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By Gene Hall
Publisher
It has been 30 years since I lived in Newton County, Texas, but both my wife's and my own family are still in the area. The news that a vicious monster named Rita was rampaging through my home country was not welcome.
I was worried about family, but getting our cameras and staff to the story was priority one. Farm Bureau members all over Texas were waiting to hear the rural story that the big news guys overlook. That's what we do here at Texas Agriculture magazine. Also, our video of Hurricane Rita's aftermath will run on RFD-TV on Oct. 11.
Mike Barnett said I needed to go because I "speak East Texas." I do speak it, and I'm proud of that, but professional considerations aside, I had to go. So I joined the team and headed east. We went to Nacogdoches first, hoping to top off the gas tank for a long day. No luck there and we were glad we'd brought a few gallons along.
We started seeing damage almost immediately, working our way south to Angelina County where we got our first indication that the rural areas were overlooked in the rush to get supplies to the larger population centers. In Zavalla, about 1,000 residents had been without food, water and ice for three days. People were gratefully, and finally, getting all of that from FEMA trucks. The storm left behind some of the year's hottest and most humid days, adding to the misery of Rita's victims.
At this point, we could not find a power line that was not broken in multiple spots. Trees crushed houses, pine timber was ripped apart, hundred-year-old oak trees were ripped from the ground like weeds from a garden.
We moved on to Kirbyville … home. Perhaps I am not objective, but it seems this is where Rita did her worst. She quite simply pounded this little town.
First, I dropped in on my mom and dad and their place right on the Jasper-Newton County line. Seeing what they were going through was difficult. I'd brought along a few things they needed, but it didn't seem like enough. I don't know how they'll keep things going through the weeks that they may be out of power. Two generators were running, keeping the freezer frozen and running the well pump.
The house was mostly unscathed, but hundreds of trees were down, many of them on fences. It's a minor miracle that the cows stayed put. There was not much of the place that was not covered with debris of one kind or another.
I talked on camera with the mayor of Kirbyville, a lifelong friend named Giles Horn. He had watched the FEMA trucks roar through Kirbyville on their way to "somewhere else." Three days after landfall, the first supplies were beginning to arrive.
We headed south again to examine the second-growth rice crop in Jefferson County. Stopped by DPS, we detoured west and then east to Interstate 10 through Beaumont. All the exits there were closed. A city of more than 100,000, it was practically a ghost town.
We found farmer and rancher Jim Smith, who had evacuated to Tyler and just returned that day to find his fences down and many of his cows gone. We talked to him and looked at the rice. Some of it may be salvageable, but with no electricity to dry, bag and ship, it's a crop with no place to go. Jim admitted to being a bit dazed by the enormity of what all of Southeast Texas has been through. I realized that almost everyone I talked to seemed a bit dazed. Everyone was worried about the next drop of water or gasoline. Food was a matter of whether or not you'd thought of it before Rita came calling or the next FEMA delivery. I saw worry and disbelief; anger and frustration. I did not see defeat.
We wound up the trip near Houston. We'd come too far to retrace our path with our meager supply of fuel. Instead, we came home to Waco, leaving behind friends, neighbors and Farm Bureau members with a difficult road ahead. We traveled more than 750 miles–places once so familiar to me that looked like a war had been fought there.
If you want to help, you can find instructions on what to do elsewhere in these pages of Texas Agriculture.
My mother believes that every experience in life should teach you something. This time, I learned that there is not much that can withstand a 100-mile-per-hour wind. I discovered that the will of my East Texas friends and family is like tempered steel. Finally, I know that my roots in these piney woods cannot be ripped out as easily as the giant oak that stood beside my parents' home.
