January 2018 - Parks & Recreation - 43

However hampered they were, Garcia
says they are driven to get back on their
feet. " We have worked really hard to do
some special programming and get some
of our fields playable. It is so important
to kids and youth to have something to
look forward to, " she says.
Meanwhile, in greater Houston and
Harris County, Texas, flooding, not wind
from the stalled hurricane, inflicted the
most damage. In Baytown, a municipality
of 80,000 people east of Houston, Scott
Johnson, director of parks and recreation,
was dealing with an unbelievable 50 inches of rain that fell on the city over four
straight days. " There is nothing you can
do to prepare for that, " Johnson says.
" When the rains abated, we only had
a skeleton staff. We opened a community center as an emergency shelter as
soon as we could. The Fire Department
had some high-lift vehicles, and they
were bringing people in who had nothing but the clothes on their backs. Some
of our playgrounds and parks were underwater for days and became covered
with up to 6 inches of muck. It silted
in everything, including our stormwater
management ditches, which we are still
working to clear. "
" We didn't lose our communications
network, which was a huge help. The
problem for us was getting our people
to work - they just could not get to
their work stations, " says Johnson. " We
found the best way to help our city employees was to provide day care for their
kids. Schools were closed, grandparents
were inaccessible, and once people got to
work they had difficulty going home. We
called it Camp Harvey, and it was a huge
help to our workforce. "
According to Kyle Kelley, parks director for Precinct 2 in Harris County,
Texas, floods severely damaged many of
their parks and 25 miles of trails. When
Hurricane Harvey hit, " Our priority was
people - we had to ensure our staff was
safe before any consideration of property and buildings, " he says.

" One of my parks, Meadowbrook
Park, was literally wiped off the map, "
Kelley continues. " Eight pavilions gone,
asphalt trails, picnic tables - just gone.
There was a very large sinkhole that
opened up in the park where the flood
waters were obstructed. It took 60 dumptruck loads of fill just to fill it in. Staff
really stepped up even though some were
really affected. Some still don't have a
home. Many were in disbelief that we
could have that kind of rain. It was just
unimaginable. One thing we learned in
the recovery was that parks really do
provide a measure of healing. We have
heard this after major disasters, but we
saw it come true in our own community, " he says.
Hurricane Irma
Following on the heels of Hurricane
Harvey, Hurricane Irma made landfall
in the lower Florida Keys as a Category 4 storm on September 10. Irma was
such a monster storm that it blasted
both coasts simultaneously as it spun
northward toward Tampa. The damages in Miami-Dade County were primar-

ily from powerful sustained winds that
cut through the entire park system. " We
lost 30 percent of our tree canopy cover
throughout our 2,000 square miles of
parks, " says Maria Nardi, director of
Miami-Dade County Parks and Recreation. " Our park staff are first responders after a hurricane, clearing roadways,
causeways and critical transportation
network components, but this storm really tested us. "
" We had incredible damage from the
wind, " Nardi relates. " Not so much
structural damage or flooding of buildings, except in our coastal parks, but
more to our natural systems - trees,
wetlands and beaches. "
Miami-Dade County has an excellent emergency preparedness plan that
serves as the basis for the parks and recreation plan of action. It follows extensive checklists for pre-storm, in-storm
and post-storm actions and does extensive training for staff, including administrative staff, who are tasked with documenting damages and assessing what
happened because of the storm. Nardi
says, " The culture of teamwork, care

In Miami-Dade
County, 30
percent of the
tree canopy was
lost throughout
2,000 square miles
of parks, due to
Hurricane Irma's
high winds.

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Parks & Recreation

January 2018 - Parks & Recreation

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