Tornados, drought, blizzards, wildfires. Mother Nature deals some mighty trials to ranchers across the country. For Gulf Coast ranchers, hurricanes also bring a unique weather-related event to their list of challenges.

“We’re on the coast. A hurricane is something you don’t live with; you just fear it,” says John Banker, owner of El Campo Livestock, located about an hour from the coast and 80 miles southwest of Houston. “You respect it. You know when it’s coming and there could be some bad things happening.”

Banker grew up in Needville, a farming and ranching community near El Campo. He worked sale barns growing up and after college, then purchased the auction barn in 2000.

“I always say there’s a smell to a sale barn,” laughs Banker at his decision to buy the barn. “It doesn’t matter what part of Texas you go to, they all smell the same. If that smell gets in your lungs and you like it, it sticks with you for life and you’ll always want to be around a sale barn.”

At 57, Banker has been through many hurricanes. He says you try to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

“You expect the wind, and it did blow, but it was the rain that made this one so bad,” he explains. “It kept coming, and coming, and coming.”

This area is in a part of Texas where three rivers meet the Gulf of Mexico: the Brazos, San Bernard and Colorado. All three of those feed into the coast within about 75 miles of each other.

“All that rain started coming, and those rivers started swelling,” Banker says. “We started seeing the kind of flooding we’ve never seen. We’re used to low-river flooding, where the rivers come up. People who live on the rivers understand it and know to move cattle. But this thing was all that on steroids.”

Banker explains that people who had never had to move cattle were having to find higher ground. He says he witnessed lessons in human nature.

“There were people being so proactive, several individuals that were helping people, moving cattle, and trying to get out ahead of it,” Banker says. “Then there were some that just didn’t believe it was going to happen and wouldn’t get out of the middle. They kept saying it was going to be okay. But it was not okay.”

Banker admits it was a delicate situation.

“It’s hard to tell somebody that their whole life will be turned upside down,” he explains. “I wished I could have been a little more forceful with some people, but I didn’t know that it was going to be that bad. At some point, you realize it’s gonna be the worst you’ve ever seen, and you need to prepare for that. That’s hard for people to comprehend I guess; they just don’t think it’s going to happen to them.”

Describing the scene, Banker says it all looked like the Gulf of Mexico.

“As far as you could see it was water,” he explains. “It’s hard to imagine something you’ve looked at your whole life — you know where the fence lines, property lines, ridgelines are — then it’s all a sheet of water. You can’t even get your head wrapped around it.”

Providing assistance
TSCRA Special Ranger Tommy Charbula said he had never seen rain like that in all his years. Harvey made landfall at Rockport on Aug. 25, 2017, dropping 30 to 50 inches along the Gulf Coast with a record 60 inches at Nederland during the next five days.

“It was unfathomable how much rain fell in that short period of time,” Charbula says. “That storm came in and it just sat right over us.”

Charbula saw firsthand the goodness of people during this difficult time.

“I’ve been here all my life, born and raised right here on the Gulf Coast and I’ve been through Carla, Katrina, Rita, all of them,” says Charbula, who was a game warden for 25 years before becoming a special ranger 11 years ago.

“In the past, I’ve seen people not really working together. But during this one, I saw people come together and neighbors helping neighbors, and people helping people they didn’t even know. They were assisting in any way they could to move livestock and equipment.”

In addition, Charbula witnessed agencies like Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service and the Texas Animal Health Commission working tirelessly to help ranchers and people affected.

“All the sheriff departments in the affected areas did a super job,” he says. “They worked days and nights. Even when their shifts ended, they kept working to get the job done.”

Jesse Carver is the executive director of the Livestock Marketing Association of Texas (LMAT), which is the state affiliate that represents livestock auction markets, livestock dealers and order buyers. LMAT represents all the auction barns in Texas, regardless of membership, which is about 92.

In 2016, these auctions sold an estimated 3.1 million in sales of cattle, sheep and goats. Carver spent many hours on the phone in the days leading up to and during the storm, helping to coordinate efforts between auction markets, state animal health officials, and county officials.

“We had about 12 markets up and down the coast that opened their doors as receiving stations,” he explained. “That is coordinated through the county officials and the state animal health officials working with those markets to make sure what they could and couldn’t do and what some of their liability issues were. You want to help everybody, but you know, you kind of have to do things the right way, too.”

In addition, Carver spent time on the phone seeing if markets needed any additional resources because they not only housed animals but also used their own trucks, trailers, portable pens and staff to help gather cattle.

With a horse and trailer
Banker describes how he and area ranchers started near the Brazos River, which is the closest to Galveston, as they prepared for the storm and moved cattle to higher ground.

“I went down with a horse and trailer. You just saw pastures where people didn’t move the cattle out and the cattle would be standing on a little island. There was nothing you could do because you couldn’t get to them. There is only so much you can do when a cow or a horse is in belly-deep water.

“You’re trying to figure out where the roads are because that’s a possible place where your horse could stand,” Banker adds. “When that ground gets saturated and there are 3 or 4 feet of water, it’s almost impassable for a horse.”

After the Brazos, evacuation efforts moved to around the San Bernard River.

“We’re moving and shuffling cattle, horses, dogs, small animals to higher ground,” Banker says. “We were moving the whole lives of people when houses started going under in areas that have never flooded. You’re just trying to help people in a bad situation.

“You saw a lot of good things with people opening their homes, helping others, but you also saw a lot of suffering, too,” says Banker, of the sobering reality a natural disaster brings. “You saw animals that were off in the water and there was no way you could get to them. You know there’s nothing you could do for them and you just gotta turn your horse and ride away. I never want to experience that again.”

When the ones helping need help
For the owner of Wharton Livestock Auction, Billy Schwertner, opening his doors to Wharton area ranchers who have been flooded has happened before, but nothing had prepared them for Harvey.

“We assisted whenever we could, says Schwertner, who has owned the market, which was built in 1949, since 1981.

“The small producers don’t have anywhere to go. We have done this several times for river flooding as a place to bring cattle. We take care of them until the water goes down. And we did the same thing this time. We had about 300 head of cattle from various owners and about 20 head of horses.”

Then the unexpected happened. The barn providing refuge from the storm also began flooding.

“When the flooding started, we had to move all those livestock out to higher country,” Schwertner says.

“Fortunately, with the aid of a lot of hardworking and generous people around the area, we placed those cattle and horses out of the flooded area. My office manager, Kara Lockley, and my daughter, Teresa, took charge and helped get everything done. I have several people working for me who were very dedicated to helping others get animals moved. They didn’t want a lot of recognition; they just did what had to be done.”

Schwertner not only had to worry about the animals at the sale barn, but his personal cow herd was down on Galveston Bay.

“We were in the process of moving 200 cows at the same time because the storm surge was going to be 4 to 5 feet high,” he says. “I couldn’t get out when the storm finally hit. I was stuck there. Thank goodness for cellphones so we could communicate.”

Once the water went down, the clean-up began. The building was gutted and the walls were cut up 4 feet high. At the time the last truckload of livestock had been hauled out, Schwertner says there were two feet of standing water in the auction barn.

“I was very blessed to have my staff stay and get the barn operational in about 2-1/2 weeks. We only missed two sales. It was almost a miracle that it happened that quickly,” he explains. “We were putting in 12 to 15 hours a day putting it back together. We literally had to clean out the entire back of the auction. We keep the pens fairly clean, but all that material that had been there for years just soaked up the water like a dry sponge.”

The crew used vacuum trucks to pump out standing water and skid steers to move manure. Pens needed repairs from the strong current that came through but fortunately, nothing was torn out. Corn stalks from the recent harvest had come in with all the water, stacking up everywhere, and they had to be removed.

“You know, it’s kind of like we got a big good cleaning out of the storm,” Schwertner says. “It was a good thing and a bad thing.”

Impacts of the storm
Knowing the unpredictability of a hurricane, Banker initially had concerns about his 80-year-old barn being able to withstand the impact of the storm and hesitated to put evacuated animals or people at risk if the structure were to become damaged by the wind. Once the wind subsided and he realized it was the water they had to contend with, Banker opened his barn to take in horses and livestock. After the San Bernard flooded, they evacuated and moved cattle away from the last river, the Colorado. Then it swelled and flooded the Wharton barn. Roads were closed.

“I told whoever could get to us to bring the horses to the barn,” says Banker. The El Campo barn sits on a prairie and far enough from the river not to flood. “We had plenty of dry pens. We had 80-something horses and goats, pigs, dogs.

“I had people living with me and staying with me,” Banker adds. I have a big house and we had it full! I was happy to do it.”

El Campo Livestock, who holds sales on Tuesdays, was fortunate to not miss any sales during Harvey, but even now, almost a year later, Banker says things are not back to normal for everyone.

“I know people who still don’t have a home to live in,” Banker explains. “They’re either staying in a camper, with friends or with family. After the water receded, there was debris everywhere. Fences were down. After all this horrible flooding we had the worst winter we’ve had in years.”

Banker knows cattle people are resilient, however.

“They’ll win the lottery, but they’ll keep spending it on cattle until it’s gone,” he says. “They’re gonna hang on, they’ll make it. They just do. That’s the part of our industry that you have to admire because they just keep going.”

For all of its devastation, cattle and property losses — an estimated $200 million for Texas ag and nearly $200 billion total — Hurricane Harvey brought out the good in people.

“It restored your faith in people,” Banker explains. “In times like this there are a lot of people who really step up and rise to the occasion, and you learn what they are all about. There are a lot of good people all across the state who stepped up, opened their arms and said, ‘Come and let me help you, what do you need?’ That part was really good because everybody was trying to help everyone.”

Time of Crisis is excerpted from the July 2018 issue of The Cattleman magazine.