Hurricane Ike September 2008

The Anahuac, Texas Volunteer Fire Department responded to the needs of the community during Hurricane Ike. Although they suffered major damage, they were able to respond and assist their residents. One year later the fire station is fully recovered.

Darla Carney
Anahuac, TX Resident
Immediately. I mean, As soon as daylight hit, members of the fire department and the police department. They were already out making sure everybody was safe. So I mean. It was just an interesting thing to watch. The whole community up, and just started taking care of their own.

Bruce Corner
Anahuac Volunteer Fire Chief
The fire station suffered major damage. All the doors as you can see behind me here in the front of the apparatus were completely blown off their tracks and torn up. Immediately after the storm had passed we were right into action and started doing the necessary volunteer fire department duties that we would do.

Ryan Holzaepfel
Emergency Management Coordinator 
The biggest challenge I think was the fact that fire departments were volunteer and a lot of these people had regular jobs that they had to go to.

Bruce Corner
Anahuac Volunteer Fire Chief
I myself work for Chambers County; I do building maintenance for Chamber County so I was very much involved in a lot of the generator and electrical hook up in all the buildings so I was really carrying two hats I worked about 15-20 hours a day for the county and then also was running the volunteer fire department for emergencies and different calls that we had. 

Darla Carney
Anahuac, TX Resident
The fire department immediately mobilized everyone we had, the fire department itself sustained heavy damage, the doors were blown out. 

Bruce Corner
Anahuac Volunteer Fire Chief
All of these large doors were completely blown off their tracks when they blew in; they actually blew in and fell on top of the fire apparatus. So the first thing we had to do when we arrived after the storm was to get all of the debris off the fire apparatus get it outside staked up out of the way so we could pull the engines and stuff out. All the lighting that you see was completely torn down; of course all has been replaced, but all that fell in, and then a lot of our gear which was hanging on racks as this gear is here was blown away, we found some out back some of it was laying here in puddles of water, so a lot of the gear couldn't be claimed it had to be replaced, I think we lost ten sets of bunker gear.
This truck suffered some major damage, the windshield was completely busted out the front of the truck was scared damaged the head lights some of the lighting the rot away lightings, some of the lighting in the truck had to be replaced; it was not damaged to the point we couldn't use it to fight fire or rescue with. All of our vehicles were still serving the community immediately after the storm. I think we have a better knowledge of what may occur if we have another storm like Hurricane Ike.

Funds from the FEMA's Public Assistance Program helped Anahuac Volunteer Fire Station rebuild following Hurricane Ike.

For more information visit
www.fema.gov
www.fema.gov/ike