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Brenham extends hand to evacuees
Published September 24, 2005
BRENHAM — There has been little breathing room for Brenham these past few weeks as it rushed to secure the needs of strangers, one disaster after another.
A couple thousand Hurricane Katrina evacuees came through about three weeks ago, said Gene Herrmann, a Brenham volunteer police officer. And last week was the Washington County fair, “which makes the timing of all this pretty interesting,” he said.
As Hurricane Rita drew steadily closer to the Gulf Coast, Texas communities further inland began to swell with the rising tide of evacuees. According to official tallies from Friday afternoon, provided by Brenham Police Sgt. Daniel Gaskamp, nearly 2,000 people have found refuge in Brenham’s 14 shelters. Brenham’s average population is about 1,900.
Though Gaskamp could not give an estimate of the number of additional evacuees unable to find shelter, particularly because there are many being taken in by Brenham residents, he said locals like Carla Prnka suggest there are hundreds still stranded in harm’s way.
Initial plans called for four shelters because Brenham was intended only as an evacuation overflow center, Herrmann said, but as the situation grew increasingly dire, more places were opened. Many of the locations are public schools or church activity centers, like St. Mary’s Catholic Church, which also served as the evacuee hub after Hurricane Katrina.
Several shelters have exceeded capacity allowed by the fire code, by 70 people in one case. Some volunteers are quick to shrug and say, “You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to help people.”
All 14 of the Columbia-Brazoria ISD school buses carrying evacuees from West Columbia, Brazoria, Wild Peach and surrounding areas along with one bus from Sweeny found refuge at St. Mary’s. They arrived in Brenham late Wednesday night, a significant distance ahead of Brazosport ISD’s buses arrival in Bryan-College Station on Thursday morning, according to C-BISD Transportation Director Marisa Weisinger.
Weisinger attributed their earlier arrival to straying from last-minute changes in evacuation plans presented by Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner after an emergency evacuation planning meeting Tuesday night.
The word came to Weisinger from C-BISD Assistant Superintendent Martha Buckner that Wagner decided buses from school districts should meet at Angleton Middle School and go to Bryan-College Station from there instead of having the buses go to evacuation sites on their predetermined routes.
While Weisinger said she appreciated Wagner’s suggestion and knew he was making it in their best interest, she deviated and held to the initial plan to go to Brenham.
“I’ll tell you it was difficult keeping 14 buses in a convoy. I can’t imagine how hard it’d be with up to 23 buses, especially with everybody trying to break in,” she said. “And these people (evacuees) already told their family about where they were going.
“I think we needed to stick with our original plans … and we’re very glad we stuck with our decision,” Weisinger said.
She also said they were initially instructed to go to the Brenham Convention Center. However, no such place exists. The information was provided to them by the Brazoria County Emergency Management.
Instead, they followed road signs posted in Brenham directing them to the Wal-Mart parking lot where a central evacuation command center, staffed by Brenham police, pointed them to St. Mary’s.
Charles Keese, St. Mary’s shelter director, estimates about 75 percent at the shelter are from Brazoria County.
But for the drivers, 14 C-BISD volunteers and one volunteer who was a former Angleton ISD bus driver, William Gadrey, the trip didn’t end when the last engine was killed. Each of them worked alongside Red Cross volunteers at the shelter, taking out trash, cleaning and preparing food. Weisinger winked while confiding the shelter’s pasta dinner Friday was made with a secret recipe.
She said the performance by these drivers has been nothing short of amazing.
“I’m proud that they work for me,” Weisinger said. Besides, “We can’t just sit still, can we?”
Meanwhile, resources are dwindling rapidly. Gladney said Wal-Mart is one of the few stores in town still open Friday, let alone one with supplies. When he was there Thursday, there was only one register open, the line snaked on for what seemed like miles and the cashier looked ready to cry, Gladney said.
Like many other places in Texas, gas lines also were gridlocked in town, often requiring up to 30 minutes before touching the pump. As of Friday afternoon, fuel was still flowing at four Brenham stations, Gaskamp said, and he was confident there was enough to go around. The abundance brought incoming evacuees further north in search of open shelters, he said.
Ralph Dahkkani, manager of Fuel Depot, explained gas stations are typically running only two pumps at a time because if everybody gets it at the same time, then it comes out much slower.
Dahkkani said the first supplies to run out were milk and bread, but ice also has become scarce. He’ll let the ice machine, normally suited for cooling soda, fill a cup, but not a bag.
It’s a conservation effort, Dahkkani said, and there has to be enough to go around.
At the Fluff Top Roll café in historic downtown Brenham, where locals greet one another with a hearty, open-palm wave, the door might as well be rotating. Despite posting a wait time of two hours, mostly due to being short-staffed, the customers kept arriving. The employed waitresses couldn’t fight the traffic and one volunteer waitress, Donna Barber of Matagorda, was more accustomed to serving medicine as a nurse’s aide than food.
Not that patrons had much of a choice. Fluff Top’s name is derived from its renowned, delicious biscuits. Many of the town’s restaurants ran out of food by Thursday afternoon, Gladney said. He was sitting in a Dairy Queen on Thursday when they announced the dinner bell had given its last twang, but soda and ice cream were still available.
Nevertheless, the third most vital resource, next to food and water, remains steadily dwindling, despite the last-minute inclusion of 10 shelters.
Prnka said she wept after seeing hundreds of people sleeping on the side of the road Thursday morning because they had run out of gas and had no place to go. She would offer them to stay with her, except she isn’t sure her place is suitable as is — “It sways in 40 mph winds,” she said.
“So many people are stranded here. I can’t believe all of this,” she said. “I cried. I was so sad to see families, children, people sleeping on the ground.”
Like many, Prnka said this particular mess could have been eased, if not avoided, had mandatory evacuation began earlier and if there had been better communication between areas with shelters.
Angie Lopez of Brazoria was among the presumed hundreds left without shelter Friday. She and her five relatives slept in a Brenham park Thursday. After being turned away from about six shelters Friday, she feared they’d be on the way back to the park or the Wal-Mart parking lot, even as winds rose to twice their speed since earlier in the week.
But even the Brenham police command center for evacuation direction, which was set up in the Wal-Mart parking lot, had been taken down before nightfall Friday because the winds were too strong for their canvas tent, Gaskamp said. On their way out, Gaskamp said the officers saw several similar tents set up in the lot by evacuees.
“We’re urging people to fill up and move north,” he said.
Gaskamp, a fifth-generation Brenhamite who outlasted Hurricane Carla when its eye rolled over this city, said it’s incredible that Brenham has drawn so many resources together in a short time span.
“Considering what we had to work with, looking at the influx of all that’s come through here, I think we held our on pretty well,” he said.
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