As Hurricane Harvey continued to pour rain on Texas, a few Bradford-born residents are experiencing the effects of the storm in the Lone Star State.
Bradford native Tom Schellhammer, who is serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Sam Houston near San Antonio, was driving back from a family visit in Pennsylvania just after the hurricane hit.
“We were driving back Saturday and Sunday,” he said via social media messaging. “It started raining outside of Dallas, and rained the whole way to San Antonio — really hard for about two hours.”
He’s about two hours inland, so he didn’t see the ravages that hit the Gulf areas. He did see heavy rain, and on Monday, he said, “today it’s super windy.” There was some light flooding, Schellhammer added, “mostly big, big puddles that aren’t going away.”
Mike Krott, a Bradford native living in Goliad, Texas, has seen more of the hurricane’s destructive impact, being less than 6 miles away from where Harvey stalled.
Although the hurricane has had a devastating effect in the state, Krott explained that Texan culture has battled back, with a strong community effort to help one another.
“A lot of the relief you’re seeing online and on TV, those are mostly regular people out there helping,” Krott said. “They’ve been organizing to help as many people as they can, no matter what race, party, religion or what have you. Texans help each other, it’s a way of life here.”
Krott himself said he may plan to go out and help in the neighboring areas that have been affected the most, joining others in his community in the relief effort with his personal boat and equipment.
“This place is a lot like Bradford,” he said. “We’ve got a big fishing community that have dedicated their efforts to helping, and so we’ll do what we can.”
Social media has been a vital tool in the relief effort, said Krott, who, along with many other Texans, has kept his Facebook locked on the “Hurricane Harvey Safety Check” page with hopes to help those that are in the more flooded areas.
“It reminds me of Hurricane Agnes in Pennsylvania back in 1972,” Krott said, mentioning that he saw much of the same in terms of flooding and community relief.
“But even (Agnes) wasn’t as bad as this hurricane is,” he said.
Nicole Aranda is also a Bradford native living in western Texas, about 7 hours away from the areas affected by the hurricane. Although she isn’t directly affected by it, she explained that she has required scheduled hospital visits in Houston for her daughter that she worries she may not be able to make given the conditions of the highways.
“Everyone in Texas is affected, and for us we have to keep our eyes on the roads that take us to the hospital in Houston,” she said.
Despite her distance from the affected areas, Aranda said that she is in the process of helping with the relief effort as much as she can.
“My daughter is in the Girl Scouts and through them we are going to raise donations for all kinds of necessities that are needed for the relief effort,” Aranda said.
Although Aranda said that there was efforts to evacuate the areas that were in Hurricane Harvey’s path, “It isn’t easy to evacuate 6 million people.”
“Other than that, we will be praying for everyone to get through this safely,” she said.
