By Lacie Morrison
lmorrison@mineralwellsindex.com
“Pretty devastating.”
That is how Texas Department of Public Service Sgt. Jason Dudley described the areas of Chambers County and the Bolivar Peninsula where he and a group of area troopers were stationed shortly after Hurricane Ike hit the Texas Gulf Coast on Sept. 13.
Dudley and his team of 18 troopers were deployed Sept. 17 to help patrol and be a law enforcement presence immediately after the storm. In addition to Rebecca Shelley and Dale Escobedo, from Mineral Wells, Dudley’s group included personnel from Haskell, Weatherford and the Weatherford area.
“We manned some check points, especially in the beginning,” he said. “We also had units doing roving patrols. We did a little bit of everything.”
Their primary objective, Dudley said, was “more a law enforcement presence to deter crime, protect property.”
According to Dudley, there were representatives from several law enforcement agencies working the area. “All kinds of people were spread out.”
The aftermath of the hurricane was apparently something to see firsthand.
“To see it first hand was unbelievable,” Dudley said. “It [television] really doesn’t do it justice. … Just the amount of destruction, to see the homes completely gone, it was just devastating. From talking to some of the local residents, they said it was the worst they’d ever seen.”
He added, “There’s a True Value hardware store sign that stayed upright and an empty concrete slab.”
Texas Parks and Wildlife Game Warden Bill Jones said they deployed an airboat behind the hardware property as part of their mission to locate living livestock.
“The destruction … was just massive,” he said. “At the Port Arthur Yacht Club, all the boats – big boats and little boats – were all stacked up on the beach.”
On the Bolivar Peninsula, Jones recalled, “the only things left were the septic systems and the slabs.”
Jones, who was stationed in the area from 1982 to1985, was one of the three Palo Pinto County game wardens who went to the disaster area to help with the relief efforts.
“We originally went down there to drive airboats,” Jones said. He explained they attempted to locate livestock that survived the storm and “did find a few live cattle” but also saw a lot of dead wildlife like nutrias.
“There was a lot of dead cattle, a lot of alligators,” Dudley recalled.
Jones said they would capture the alligators and release them into the marshes.
During their time in the Gulf Coast region, Jones was stationed in the Beaumont and Vidor area, staying in a closed down Academy Sports & Outdoors store along with a group of National Guardsmen.
Dudley and his team stayed in Winnie, Texas, and slept in an evacuated nursing home.
“We slept on cots and were able to take showers,” he recalled. “They really took care of us. It was unbelievable. Chambers County is rural in nature. They are a tight community.”
Both Dudley and Jones said they saw people working with each other to clean up the aftermath.
“Overall, everyone really came together,” the DPS sergeant observed. “It was really interesting to see – in a time of disaster, so many people were coming together and helping each other.”
Hurricane Ike is the ninth named storm and fifth hurricane this year. Originating as a tropical depression off the coast of Africa, Ike crossed the Atlantic Ocean and hit the Texas coast as a Category 2 hurricane. Ike is blamed for 67 deaths in the United States, with at least 32 deaths in Texas.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this article.
