Aransas Pass, TX; Schools Closed Through 2017, 20 Miles To The Nearest Hospital
ARANSAS PASS, Tex. — At a small rural hospital in this shrimping and tourist town of about 3,000, some patients visited the emergency room twice a day, obtaining insulin and other medications they could not afford to buy themselves. Nurses sometimes pooled their money to pay for patients’ cab fare home.
“It is that kind of place,” said Jen Deselms, a registered nurse who worked in the emergency room at Care Regional Medical Center before Hurricane Harvey hit last month, forcing the facility, which serves about 90,000 in three counties, to shut its doors indefinitely. “We look out for each other and for our community. Not having this hospital will be devastating for the entire area.”
Since the storm passed, doctors and nurses have labored to repair the hospital themselves, mopping flooded floors and hammering two-by-fours to patch crumbling walls. In Aransas Pass and the neighboring beachfront towns that were decimated by Harvey’s first brutal landfall, a tale of two recoveries has emerged. Although often described as resort towns, tourism overlays a culture of rural poverty here. These are places where old shrimpers struggle to get by on their disability checks. Folks who gave up on the cities cram into waterfront RV parks — many now destroyed by the storm — venturing to the coast to flip hamburgers or wait tables in a last-ditch effort to find their place in the sun and the sand. Schools have shut down for the year, and residents needing medical care will have to travel at least 20 miles across the Harbor Bridge to Corpus Christi — difficult for many in an area with little public transportation.
In nearby Rockport, where retirees show their paintings of shrimp boats and pelicans in art galleries along picturesque Copano Bay and condos line the waterfront, virtually nothing remains unscathed. Nearly two weeks after the storm, electricity was still off, cellphone service was spotty, and the water wasn’t back on. About 80 percent of buildings in the town were damaged, according to federal estimates.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/nowhere-else-to-go-small-texas-towns-decimated-by-hurricane-struggle-to-rebuild-amid-poverty/2017/09/10/1b05fe54-9298-11e7-8754-d478688d23b4_story.html?utm_term=.4833fe1681ab
