Barbara Lawlor, Nederland.  Just before noon, on Thursday, August 31, 2017 vehicles pulled into the Nederland shopping center parking lot and stopped behind Laurie Roberts’ car parked near the Nederland Police Station. Doors opened and women and small children hauled out large bags of animal food, sacks of toilet paper, diapers, wipes, cleaning products and a small package with a message, “We love you,” a heart with TX in it.

The night before, Laurie had sent a message out on Facebook saying that a friend of hers was loading a trailer with donations to take to Nederland, Texas to help people recovering from the Harvey Hurricane that ripped through the Texas coast last week.

Harvey started as a tropical wave out of the African coast in early August and became a tropical storm on Aug. 17. A couple of days later, with dry air and unfavorable winds in the eastern Caribbean, it died down and the hurricane advisories stopped.

Bits of the storm pushed into Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, however, and once it reached over the southwest Gulf of Mexico water, Harvey reemerged as a tropical depression on Aug.23. In 56 hours, it became a Category 4 hurricane and made landfall on the Texas coast on Aug. 25, hovering over south Texas until it moved in to Louisiana on August 30.

Harvey became the longest a Texas hurricane remained a named storm after landfall on record, according to Colorado State University tropical scientist, Dr. Phil Klotzbach. The slow movement of the hurricane was what caused the destructive flooding that occurred in Texas. Winds reached 130 mph and was the strongest landfall in the area since September of 1961.

The top rainfall was 51.88 inches, one of the worst weather disasters in U.S. history, costing billions of dollars. At least 31 people have died.

Nederland, Texas is nine miles from Port Arthur which was totally submerged in water during the flooding and 90 miles from Houston, one of the worst hit cities.

All it took was Laurie’s post on Facebook to get Nederland, Colorado’s residents to respond to the call for help.

Deb D’Andrea headed to the Nederland Feed and Pets Store first thing Thursday morning, but they weren’t open yet, so she began to chat with neighbors, telling them what was going on and soon people were donating money. Almost $500 was raised in the next few hours.

Abby Pause, with Ned Feed, matched funds and donated sacks of dog food which soon filled Laurie’s car and spread over the ground in the parking lot. She called her mom to bring in her truck and after the flurry of giving dwindled, the Nederland donations were hauled to Arvada to meet the trailer headed for Texas.

D’Andrea says that in all, over $1,000 was raised by 20 people in less than 12 hours.

“It all came together in a heartbeat,” says D’Andrea. “It was amazing. There was so much love.”

The American Red Cross has a donation site specifically for Hurricane Harvey donations.

(Originally published in the September 7, 2017 print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)