JAMAICA BEACH, Texas — A Fort Smith family is safe after riding out a tropical storm as it hit Jamaica Beach early Monday morning.
Hurricane Beryl slammed into Texas on July 8, knocking out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses and killing at least three people as it moved east and later weakened to a tropical depression, the National Hurricane Center said Monday evening.
Ashton Wise and her family spent the night in a motorhome and beach house in Galveston County when the storm hit.
"The motorhomes say that once the wind is sustained to 55 or more, you have to close the slides and evacuate," Wise said. "So obviously we were above that, and it was like midnight last night."
Wise met the rest of her family in the beach house where they were staying. Wise said the storm did some damage to the beach house.
"It did lose some shingles, and it definitely flooded inside not from the storm surge, but from the [wind hitting] the windows and the door," she said.
Wise said they usually stay at Jamaica Beach but decided to try out a different RV resort this time.
"Thank God because that's where the tornadoes were last night, and there is quite a bit of devastation towards the beach," she said. "There are houses completely gone. They had some evacuations down there. So thankfully, for some reason, we decided to stay somewhere different."
Wise said this wasn't the first time she had been in the middle of a hurricane.
"When I was 10, we stayed for Hurricane Ivan in Pensacola, which was [category] five before landfall, and cat four when it made landfall," she said.
So far, Wise said her family is doing OK considering the circumstances.
"Thankfully, we're in the motorhome, so we have water. We have AC," she said. "In the house, like, all the windows are open, all the doors are open because it's soaking wet in there last night."
Texas state and local officials warned it could take several days to restore power after Beryl came ashore as a Category 1 hurricane and toppled 10 transmission lines and knocked down trees that took down power lines.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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