“We decided to leave early rather than get stuck in the rush later on,” Zambada said.
He explained how they saw a ticker across the bottom of the television screen explaining that evacuees from Angleton were to head to Bell County shelters.
“I worked through Hurricane Carla in 1961,” he said. “My wife told me we were taking the grandchildren, not staying.”
No stranger to the fury of a hurricane, Zambada is a retired Department of Transportation worker who has cleaned up after many coastal storms.
“In ’61, when Carla came, it ripped the old Port Lavaca Bridge to pieces. One day it was there and the next it was gone. The highway and streets were covered with cars, dead cattle and animals everywhere, roofs, power lines and poles. The restaurant that where we used to stop and get coffee was wiped clean down to a slab of cement, and a charter boat was found resting on the ground 12 miles away from its dock.”
Carla made landfall between Port O’Connor and Port Lavaca on Sept. 11, 1961, as a Category 4.
. . .
In the last 24 hours Bell County and Temple went from “where will Hurricane Ike hit?’ to “holy heck, we are getting evacuees” - and so far it seems quite smooth.
By mid-afternoon Wednesday, downtown Temple was buzzing.
Meetings started at 8 a.m. and continued with updates throughout the day. City officials then went to the county emergency operation centers (EOC) for further meetings on how the event was going to be coordinated.
The Bell County Expo Center was set up as a staging area early afternoon.
The EOCs in Bell County and Temple were like revolving doors all day since word came in during the middle of the night that Brazoria County would be putting mandatory evacuations in place for those with special needs.
Dennis Baker, Bell County emergency management coordinator, said he found out about the mandatory evacuation for special needs people - basically those with medical conditions, the elderly and people with no transportation - from Brazoria County when he awoke Wednesday morning and checked the voicemail on his cell phone. Later in the day that changed to Brazoria County being evacuated.
That started a chain of events in the county to prepare for evacuees.
By 10 a.m. Baker was in the county EOC with local representatives from the Salvation Army and American Red Cross where the group participated in a state conference call about the impending storm. That conference call was followed by a second one with officials from Brazoria.
Buses that had been sent to San Antonio on Tuesday traveled to Brazoria on Wednesday to pick up the evacuees. A computer screen at the operations center indicated that some of the evacuees were from Freeport.
By 2 p.m. area volunteers began setting up at the Bell County Expo Center where 15 buses carrying about 350 people were expected to make their first stop to register.
Temple Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members and Sheriff Posse members kicked into action at the Bell County Expo center when it was announced Brazoria County would be issuing a mandatory evacuation.
“I received the call at about 1 p.m.,” Karl Kolbe, a Temple CERT member, said. By 2 p.m. Kolbe was being trained on the computers for processing of evacuees. Just before 3 p.m. the first voluntary evacuees arrived.
Once at Bell County Expo those with special needs would be transferred to the old Temple police station. Others were to be transported to First Baptist Church in Belton.
The old police department near the Santa Fe depot in Temple was transformed in hours from a bunch of empty rooms to a fully staffed shelter for evacuees.
The station looked empty at 1 p.m. By 2 p.m. the parking lot had been taken over by City of Temple Parks and Leisure vehicles.
Cots provided by Temple Fire and Rescue were set up, staff from Scott & White Memorial Hospital and other city medical personnel started organizing triage areas.
“We are going to set this up so we can see patients as they come in or if they need prescriptions or anything like that,” Carol Morrisett, the emergency management manager at Scott & White, said.
The Salvation Army volunteers set up a kitchen area and entertainment area, including a television, board games and a basket full of toys for the younger evacuees to help them settle into their surroundings.
The county will be reserving some shelter placements for some of its own residents who live in low-lying areas and may need to evacuate when and if the rains were to hit on Saturday as expected.
Meanwhile at Belton, the First Baptist Church started making its preparations for evacuees.
“We’ve done this for Katrina and Rita. We house about 100 folks in our gymnasium,” Craig Pearson said. The final stages of the setup were in place in the afternoon. “We have received support from the Bell County Health Department. We have nametags to identify both our clients and our volunteers, he said.
Pearson said the food would be provided through the Salvation Army.
“We are blessed with a kitchen that allows us to prepare food. It’s pretty good size commercial kitchen,” he said. “The state has done an extraordinary job of organizing this county by county. They can tell you when a bus leaves and when to expect it.”
Pearson said they have the ability to handle small pets in carriers and cages in a separate building. Bruce Pritchard, Belton Fire Department fire chief and emergency coordinator, arranged with veterinarians to take some of the larger animals.
“This is much better organized than Katrina,” he said.
Evacuees to the area are met at the county line by state troopers and escorted to the Belton Expo Center, where they are processed and their names entered into a computer system before being sent to a shelter.
Buses started arriving just after 9 p.m. at the Expo center.
Temple photographer Scott Gaulin contributed to this report.
