Merced residents 'gave so unselfishly' to victims of 'incredible' flooding

Merced residents have been generous, according to a Merced man who trekked with a team to the Houston area to aid victims of Hurricane Harvey, which displaced more than 18,000 households.

The storm touched down in late August, drenching the Houston area and other parts around the Gulf of Mexico with anywhere from several inches to feet of water, according to authorities. At least 70 people have died so far.

Billy Baldwin, 47, of Merced made the roughly 30-hour drive with a handful of other volunteers to take water, food, clothes and other supplies to the outlying suburbs of Houston. The whole effort took about a week.

"People just gave so unselfishly," he told the Sun-Star. "Actually a lot more people wanted to give, but it was such short notice we couldn't connect."

As motorcycle enthusiasts, the crew of volunteers runs in similar circles, Baldwin said. In about 12 hours, with the help of more than a dozen Merced residents and business owners, they were able to fill up two full-size trucks and a rental van with supplies.

Once there, they were also able to make runs for more supplies thanks to more than $20,000 in donations through a gofundme page.

"The city of Beaumont and Groves, where we were at, they were out of water," he said, "They had no drinking water there at all. The power was off to the whole city."

Beaumont, a town of about 120,000, is about 85 miles east of Houston and 22 miles north of Port Arthur.

"We watched what was happening on TV. ... The TV doesn't even explain the devastation that was going on through there," he said. "We wanted to do something. We felt the only way really is to get down there and make sure we can get supplies in."

Baldwin said the crew saw "an incredible" amount of flooding on and around major roads several days after the storm had moved on. Perhaps the most extreme situation the crew witnessed was a woman leaving an area gas station with four cases of bottled coffee, because they were out of cases of water.

"She was buying the iced coffee so her children would have something to drink," he said. "I just couldn't believe, couldn't imagine it. So we gave her some cases (of water) to help her out."

The crew coordinated with a church for the bulk of the supplies, he said.

Harvey's record-setting rains have since created heaps of ruined possessions that now line entire neighborhoods, nearly up to the rooftops of the homes that were swamped.

All that sodden drywall, flooring, furniture, clothing and toys adds up to an estimated 8 million cubic yards in Houston alone, enough to fill the Texans stadium two times over. By comparison, the Federal Emergency Management Agency says it helped remove some 15 million cubic yards of debris after 2012's Hurricane Sandy.

Texas and city officials have pledged to make a priority of the monumental task of cleaning it up, though they stopped short of giving specific timelines, mindful that such cleanups have dragged on longer than anticipated after other major storms. "We want to get it removed as quickly as possible," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told reporters Thursday.

Harvey has so far killed at least 70 people who drowned in floods, got crushed by trees and died during power outages — a surprisingly low toll that experts say reflects heeded warnings, swift action by first responders and volunteers, and no small amount of luck.

"It was astounding that we didn't have a much larger loss of life," said Phil Bedient, co-director of a Rice University effort to research severe storms and evacuations. "It is a relatively low number for as big a storm as this was."

The system intensified from an ordinary storm to a Category 4 hurricane in just over two days before striking Texas on Aug. 25 and dropping 52 inches of rain while parked over the Houston area. Unfortunately for those in storm country, the season is not over.

The most powerful Atlantic Ocean hurricane in recorded history, Irma, bore down on the islands of the northeast Caribbean late Tuesday, following a path predicted to then rake Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and Cuba before possibly heading for Florida over the weekend.

The Category 5 storm had maximum sustained winds of 185 mph, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami.

The team that responded to Houston is mulling whether they can make a similar trip to help more victims, Baldwin said. "I think as Irma comes in and hits, we may be rolling out again," he said.

This story was originally published September 7, 2017 at 5:14 PM with the headline "Merced residents 'gave so unselfishly' to victims of 'incredible' flooding."