HOUSTON POLICE CHIEF ON THE EFFECTS OF HARVEY AT TEXAS TRIBUNE FESTIVAL

Hurricane Harvey was the most destructive hurricane in the Atlantic in recorded history.

The storm was first recorded as a tropical storm as it hit the Caribbean with rain. As the storm passed over the gulf, a very warm body of water, the storm intensified to a category 4 Hurricane. When the storm made landfall in Rockport, it was producing 135 mph wind speeds and was battering the Texas Coast.

CNN reported that the the storm dumped 27 trillion gallons of water on Texas and Louisiana. Fifty inches of rain were recorded in Houston alone, a record for the continental United States. The storm caused $75 billion in damage, and will have long lasting effects. With 25,000 students unable to go to school, Houston (which is the seventh largest school district) canceled classes, and 30,000 people are without homes and are in emergency shelters. 

The burden of dealing with this natural disaster in Houston fell largely to its police chief: Art Acevedo.  Acevedo, the first Latino to serve as police chief in both Austin and Houston, spoke of his Harvey experience at the seventh annual Texas Tribune Festival on Sept. 24.

During his speech, Acevedo discussed the human perspective of Harvey within his city and the region. His talk, both somber and uplifting, focused on how badly hurt the city was but also celebrated the silver lining of neighbors and visiting volunteers helping Houstonians and Texans in the face of tragedy.

“We took over the ‘Cajun Navy’ [a volunteer group of Louisianan and East Texan citizens],” Acevedo said. “These volunteers were really the true heroes; it was a beautiful thing to watch. There were thousands of people who needed help. … We needed people to save them. These people coming from Louisiana, who were out there killing alligators with their bare hands, they were a modern-day Dunkirk. They brought their airboats, their food and their Cajun spices.”

Acevedo said that the rescue efforts were a success in great part to the many individuals who helped the affected communities, rescuing those who could not save themselves. Additionally, in the wake of the storm, many organizations let evacuees into their buildings for shelter, and countless relief efforts were created and immediately endowed with donations and volunteers across the nation.

“The willingness of people to put their self-interest aside to help others was great,” Acevedo said.

On a smaller but no less significant level, Acevedo praised his own department’s commitment to helping victims of the destruction. The Houston Police Department not only took on a search-and-rescue role but also kept law and order by monitoring the area and arresting people who attempted to use the storm as cover for looting abandoned stores. Every member of the Houston Police Department was on duty 24 hours a day for six days; 500 of those working in the department lost their homes, Acevedo said, but nobody left their post.

The 100 percent participation, the chief said, was a big change from disasters of Harvey’s magnitude that have hit the United States in the past. During Hurricane Katrina, Acevedo said, up to 75 percent of the New Orleans Police Department was off duty. Chief Acevedo believed that by having everyone on duty, they could save the as many lives as possible.

“The response of my department will be studied for generations to come,” Acevedo said. “I’ll never forget a cop that came up to me with tears in his eyes in pain because we weren’t getting to everybody quick enough.”

Chief Acevedo also discussed how his decade-long tenure as police chief in Austin better prepared him for the preparation for mass flooding. While in Austin, Chief Acevedo had to respond to the Halloween floods of 2016. Those floods would change how Acevedo would respond to the imminent flooding of Houston.

“There were valuable lessons learned from those floods.” Acevedo said. “I’ll never forget waking up to those floods. All of our gauges measuring the water level had been knocked out. I learned that you cannot always rely on technology. I never make the same mistake twice, so what we did leading up to Harvey was to put every member of the Houston Police Department on tactical duty [and in uniform]. This allowed us to have a system in place when the storm hit. We also had eyes on the bayous and were able to warn people of the flooding. Of course many people refused to evacuate, and we ended up having to rescue them anyways.”

During the panel, Acevedo described how, in light of the horrific flooding that occurred, people in the media and state leadership began to second-guess Chief Acevedo and Mayor Sylvester Turner for deciding not to evacuate Houston. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said at the time, “If it were me, I’d get the hell out of Houston.”

But at Saturday’s festival, Acevedo defended the decision to have people stay home rather than order them to evacuate.

“I found myself angry,” Acevedo said. “We were in the middle of trying to save lives. and people were already trying to debate this. I couldn’t care less; let history decide that. How do you evacuate 6.5 million people in this region, and where were you going to take them? The storm didn’t just hit Houston, it hit north of Houston, east of Houston, and up into central Texas. I called Col. McCraw from the Department of Public Safety and told him we needed a task force down in Houston, and he told me, ‘We have 500 state troopers that can’t get through to Bastrop because of flash floods.’ So we decided to have people shelter in place and do limited evacuations in neighborhoods that were historically prone to flooding.”

Chief Acevedo further defended the decision by pointing out the entire city of Houston was not flooded.

“We decided to evacuate people to those areas that were not under water,” Acevedo said. “During Hurricane Rita, Houston was evacuated and many [120 total] people lost their lives. Most people in floods are killed when they are out on the roads. Flooded roads can be like black ice, where people can’t see how dangerous it truly is. We lost Sgt. Steve Perez as he was trying to get to work due to flash flooding.”

The session was not only about discussing the hurricane itself but also the effect the hurricane had on Houston, and the ways Chief Acevedo thinks the way governments are run should be changed.

“The problem with government and society is that people are more worried about keeping their job than doing their job,” Acevedo said. “I’m not there to keep a job, I’m there to do a job. I told my department, I’ll walk away from this job when it’s over if I did the job that needed doing.”

The future problem that Houston will face will be hard to overcome, Acevedo said. “We are an artificially cash starved city. It’s not about small government. It’s about properly sized government; people understand the value of tax dollars.”

Acevedo also talked about how emergency services were severely limited.

“You cannot be the fastest growing city in the country and have a cap on spending or number of police officers,” Acevedo said. “When  a tree falls down, and you call the government, when do you want it to be picked up? Now. When you call 911, when do you want the emergency services there? Now.”

Acevedo wrapped up the session by discussing state politics and how to be better prepared for future storms.

“Houston is a major economic engine for the state of Texas and the U.S. It costs about $8 million per minute the port of Houston is closed. You can spend a lot of money now to fix the problems Houston is facing, or spend more money for every event that follows Harvey. It comes down to whether the U.S wants to spend money on missiles to blow up some country or spend the same amount of money to rebuild the infrastructure in Houston and other affected areas.”

Despite what Acevedo sees as an obvious choice, the economic ramifications are not swaying legislators, many of whom Acevedo pointed out not only deny the existence of global warming but also  work actively to argue against the scientific evidence that it exists.

“The science is there that the environment is being changed by global warming,” Acevedo said. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t go to the legislature when I’m sick. The environment is a patient, and if we are going to help our environment, I would put it in the care of scientists, and not politicians.”

For years to come Houston will be working to rebuild what has been lost. If the politics don’t change, Acevedo said, then storms like these will get worse and cause more destruction.

The story of Harvey, he said, is a story that may become all too common if policy is not changed.

In addition to being chief of police, Acevedo is also the vice president of the Major Cities Chiefs Association and the former president of the Latino Police Chiefs Association