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August 31, 2008

Residents stock up to prepare for Gustav

Mid-County residents flee Gustav with full shopping carts

By Darragh Doiron

By Darragh Doiron and Sherry Koonce

The News staff writers

As Gustav eyed the Texas Gulf Coast, Southeast Texas residents prepared to get out of harms way, but not before they filled shopping carts with provisions.

Motiva’s receipts for a Saturday shopping trip to H-E-B totaled about $2,200.

Ken Breakfield helped load enough pork chops, chicken, Zummo sausage and Little Debbies into a truck to feed about 200 workers until caterers arrive after Gustav.

“I didn’t forget the most important thing —Little Debbie snack cakes,” Kenneth Breakfield, a Motiva employee, said. “I can be away from home for four or five days, but I can’t be away from Little Debbie honeybuns.”

The impending hurricane’s name means “staff of the Gods” and has residents still stinging from 2005’s Rita in a flurry of preparation.

Motiva is preparing to secure property against Gustav and the workers doing it will need food as fuel, Verna Rutherford, external affairs manager, said.

“I feel like we are very well prepared to protect the people, the environment and the community,” Rutherford said.

Shoppers inside HEB took their time in the aisles with bread, beer and water seeming to be top picks.

“I’m really a calm person. We’ll leave if it gets too bad,” Tammy Coward of Port Neches said as she loaded up on spring water and cat food. “My husband’s getting on my nerves.”

Working at a refinery has made him a stickler for preparedness, she said.

Veronica Isadore and her daughter, Shemika, of Port Arthur had done the easy work, shopping, but the hard work of deciding how to escape Gustav’s path was still ahead.

“We’re kind of wishy washy about it,” Shemika said.

While Friday’s focus was gas lines and lumber supplies, Saturday’s crowd concentrated on food and medicine.

Monica Britton had already prepared ham sandwiches for a car ride to “wherever” before standing in line at King’s Pharmacy in Port Arthur. She was getting medicine for her child before heading out on an undetermined route.

Thomas Martin, next in line, had a plan. He had a generator, a tent and a map to the woods.

“Oh, I’ve got everything. Rita tore my other house up,” the Port Arthur man said.

Manuel Chavez, and his wife Guadalupe planned to evacuate to Dallas even before the order was given, but with a family of four and one on the way, just a few necessitities filled the grocery buggy.

“We know what to take. When we lived in Houston, we had to evacuate for Rita, so we feel like we are prepared,” Manuel Chavez said.

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