Tivoli, the Town that Saved Itself
The frustration was rising in Marcus Torres’s voice. For five days, he had been the “chief cook, bottle washer, commander, whatever you want to call me” in the small unincorporated farming town of Tivoli, where one out of every four residents lives in poverty. The houses are mostly wooden frame, many homemade. When Hurricane Harvey hit Tivoli with winds in excess of 130 miles per hour, trees ripped up from the roots, branches broke, and homes were battered, losing water and electricity. For five days, Torres had been helping his community of 479 people to fend for themselves during the recovery with little outside help. But on Wednesday, government agencies and do-gooder groups were suddenly overwhelming the 53-year-old former auto repair shop owner—and they all wanted to imply either that he had been doing it wrong or that Tivoli could not move forward without their help.
But for the previous four days, Tivoli had saved itself.
There had been warning that the storm was coming, perhaps more powerful than people realized at first. Tivoli (pronounced tie-vo-lee) sits inland almost twenty miles from the Gulf of Mexico, a barrier island and a bay in between, in the middle of a sea of open farm land. However, with the eye of the storm predicted to hit Rockport to the west, Tivoli would take the brunt of the wind. Refugio County officials had ordered a mandatory evacuation on August 24, but that didn’t mean much to poor people with questionable cars and trucks. Two-thirds of the people of Tivoli just hunkered down. “People had nowhere to go,” Torres said. “The majority of them had no money to go anywhere or vehicles to transport out. You’ve got families that lost their homes, TVs, clothing. School was supposed to start this week, so a lot of them lost their school clothing.”
No official shelter existed in Tivoli. Just in case, though, Torres had gotten the keys to the Austwell-Tivoli High School. On Friday night, in the midst of the storm, Torres and his 22-year-old son Justin, helped a family take refuge at the school. Then they returned home. “I told my son, let’s go get something to eat. We got in there and we were in the process of winding down, and by that time the winds were kicking, and the next thing we heard was wraaack, that was when the roof came off,” Torres recalled. “That was when it was time to throw the sandwiches down and get the hell out of Dodge. It was a wild night. When this thing ripped, his eyes were as big as saucers. ‘Dad! What was that?’”
Two days later, on Saturday morning, the Texas Forestry Service came in to clear branches off the street and trim the most dangerous trees. And members of the Ohio Task Force 1 urban search and rescue team joined Torres in doing a search and rescue mission in Tivoli and nearby Austwell. No one had died, and no one was seriously injured. The town, however, was a wreck—but the emergency crews quickly redeployed to Houston. And that became the Tivoli story. Everything went to the greatest number with the greatest need. Tivoli was on its own for food and water. “I knew I wasn’t going to get no help because we’re located near no one, resources don’t come,” Torres said.
Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/tivoli-town-saved/
