To the Editor,
It is amazing that it’s already been 10 years since the F4 tornado hit the Southeast portion of the City of Garland and then traveled NE across Lake Ray Hubbard and through a long swath of the City of Rowlett. For us, Daphne and me, it started with a quite evening the day after Christmas with Friends and soon became a life changing experience for the both of us and so many in the region.
Shortly after arriving at friends for a dinner party the power went out due to storms in the area, so we all pulled out our phones to determine what was going on around us. We soon heard that a suspected tornado had touched down near Broadway and Centerville Road in South Garland. As a City Councilmember for District 3 at the time I knew I needed to head to the area as I was expecting calls to see if I knew what was happening on the ground, so Daphne and I left for the area.
Once we arrived in the area, all we found were some downed limbs and trash blowing around, but then heard on the radio, a tornado had actually touched down off I30 & Hwy 190, so we immediately drove in that direction. We arrived before many of the first responders who would soon arrive. We parked off Bobtown Rd. on High Dr., and we began assessing the situation and seeing if there was anything we could do to assist those in need. I walked around the corner to a home on Creekridge I had just sold 2 weeks earlier for a client to see the front half of the home destroyed. The alarm was going off, and the new owners recognized me and asked if I knew the code to shut it off. Made a quick call and got the code to shut off the alarm, and made sure no one was seriously injured before I went back to where I had parked to see if emergency personnel had arrived yet.
Once back at my vehicle, I began blocking off the High Dr to prevent the number of cars wanting to drive through the neighborhood to see the damage. After about 45 minutes, more emergency personnel arrived, and they were able to secure the entrance to the neighborhood so only residents and first responders could enter the neighborhood.
By this time, we had first responders from everywhere on scene, Garland, Dallas, Rockwall, Highway Patrol, Dallas Sherriff’s Dept & Constables were all on scene here in Garland and in Rowlett. We walked briefly through the neighborhood to see if there was anything we could do to further assist anyone in need. Met several of the homeowners who were literally walking around in a daze as they still could not fathom what had just happened to them.
At this point, we knew things were as well in hand as they could be, and we left so as not to get in the way of any search and rescue and headed to the Incident Command Center set up at the Super Wal-Mart on I-30 & Broadway. It was an amazing experience to watch all the First Responders work together from a number of different agencies and municipalities. I found out from the Incident Commander where the first emergency shelter was being set up at so I could help to let those in need know where they could go for immediate assistance as the cold front had come through by this time and it had dropped down into the 30’s and was cold and windy.
Shortly after leaving, I was contacted by an old high school friend, Beverly Holms, already asking what she could do to help. We made contact with another high school friend, Bryan McClarty, who Bev knew was working with a group few knew at the time, Operation BBQ Relief, to see what we could do to help get them up and running the next day. First thing, the next morning, Daphne, Bev, and I headed to a restaurant supply company in Richardson to pick up supplies. We gathered $500 worth of food, paper products, plasticware, and Styrofoam containers to help Operation BBQ Relief get started cooking food for anyone in need. We were blessed that the store where we were picking up the supplies picked up half the cost of what we had picked up. This was the first of hundreds of people to step up with whatever they could do to help those in need, we experienced over the next number of months.
We headed to First Christian Church in Rowlett, where OBR had set up and were already cooking briskets to start feeding first responders and residents in the affected areas of Rowlett and Garland. Other items had already started coming in, and the City of Garland’s Emergency Command Center had worked out with Dallas County to use the Granger Recreation Center to serve as the Emergency Response Center for all those affected by the tornado. In short order, the Granger Annex next door was soon overrun with donated items, and we had to rent a large tent to help store and sort donated items. After just 2-3 days, we had to order another large tent as the first had run out of room already from the massive outpouring of support from across Texas and the Country at this point.
Over the next week, I spent most of my time riding in the vehicles going out into the affected areas with the prepared meals so I could talk firsthand with residents, volunteers and first responders to see what they needed. In doing so we realized we needed to station port-a-potties for folks to use as most still had no water, electricity or most any other city services as well as roll off dumpsters for residents use.
After just a week of cooking and boxing up meals, Operation BBQ Relief had cooked and fed over 32,000 meals. These folks were instrumental and a tremendous lifeline to so many during these first few days so people didn’t have to worry where and how they would get a meal and they didn’t have to leave their homes to get it as there were, sad to say, vandals already coming into the area trying to see what they could steal.
I spent most of my days over the next 3-4 months out in the area working with the residents and the City to try to do all we could to help them pick up and put their lives back together. This was truly a life-altering experience seeing the best of our fellow man come together with our first responders to help a neighbor, a stranger, a friend in the most trying of times and in their biggest hour of need!
Sincerely,
Stephen Stanley
Former Garland District 3 City Councilmember
