Reprint from the Progress Times - June 29, 2007
©Progress Times 2007 - All Rights Reserved

Remembering Hurricane Beulah 40 years later

By Kathy Olivarez

On September 7, 1967 Hurricane Beulah swept through the Rio Grande Valley changing life forever for many.

Today most people living in the Valley were not alive when the storm hit, and many of those who were alive, were not here when it happened. Nearly 40 years later those who stayed and lived through the event remember it and the aftermath as well as events such as the assassination of President Kennedy, just four years before. The images they saw are forever ingrained in their memories. At the time, Hurricane Beulah was the third-largest hurricane of record to hit the United States.

After days of anticipation and being warned that a major hurricane was headed their way, residents of the Rio Grande Valley were armed with stored water, gas-cooking camp stoves, flashlights and other essentials to wait out the storm.

In spite of all the warnings, the extent of the damage and the immense flooding was a surprise to many. In the upper Valley area power was off and telephone lines were down in most homes and businesses. Trees were uprooted and many homes were damaged or destroyed by the estimated 130-mph winds. While an estimated 95 tornadoes caused much damage, the real story was the flooding from the torrential rains.

Much of South Mission and South McAllen were under water, including portions of McAllen Miller Airport that remained under water for six days. On the coast about 80 shrimp trawlers were thrown into a pile as if they were a child's toys in a toy box. Others landed in trees. Port Isabel and South Padre Island received major wind damage to the island's resort hotels. Brownsville received less wind damage but had cleanup costs of over $1 million due to rising waters and mud. As far north as Falfurrias there was over four feet of water in streets downtown.

But much of the damage that occurred was from the flooding that happened when levees broke across the Valley. Up to 27 inches of rain fell from the storm.

Damage in Hidalgo County alone was estimated to be $34.7 million with $20.7 million of that being attributed to the breaking of the levee and rising water.

Citizens of Valley communities worked together to place sandbags in critical locations to prevent flooding in their cities. While they worked, displaced rattlesnakes slithered by and a plethora of skunks fled their homes. Fortunately for many workers, the animals were more intent on their own escape than the people nearby.

When the levee broke near Mission, it sent floodwaters into the Arroyo Colorado and Harlingen instead of into the North Floodway. Some elite residential neighborhoods in Harlingen flooded under several feet of water. Residents could only travel by motorboat.

The streets of Raymondville flooded putting homes, businesses and a cotton seed oil mill under water. Wind and water damage occurred in Corpus Christi and further up the Texas coast.

In rural areas, four-fifths of the citrus crop lay on the ground. Acre after acre of farm fields were under water with total loss of crops planted.

In all, over 25,000 homes were lost or damaged. Over 100,000 people's jobs were affected. The Red Cross provided over 200,000 disaster meals to Valley residents. But miraculously there was no loss of life in the United States and only four deaths in Mexico. The hurricane killed no one because people took the warnings seriously and left low-lying areas. Over 135,000 Valley residents took refuge in the shelters provided across the Valley.

The one good thing Hurricane Beulah is attributed to have done was fill the newly constructed Falcon Dam by adding 1,428,000 acre feet of water into what had already collected in the basin, bringing the dam within five feet of its rim.

The Progress Times asked several long-time residents to recount their memories of the event.

Insurance adjuster Scott Martin remembers that "the wind blew like hell" and a tornado that sounded like a freight train passed over at one point. "It was just awful," he recollected. "I did not have many broken windows because I had read that when a storm like that blows in from one side, the windows and doors on the other side of the house should be opened to equalize pressure. I did that and did not receive much damage to my home."

"Most of the power was out along with the telephones. But the telephone extension to our insurance agency (Conway, Dooley & Martin) that was in my bedroom worked. For two weeks that was the only phone we had and my partners, Trini Valverde and Dick Dooley, did business from my bedroom."

As an insurance adjuster, Martin traveled all around the Valley looking at property he had insured. "Friends of mine had strange things happen. Charles Knadle had two grain tanks located on the east side of Glasscock Road picked up and placed in his yard on the west side of Glasscock Road by a tornado. Strangely enough, there was no damage done to the tanks. And the north half of his barn was sheared off by the wind and scattered everywhere. Not a nail was out of place on the remaining half. It looked like someone had taken a knife and cut it into two pieces."

"But the worst part was the damage caused when the levee broke and the water rose all over the Valley," continued Martin.

He estimated his firm insured 500 dwellings that were complete losses. Some were in other parts of the Valley. He and a worker went down to Raymondville in a truck to see some damage on a property they insured. The truck got in water so deep the wheels were acting like the rudder of a boat while the truck floated. The water entered the cab and covered the floorboard.

Martin warns those who find themselves in floating vehicles to open the doors so the vehicle will sink. That way it will not be swept into overflowing drainage ditches, which may do them a great deal more harm.

Another thing that was eerie was the sense of isolation. The only way to get out of the Rio Grande Valley was to go through Laredo and take the highway to San Antonio. Expressway 83, S.H. 281 and S.H. 77 were all closed in locations.

The largest loss he covered was the C.B. de la Garza Wholesale in South Mission. Martin says the wind ripped the roof off the building and all of the food products inside were written off as a loss by the insurance company.

Ben Cavazos has vivid memories of the flooding aftermath of the storm. Drainage waters were supposed to move into a storm sewer located east of the hospital. As the water rose higher the gate was closed.

The city's sewer plant was in danger of being flooded, bringing sewer service to a stop and backing up toilets. The plant was located just 300 yards from the old levee. Together with Joe Summers and Frank Strickland, Cavazos borrowed giant irrigation pumps from local farmers to set on top of the levee to move the water to the other side and keep it from flooding the sewer plant.

They kept the pump working for a week as water continued to pour into the area from the Mexican river south of Falcon Dam. The Mario Gomez Dam on Sugar Lake in Mexico overflowed. Normally the water would be managed by Anzalduas Dam but it was already full.

During this time, floodwaters continued to rise so getting fuel to the pumps was a problem. Strickland had a weasel, a military track vehicle that runs in water. He loaded 55-gallon barrels of fuel on the weasel to move them to the top of the levee where the pumps were located.

They also had a problem with getting hoses big enough to move the volume of water they needed to move. The hose had to be trucked in from San Antonio via Laredo.

Flooding was serious in South Mission. Cavazos remembers going through an area on Magna Carta Street just east of the sewer plant on the back of a truck with then city manager Calvin Gibson with a bullhorn at midnight one evening warning residents to "take your families and get out now because the area is going to flood during the night."

Cavazos was also instrumental in getting K-RIO radio back on the air after the hurricane by providing a generator to provide power.

"You could listen to the radio and hear the generator in the background, " said Cavazos. "It was a noisy thing that clicked constantly. But at least people could hear the news."

Caterpillars were used to dig a dirt berm along South Conway Avenue to keep it clear of floodwaters, according to Cavazos.

Another long-time Mission resident, former Mayor Jim Miller, remembers that South Mission was not the only place where flooding occurred. Water came within two inches of his front door on North Bryan Road when the Edinburg Canal overflowed. Miller speculates that the flooding would be much more serious today because during Hurricane Beulah, the land around his home was all agricultural and able to absorb much of the floodwater. Today, there are many subdivisions in the area.

Pat Townsend Sr. who lived on Taylor Road in the Sharyland area at the time said there was a six to eight inch lake in his yard. All of the neighbors had the same problem. His house was on piers like those of most of his neighbors so the water did not get into his home. Many of the trees in his yard were uprooted.

"Some of the homes nearby, and the packing sheds that existed in the area, lost their roofs," he recalled.

"Most of the orange and grapefruit crops were lying on the ground in the orchards. For the most part, the trees survived the onslaught of wind and the rain that came before, during and after the hurricane. They had some wood damage to their extreme branches where the wind ripped the fruit off them. The citrus crop was light the next year but after that citrus production returned to normal, " said Townsend.

Those are just a few memories of what it was like in Mission and the Rio Grande Valley during Hurricane Beulah and its aftermath. Based on these accounts and the fact that the Valley is much more populated than it was previously, the recommendation in case of a pending storm would be to follow the guidelines given by emergency management personnel and evacuate areas where flooding is likely to occur.