A week after Hurricane Harvey slammed into the Corpus Christi, life in Texas has gone from bad to worse in only a matter of days. What was once a few downed power lines is now vehicles laying abandoned across roads, houses flooded and damaged beyond repair, and debris everywhere you look.
Just there on Saturday, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, visited Houston to meet the victims who have suffered from Hurricane Harvey. The aim of the trip was to bring comfort and hope to the people of Texas.
The First Lady, Melania Trump, also visited and met with families at a storm shelter in a Houston sports stadium. The Texan Governor, Greg Abbot, and Houston’s mayor Sylvester Turner, also came along, prior to visiting a church in the suburbs of Pearland.
Trump then gave a speech on how Texas would tackle their situation saying;
“The water’s disappearing. We knew we have a long way to go, but the water’s disappearing. It’s a long term. We’re talking about, they say two years, three years, but I think that because this is Texas you’ll probably do it in six months!”
Once he was finished the church applauded and cheered on the visit. However, Trump has been heavily criticised due to him not meeting up with the hurricane victims. In his persistent defiance of convention, the President seemed determined to rectify this as he and his wife were serving lunch at a shelter and playing donated board games with children.
One of the survivors that Trump didn’t meet was the Smith family. They lived in a wood framed home with cinder blocks on Richland Drive, a former street, built on a triangle of swamp between two bayous.
Before Hurricane Harvey came thundering down, the rain had already flooded their block.
With her busy career as a nurse and raising two teenagers Yvonne Ferguson-Smith saw no easy way to escape the atrocities of Harvey.
Charmane, her sister, also has schizophrenia, was already extremely agitated with the rainfall. As neither Yvonne or Charmane could swim, they both wanted to stay. However her 14 year old son reasoned with her as he feared the snakes that would come rushing in when the rain flushed in from the woods.
The Smith family faced the same question that everyone else in Texas was asking themselves. Was it better to stay at home and get on with it? Or would they be better moving to higher ground and seeking refuge?
With all of our thoughts and prayers with the Smith family and all the other families who have been affected by Hurricane Harvey, hopefully the situation will be resolved so that people can go back to their homes and live out their normal lives.
