The American Red Cross took in about 80 people at an emergency shelter in Beaumont, where children played in boxes and adults ate donated turkey dinners on their cots.
“We’ve been hammered pretty hard,” said Chester Jourdan, the executive director of the Red Cross in southeast Texas, who himself lives within the evacuation area and whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Rita in 2005. But because of that shared history, he added, “we just have a lot of folks who understand we live in an area where we have to take care of each other.”
Melissa Quevedo, who lives within the evacuated area in Groves, had plans for a Thanksgiving feast: turkey, dirty rice, the ingredients for coconut and lemon pies. “All that’s back home,” she said. Instead, she was with her parents and their two German shepherds, Prince and Piper, in a hotel in Sulphur, La., just over the state line. Her gratitude outweighed her frustration.
“As long as we know that we’re O.K., that’s all that really matters,” said Ms. Quevedo, the legislative director for a local state lawmaker, Joe Deshotel. “We have a lot to be thankful for because things certainly could have been different.”
David Montgomery contributed reporting from Austin, Texas, and Farah Stockman from Boston.
Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/28/us/port-neches-texas-explosion.html
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