pulled this from a news site

[joeshmoe]

not sure what's happening here, but I don't think he's stopped for dinner.

[Old_Plank_Road]

bighatnohorse-Mother nature takes care of it with her Darwin rule.

Viewing your statement and the Twain you quote leads me to believe you don't get out enough. "...Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

[Kayteg1]

I was camping on Houston beach, or next to it 10 days ago. Driving on Gulf shore it did look strange to me that all the houses are build 10 or even 16 feet off the ground, having high piers and even noticed one installed elevator just to get to the house from ground level .
Now I know why they need it. I left the area simply becouse after spending week there, we went to New Orleans for 4 days. Now we are in Georgia.
Must be plain luck, but looks like we had good timing.

[Bedlam]

The story:

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (Reuters) - Craig Uggen stopped short in his white Ford truck on Friday as gusting winds from Hurricane Harvey pushed waves from Corpus Christi Bay over the road. His anxiety rose with the water, now covering half his front wheels.

As he backed onto higher ground, another gust ripped the camper from his truck bed. Uggen had lived in that camper on the beach for the past year.

"I can't believe I dropped my home in the **** street," he would say minutes later, shocked at finding himself homeless on Friday with a Category 4 hurricane bearing down on this working-class South Texas city.

The man in the cab next to him, who would only give his name as Travis, had started the day homeless. Uggen had offered to shelter him in his camper when the two met at a convenience store just an hour before.

Their predicament highlights how quickly a natural disaster can make life desperate for those on the margins of society. Travis had planned to stay in Uggen's camper in part because he believed all the city's shelters were closed or full.

He was almost correct. Only one shelter, the Good Samaritan Rescue Mission, remained open as the most powerful storm to hit Texas since 1961 approached.

At the mission, about 300 people flowed into a shelter designed to hold about 200. That did not begin to fill the need.

In March, Good Samaritan estimated the total number of homeless people in Corpus Christi at about 8,100, said director Spencer Lowe.

As the storm strengthened, the shelter’s power failed, leaving the staff in the dark and struggling to hold the door open against gusting winds to admit new guests.

"These two people just came in 10 minutes ago," Lowe said as the wind roared outside and blew debris down the street. "They've been out there for hours."

The staff had visited about 20 places around the city where homeless people were known to live, panhandle or hide from police but found only about 22 people, Lowe said.

Many were eager for help; others turned it down. It remained a mystery where thousands of other homeless people had fled or hunkered down for Harvey.

The city had offered to get people on buses to San Antonio, but there were few takers, Lowe said.

Another shelter run by the Salvation Army evacuated, taking some homeless people out of the city, Good Samaritan staffers said. The rest of the city’s half-dozen shelters closed.

Lowe said he could only hope for the best for thousands of others believed to be homeless in the city.

"If you take that 8,100 people we estimated in March, and there's only 300 with us tonight ...," he said, pausing. “I just hope they got out, or to a family’s house, or just anywhere out of the elements."

Harvey was downgraded to a tropical storm on Saturday, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said, but it is expected to linger over Texas for days.

A SIMPLE PLAN

Uggen is not technically homeless, even with the loss of the camper. He has a home in South Louisiana, he said, and a fixed income he earned during many years as an elevator repairman, which allowed him to travel as he pleased. He came to Corpus Christi last year to live in the camper on the beach.

But he was not exactly flush, either. On Friday, he met his companion, Travis, when he asked him for the quarter he needed to buy a beer.

Travis instead offered to buy Uggen all the beer he could drink in exchange for a night in the camper.

The two men had been looking for a bridge to park under when the storm claimed the camper, shattering the back glass of Uggen’s truck and bending its bed.

Travis panicked, calling an acquaintance for a place to stay. But the friend had fled to Dallas.

In time, both men accepted their lot. At least the cooler strapped to the back to the truck had survived, with an assortment of food and drink.

"I was on top of the world yesterday," Uggen said as he pondered what might come next.

"I got a hotel room right there," he said, pointing to his weather-beaten truck, sans the camper. "Well, half of one.”

[jimh406]

It's a shame he didn't have tiedowns/straps/rope of any type on his camper, and it blew off. In some video, I saw some other RVs flipped over at an RV park and wondered why they were at that campground as well.

[Oregun]

Here is more information on the guy with the truck camper in the storm.

[GoinThisAway]

Maybe a storm chaser wanting a front row seat? If he stayed there on purpose, then, yes, the Darwin rule applies. If perhaps the truck was out of commission or there was some other reason for not evacuating, then condolences are due. I tend to believe the former is the case as, if the report that the camper blew off the truck is true, it indicates he didn't use Torklift tie-downs 😞

[bighatnohorse]

Captain_Happy wrote:
You just can't fix stupidity

Mother nature takes care of it with her Darwin rule.

[d3500ram]

HA... saw that too and thought about posting a screenshot of the image because clicking the ling does not show the camper... thought the same thing that it might be a stock/ file image.

Hoping for the best for our Texas TC'ers.

[Captain_Happy]

You just can't fix stupidity

[3oaks]

Dave Pete wrote:
.....................................
Maybe he didn't get the memo from the TX Sheriff who said he wouldn't sacrifice any deputies to go rescue anybody who hadn't heeded the evac order.

Yep, being that mobile, he should have been long gone before weather conditions got that bad. :R

[Dave_Pete]

I saw that too. The caption said, 'he almost flooded his camper. Minutes later winds blew it off the truck and he lost all his possessions. It also said he was from Louisiana, gave his name and said he's 57'.

Maybe he didn't get the memo from the TX Sheriff who said he wouldn't sacrifice any deputies to go rescue anybody who hadn't heeded the evac order.

[jimh406]

I saw that, too. Hopefully, he's not camping if that isn't a file photo.