Since Hurricane Harvey, many victims who “lost everything” are calling hotel rooms their new homes. The massive storm left many people displaced.

Chandler Matthews, a college student at Lamar University, has worked at the Three Rivers Inn & Suites for about a year. During the hurricane, he was at the hotel.

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“The water came in the AC room, then the side doors…by the evening time, about 12:00-1:00, water got into the first-floor rooms,” Matthews said.

Matthews and his other three coworkers were stuck at the hotel for three days. Sharing a bed with his coworkers, they opened doors to families to use the hotel. Those families became refugees from the storm, and some of them still are.

The hotel was operating up to full capacity. Matthews described families with more than four people cramming into a single bed, and people begging to stay at the hotel during the storm.

“We ate out of the vending machines for two days. We ate ’til everything was gone,” said Matthews.

During the hurricane, Matthews was isolated from his family. His parents were stuck at their home for seven to eight hours. He had to use a Facebook status as a tool to have them rescued. Currently, Matthews and his parents are living with his sister and her husband.

Now, he describes the hotel as the new home for many. He even had to sign a document for a guest stating the hotel is their permanent living situation. The hotel capacity had overwhelming increased since the hurricane.

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People like Marsha Bias and her family showed strength in the toughest moments in life.

Marsha has been living in the hotel with her husband, daughter, and granddaughter since Hurricane Harvey began. She works in the professional field of social work in the foster care system, and her husband works at the oil refinery. She is from nearby Beaumont, Texas but had to come to Port Arthur because there was no hotel availability in Beaumont.

During the Hurricane, Marsha’s family lost everything, but she did save one of her cars.

After Marsha was denied Red Cross, she only received $1,300 from FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency), even though she had full insurance with her cars.

Marsha received $1,500 plus gift cards from her job, which is more than FEMA provided.

“As far as FEMA goes, they haven’t done anything. So, basically, you lose everything, and they give $1,300 and that not going to do nothing but help you live in hotel room temporary,” she said.

According to FEMA’s Disaster Relief monthly report for September, the cost of Hurricane Harvey recovery is $3.11 billion.

Marsha and her family are paying out of pocket for the hotel daily, with money getting short as time progresses.

“I had pictures of my kids that got wet, and my son is deceased. How do you replace those?” she said. “It’s devastating and disgusting.”

Marsha cooked her family Thanksgiving meal at their temporary home, the Three Rivers Inn & Suites.

“By the grace of God, we got to stick together. Got to stay strong. I think about we are blessed. Even after all this, I think that we are blessed… Keep going strong,” said Marsha’s husband Kenneth Marshall.

Despite losing everything, Marsha Bias and her family keep a more positive outlook than most do about life.

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“When this hurricane hit, it was brand new for me. Also, it was managing expectations, it was managing emotions, it was managing people, managing personalities; it was a lot of things. It was hugging folks at certain times,” Freeman said.

Port Arthur is no stranger to facing hurricanes such as Hurricanes Ike and Rita, but Hurricane Harvey was by far the worst. After receiving over 53 inches of rain, and water from neighboring towns and drainage water, it will be a long road for recovery.

Mayor Freeman has been involved in the recovery from Hurricane Harvey since the storm hit.

Elected in 2016, one of the liveliest mayors of Port Arthur wasn’t ready for the obstacles the hurricane brought.

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Born and raised in Port Arthur, Freeman is the youngest and first African-American male mayor of Port Arthur. Before becoming mayor, he left Port Arthur and lived in Los Angeles. He worked in the entertainment industry for 10 years. He then came back to Port Arthur and was involved on the city council.

During Hurricane Harvey, Freeman’s wife and children were with his mother-in-law in Austin, Texas. He stayed home during the hurricane, capturing all of the live footage and using social media, like Facebook, to communicate with the public. He also helped with immediate rescue efforts to people’s homes.

“I have a two-story house; my second story is where my kids’ rooms are. I was able the first week or so to sleep in my house. I just closed the door upstairs. It was cold; it was moldy and nasty. I haven’t gutted it out. But I didn’t have any other place to go, so I just slept in my kids’ bunkbed for about a week,“ said Freeman.

He didn’t leave his home until his mother insisted that he should live with her. So, for the first two months, he slept on his mother’s floor with a bed-spring mattress, while his mother opened her home to families in need.

Freeman’s home was completed full of mold and is currently gutted. He and his family are currently living in a rented home.

During the hurricane, Freeman said in the first couple of days there were 23,000 911 calls going to six telephone operation lines. At the storm’s highest peak, hundreds of missing person’s reports were filed, but only one fatality was reported during the hurricane in Port Arthur.

Emergency shelters flooded, moving people into nontraditional shelters like bowling alleys.

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“We lost city buses, we lost city dump trucks, we lost city fire trucks…everything in our fleet operation went down,” he said.

According to the Freeman, 80 percent of the victims affected by the hurricane didn’t have insurance. Financial limitations are slowing down recovery.

Recovery could go faster, the mayor said. Hotel capacity is becoming fuller, so there’s been limited accessibility for victims.

“Another thing that’s been an obstacle has been working through the FEMA application. People can put a period in the wrong place and can be disqualified,” said Freeman.

According to the Statistical Atlas, Port Arthur is a very racially diverse city and described by Freeman as “a blue island in a red state.” The population is 24.6 percent white, 29.1 percent Latino, 37.6 percent black, 7.3 percent Asian and 1.2 percent mixed.

Freeman said that he believes government response to recovery has been slow. Ben Carson, the head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), visited Port Arthur along with the Governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.

The recovery may take a few years, Freeman said, adding that he believes Harvey was worse than Hurricane Sandy but recovery funds have been less.

Port Arthur is home to one of the largest billion-dollar oil refineries in the world.

Mayor Freeman believes that global warming is one of the causes of Hurricane Harvey.

How does he rate himself as mayor? Freeman replied,  “I give myself a one…I’m my own worst critic. I am not the person to ask, because I am hard on myself…every day I am learning. There’s always places where I can improve.”

A Port Author citizen, Kiara Wilson, thought the mayor could have done better.

“They wanted him out during the Hurricane. He ain’t at all going to be mayor again,” she said.

Disappointed in the city recovery, her younger sister wrote a letter to the mayor asking him to do better.

“I never been through a devastating hurricane like this. I don’t have anything to pull from. I rely on my faith heavily to get me through,“ said Freeman.

Mayor Freeman said he wanted to rebuild the city and build the economy in hopes to get people to stay and give back to Port Arthur.

Freeman’s son explained to him: “Daddy, the city got baptized. The old man went down; the new man is about to come back up. “

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