High Island, TX
May 2009

Families in High Island Community Site recover from Hurricane Ike, utilizing FEMA's Direct Housing Program.

Paula Quick
High Island School District 
I'm Paula Quick, I'm Superintendent of High Island ISD. Before the storm the school had about 221 students they had 40 employees, we ran about six facilities, and managed K through 12th. After the storm we got down to 117 when we re-entered on October the 6th.  This is turned out to be something that FEMA should be very proud of, and High Island is very proud because we have definitely gone into a good looking site, and we proved to the peninsula that this was to help people recover.

Michael McCaleb
Community Site Manager
We have 51 units one of them being an admin so we have a total of 50 units we have nine UFAS units those are our handicapped units out here as well, there are three bedrooms one bath we built it up five feet tall so we can have the right fall for the water and everything, we put in a waste water treatment plant as well for the site. Most homes out here run on a septic and a well, so we put in a nice waste water treatment plant for High Island.

Robert Thompson
Project Manager CH2MHILL
In smaller communities like this, that are not connected to a larger city sewer system, areas would have their own individual plants just like this one.

Michael McCaleb
Community Site Manager
We started building the park they had 28 days to complete this park from braking ground they did a tremendous job doing that.
With building this site here we were able to bring back the families and the students too, this is definitely a step forward to helping the community get back on its feet and bringing the people back. 

Paula Quick
High Island School District 
That type of site show people the care of the federal Government and of the community of High Island that we are working with you.

Closing slate
After the storm the number of students was 117, up to date High Island school District has 161 students.
They hope to increase this number for the school year 2009-2010