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Where Hurricane Harvey Made Landfall, Tough Texans Begin to Clear the Wreckage - The New York Times

posted onAugust 28, 2017
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Article snippet: ROCKPORT, Tex. — In the days since Hurricane Harvey slammed into his hometown, Colin McBurney has become his own first-responder – a 16-year-old in a backward baseball cap with bare feet, a pistol and a truck. He drove to the houses of his neighbors all weekend, checking on the people no one had heard from. One friend made the kind of request people make in this bay town of nearly 11,000 whose spirit is equal parts fishing village, millionaire’s retreat and working-class country – please get the horse. Right before sunset Saturday, Mr. McBurney, still in bare feet and beach shorts, tied a piece of rope into a leash and waded into his friend’s flooded front yard. She had evacuated, but her horse, Stew, had wandered out of the stable through the busted fence. Mr. McBurney walked past the blown-down barn, put the leash on Stew and led the horse back to the stable, a barefoot cowboy after the storm. “We’re just going to get through this together,” said Mr. McBurney, a student at the storm-damaged Rockport-Fulton High School. The most powerful hurricane to hit Texas in decades struck land here on Friday, damaging or destroying hundreds of homes, apartments, businesses, churches and government offices and killing at least one resident in a mobile-home fire. Rockport is a piece of rural Texas on the water, sandwiched between Copano Bay and Aransas Bay, and separated from the Gulf of Mexico by thin strips of islands. Not far from its palm-beach-lined waterfront, cattle g... Link to the full article to read more

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