Good to hear. I was in Lynn Haven Monday. Pictures don't even begin to show the level of damage.
We get an idea from photos and videos and if we've been there before we have a pretty good idea, but until you stand in the middle of it with those whose homes they are, you don't really see it.
Rockport was my first to go to post hurricane. One picture that will always stick with me and it definitely wasn't the worst, but two young girls with us saw it first. There was a 17 year old girl standing in a pile of wood and debris that had been her home, picking up and throwing boards and cursing at the top of her lungs with each one. I think in some ways she was expressing what others were suppressing. So many show sadness, but it's just a cover for anger. Juanita had lost her mom in the Dallas area two to three years earlier, moved to Rockport with her father who was in oil and she rarely saw, and then taken care of him through a long illness and lost him about 6 weeks before Harvey struck. Her entire world had crumbled. She was alone and left with a pile of debris.
There are so many left like that, some alone, some with families. It's not the physical damage that is so tragic but the human toll. You go there and you see it and you feel so helpless. You might help just a little but you can't make things right again. Some are partially covered by insurance and some get FEMA aid and some are completely devastated.
You try to remain strong while around them but when you get alone at night, you cry for them. I'm sure other natural disasters like the west coast fires are much the same.
Juanita is fine today by the way. We brought her home with us and she moved in with friends of ours in Jupiter, finished high school there and has shocked even herself, not a college freshman. We're so proud of her and happy for her, but we also realize that she was just one person and a fortunate one.
Hundreds of thousands will suffer from PTSD and the vast majority of them will get no treatment for it. Most may work their way through it alone or with family, Some never recover and are haunted by it the rest of their lives, especially young children.
I have no answers and still can't fully appreciate it, having not suffered such losses personally. I don't know how it feels to be terrified you're about to die or to lose everything you have, and those who lose most are those who have the least.