Anguish and nerves grip the thousands today who have chosen to leave behind their properties and protect their lives before powerful hurricane Harvey landed in the Texan town of Rockport.
These displaced people, now distributed among the 21 shelters enabled by the Red Cross in that southern state, spend hours worried about the fate that have been run by family and friends who decided to stay in the area and by the doubts about how they will find their home When returning to their respective cities.
“People are nervous, children cry,” said Sara Senderos, a volunteer coordinator at one of three shelters in San Antonio, Texas, where more than 650 people slept last night.
“The question they ask me the most is when will we go home?” She added.
More than twenty buses arrived in the last hours from various locations in the coastal area of Texas to Abraham Kazen School, located southwest of San Antonio and now the home of the displaced by the hurricane.
Cyclone Harvey, the strongest who has touched US territory for 12 years, has left at least one fatality in the small coastal town of Rockport, where he landed on Friday night with winds of up to 215 kilometers per hour.
Less than fifty kilometers from Rockport is Corpus Christi, a town that was largely evacuated before the arrival of the powerful hurricane.
Jose Luis Fuentes, born in Corpus Christi 62 years ago, decided to leave the area paying attention to local authorities, a decision that his elderly mother did not share.
“She was fine yesterday, but today she went out to the neighbor’s house, which has a gas stove, slipped, fell and broke her knee,” said Fuentes, who regretted not being able to help her mother right now.
The man, who said he wanted to go home, said he may not be able to see his mother again “until Wednesday or Thursday.”
“They tell us that the hurricane is gathering force back and that it is dangerous to be there,” he said with a worried face.
Although most of the refugees in this school are residents of Corpus Christi, there are also people from Aransas, Padre Island, Matagorda and Rockport itself.
This is the case of Felix Escobar, a middle-aged Hispanic who arrived in San Antonio from the coastal city accompanied by his four children.
“My wife did not want to leave the house and although it is okay, it is difficult to contact her and she has no electricity,” he told Efe.
Rockport, a coastal city of almost 9,000 people, has sunk today with streets turned into authentic rivers, felled trees, torn road signs, demolished buildings and even boats turned around by the force of the wind, local television showed.
The Hispanic entrusted himself to God so that the situation did not worsen and he thanked all the volunteers who “offered their time and affection” to those in need because of the hurricane.
Red Cross volunteers assured Efe that they need more donations of underwear and hygiene products to supply all the refugees, who have no hope of returning to their homes at the moment and who suffer the anguish of not knowing in which situation They will find them.
Harvey, already a tropical storm after losing strength once landed on Friday night as a hurricane of force 4 on the Saffir Simpson scale, a maximum of 5, has left floods of up to half a meter in the coastal cities of Texas.
It has also caused water concentrations of up to 40 centimeters in height in Houston and floods that could reach 1.3 meters in height, without for now expected to stop the rains that accompany the cyclone.
Alex Segura
