Hurricane season on the border: what a colonia household should do first

Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30, and the peak for the western Gulf is August through October. The Rio Grande Valley does not get a landfalling hurricane most years — but it gets tropical moisture nearly every year, and in a colonia the flooding threat from an ordinary heavy rain event already exceeds what most of the country would consider serious.

Drainage is the reason. Many colonia streets were never built with storm drainage, and yards sit at or below street grade. Eight inches of rain in a day, which the Valley has seen repeatedly, means standing water for days, an inaccessible street, and water into homes whose slabs sit low.

A realistic checklist

Start with documents, because they cost nothing to protect and are the hardest thing to replace. Birth certificates, Social Security cards, immigration paperwork, lease or deed, insurance policies and prescription lists go in a sealed plastic bag, photographed on a phone as backup. Do this in June, not when a storm is named.

Water: one gallon per person per day, aiming for at least three days, plus extra for pets. Build it up a jug at a time across several grocery trips rather than trying to buy it all in the week a storm approaches, when shelves empty and prices rise.

Food: shelf-stable items that need no cooking and no refrigeration. Canned protein, peanut butter, tortillas, crackers, dry cereal, canned fruit. A manual can opener. If your household relies on our distributions, tell the pastor you are building a storm box and we will weight your box that way when we can.

Medication: keep a written list of every prescription with dosages, and try to stay ahead on refills during peak season. Pharmacies close, and a lost bottle is a bigger emergency than a lost freezer.

Power: a phone bank battery, charged, is worth more than a flashlight. Keep the car's fuel tank above half from August through October if you have a vehicle.

If you cannot evacuate

Many households here have no vehicle, or one vehicle shared across a large family, or a job that cannot be missed. Plan for that reality instead of assuming a car.

Identify now — not during a warning — the closest solid public building, the shelter your county opens, and one household on higher ground that would take you in. Ask them in advance. Know how you would get there: a neighbor, a church van, or a county transit line if one runs.

During a warning, move valuables and documents up off the floor, unplug electronics, fill bathtubs and containers with water for washing, and charge everything. Never walk or drive through moving water; the depth and the road condition underneath are impossible to judge, and colonia streets erode.

What Hearts 4Kids does

Before a storm, our partner churches are the practical staging network: they announce shelter and pickup information block by block in Spanish, and several serve as gathering points for residents without transportation.

After a storm, the work is the same work we do every week, just compressed — water and food into neighborhoods that are cut off, and then repairs. Water intrusion means ruined drywall, ruined flooring and mold, and mold in an uninsulated house in Valley humidity becomes a respiratory problem for children within weeks. Tear-out, drying and reinstallation is exactly the kind of project a mission team can complete, and it is what we prioritize in the months after a bad event.

If you want to help with storm response specifically, the most useful thing is an undesignated gift given before the season, not after. Pre-positioned funds let us buy materials in the first 48 hours, when supply still exists and prices have not spiked.