 1,000 people have been without food, water or any kind of help for the last three days," Brunk said of emergency relief efforts in his community on Tuesday afternoon, Sept. 27. "Right now, it's getting better. As of yesterday, we had people who were taking water out of the lake, out of our creeks, and out of ponds here because we couldn't get drinkable water."

Brunk was furious with emergency relief efforts. Although local fire departments and volunteers were able to cut paths to people in need, they had nothing to give them. The first supplies came, in fact, courtesy of local grocery chain Brookshire Brothers, hauled in by an 18-wheeler donated by a local construction company.

"This ice just came in from FEMA this morning," Brunk said, waving toward a truck dispensing bagged ice to local residents. "We raised all that Cain yesterday, and we're getting a good amount of supplies now. But it's a shame that it took three days to get this happening, especially since we watched FEMA convoys rolling down the road past us to these other areas."

•••

Any estimates of losses to agriculture or property would be premature at press time. However, it is readily evident that the agricultural industry hit the hardest in East Texas will be timber.

Preliminary results of an air survey by the Texas Forest Service (TFS) indicate the western boundary of timber stand damage is State Highway 59, and runs up to the northern boundary of State Highway 7 from Nacogdoches to Center. This includes the Sabine and Angelina National Forests.

The air crews reported severe timber damage in a 400 square mile area centered at Mauriceville, which includes most of Orange County, and the southern one-third of Jasper and Newton counties. TFS estimated 50 to 100 percent timber damage in this area.

"It's one of the major industries here in East Texas," said Texas Forestry Association Executive Director Ron Hufford. "Hurricane Rita has knocked on our door, and we have a lot of people who have lost timber, and some of our mills, I'm sure, are down right now in that area just north of Beaumont in several of those counties."

Compounding forestry industry problems is Hurricane Katrina, which devastated timber stands in Mississippi, Alabama and Eastern Louisiana. The salvageable timber there, much like the salvageable timber in East Texas, will be looking for buyers.

"There's a response team at the national level," Hufford said. "We're going to try to form a response team at the local level to see what we can salvage from this, and a lot of it will be determined by the condition of the trees. Have they been snapped off, are they laying down, have they been twisted? These factors will determine if there's value and the extent of the value on the resource that's been impacted."

Hufford's concern and sympathy were evident for those timber owners who have put a lifetime of work in their crop.

"The saw timber's your cash crop," he related, noting that good saw timber will run anywhere from $50 to $60 a ton, delivered to the mill. "You've been managing it for 25, 30, 35 years and now all of a sudden it's salvage material. That's pennies on the dollar."

The impacts on the timber industry will be huge in the devastated counties, Hufford said. Mills were already full because a dry summer allowed a lot of harvest. Now, those mills in the storm's path are not operating.

"You probably are looking at well over a thousand loads a day of the mills in the storm path that are shut down," the forestry executive said. "We'll just have to look and see how extensive the mills were damaged. And the other thing: How soon can they get power to get on line and start producing?"

Hufford said several big and independent mills were affected by the storm, putting 4,000 to 5,000 people out of work.

"And I'm not counting the loggers, the professional foresters and everyone else that's affected," he said. "In those counties, we're just going to have to clean up and get back to work."

Estimates on other crop damage are hard to come by. Preliminary reports by Texas Cooperative Extension indicate some 15 percent of the ratoon rice crop in the area was destroyed by strong winds, and some 10 to 12 percent of the soybean crop.

Cooperative Extension reports most of the poultry industry did not receive severe damage. There were spotty areas of destruction, however. Reports from Nacogdoches County indicate some poultry houses damaged or destroyed.

Texas cattle producers also seemed to have escaped the havoc wreaked on their western Louisiana neighbors, where it's been reported that thousands of cattle have been drowned or dispersed.

"TAHC (Texas Animal Health Commission) inspectors are checking with county officials to offer help with livestock evacuation, feeding or carcass disposal issues," said Dr. Dee Ellis, deputy director of animal health programs. "Fortunately, to date, we do not have large numbers of cattle losses reported in Texas."

•••

Jim Smith, who farms rice and runs cattle near Fannett, just south of Beaumont, was fixing fence when we ran across him late Tuesday evening. Smith and his wife, Kay, evacuated the day before the storm, and had just returned home.

"We got a phone call that all our fences were down and cattle going everywhere," he said. "I got back in as soon as I could to try to get my fences back up. We moved the cows to an area where they couldn't get back on the road, so we're fixing fences right now. With temperatures in the high 90s, it's too hot out here trying to fix fence."

Smith said he would need a few days to evaluate the mess that Rita left behind. There's no doubt that he was overwhelmed, admitting that he and neighbors were "walking around in a daze." Certainly, everyone we talked to bore evidence of a traumatic experience.

"Some people ask, `Why does the good Lord let these things happen?'" Pausing to wipe the sweat from his brow, Smith answered his own question: "So that people can come together and help each other."

The people in the path of the storm are bound by a shared, if temporary, misery. Already, Southeast Texas is working together to pull their shattered communities together and begin the long journey toward recovery.

"And we survive," Smith continued. "We will survive."

 

 

Downtown Kirbyville suffered extensive damage.

 

 

 

 

Mayor Giles Horn spent three sleepless days and nights trying to put the town back together.

Crews are overwhelmed trying to restore power (right), while it's anyone's guess when businesses will open (below).

 

A home in Angelina County lay in ruins (above) as a flag signals courage and hope amidst the devastation (below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Zavalla Fire Chief Richard Brunk (left) was furious that it took FEMA three days to get ice and food to the town's desperate citizens (below)

 

 

 

Power lines are down everywhere—this one in Jefferson County.

 

 

 

Huge trees were felled and barns torn to pieces in Jasper County by the destructive power of Hurricane Rita.

 

It could have been worse: The over 100-year-old Watson Chapel in Newton County survived with only roof damage.

The poultry industry escaped most of Rita's devastation, but there were isolated incidents of severe damage, like this chicken facility near Nacogdoches.

The County Feed Store in Kirbyville was severely damaged, along with most of its contents. The owner, Donnie Maddox, said he hadn't heard much from local ranchers since the storm. He speculated that they were "busy chasing cows and building fence and will be for a while."

Of the timber damage near Jasper, some say "more timber is on the ground than still standing." Timber was the hardest hit commodity in East Texas. Felled trees and brush had to be cleared and fences mended in Jefferson County, where many cattle are still missing.

Want to Help? Here's How!
The president of Texas' largest organization of farmers and ranchers said a special fund established by the American Farm Bureau Federation will be available to the Texas victims of Hurricane Rita.

AFBF had previously established "The Farm Bureau Hurricane Ag Fund" following Hurricane Katrina as part of the organization's foundation to receive donations for agricultural producers and rural residents who may be overlooked by other relief efforts.

"We know that relief has been slow in coming to many rural areas," said Kenneth Dierschke, president of the Texas Farm Bureau. "We have a lot of Farm Bureau members and others elsewhere in the state who would like to help."

Dierschke said that 100 percent of the funds will be used for individual relief. No overhead or administrative charges will apply.

Donations are tax deductible when checks are made out to the "AFBFA/Hurricane Ag Fund." Dierschke said donors may specify that their gifts be used to assist Texas victims.

Checks should be mailed to: AFBFA/Hurricane Ag Fund, 600 Maryland Ave. SW, Suite 900, Washington, D.C. 20024.

Dierschke expressed disappointment that many rural areas have been so slow to receive help.

"We know that logistics can be a nightmare during major catastrophes, but we have first hand reports of rural residents without enough food, no drinking water and no way to preserve essential medications," Dierschke said. "We've got to do better."

The San Angelo cotton farmer said Texas Farm Bureau would be encouraging cooperation between state and federal agencies and private groups to facilitate hurricane relief efforts.