We spent the end of last week preparing for Hurricane Harvey. We attended meetings, fired up our generators, cleaned out our emergency management trailers, gassed up our vehicles, etc. and waited. In Lytle we ended up with about 1” of rain spread over three days, I’m not complaining though. What for us resulted in little more than a drill turned out to be a major disaster for a lot of our state. Looking at the photos on the internet of the destruction and flooding it seems almost unreal. It seems like everyone wants to help somehow, I can’t really direct anyone to a particular cause or charity but I am sure there are many opportunities and avenues worthy of our support.
Our past week was “light on crime” and police activity. We handled 42 calls for service and officers issued 14 citations. Only one arrest and that was for Public Intoxication and Escape. A female was arrested for PI, she complained about her cuffs being too tight so when the officer opened the door to adjust them she “bolted.” Luckily she was captured rather quickly and her short freedom caused her to pick up a Class A misdemeanor escape charge. That was it for the arrested person activity. If you think that was a dull week our property crimes reported only included a tire “slashed” at HEB Plus and we took two reports of identity theft.
What wasn’t dull this past week was the activity caused by the hurricane, both hotels were booked up, all the eating places were covered up and HEB Plus was, for lack of better terminology, a “mad house.” They ran out of water (twice), ran out of milk (even chocolate), and in general the lines were longer than I have ever seen them. Having an HEB Plus here is really a blessing; they are a great community partner and provide a much needed service to our community, even though they did run out of chocolate milk. The parking lot was totally packed, which is why I believe we didn’t have any reported thefts last week. Thieves are lazy and they would have had to park a good distance from the store, so they most likely would have picked a target that required less walking. Secondly there wasn’t much left to steal after all the paying customers hit at the last minute. I’m not a hardcore “prepper” but I do believe in having a backup plan. Mine is simple I call it A.W.T. (Ammo – Water – Twinkies). That pretty much covers all the bases one would need to sustain life.