As the Houston region continues to face detrimental flooding due to Hurricane Harvey, Riley County Emergency Management Director Pat Collins advises the public to be wary of relief scams.
“People that normally take advantage of good people use that as a time to try to gain money or whatever from people who are unsuspecting,” Collins said following Monday morning’s county commission meeting. “What you can expect now, with the hurricane in Houston, is somebody calling you up saying, ‘Hey, we’re here, we represent something, and we’d like you to donate.’
“I’m cautious anytime that happens.”
Collins said scammers often go after the elderly in such cases and encouraged anyone wanting to help those suffering Harvey’s destruction to seek credible agencies.
“Go on the local FEMA site, take a look at it,” he said. “They’ll have a list of people you can donate to, or choose somebody locally. Maybe your church, or the Red Cross, the Salvation Army — something that’s local. Contact them and say, ‘Hey, how do I donate?'”
Flooding has already been catastrophic for Houston and surrounding Texas communities. But by Wednesday, experts are predicting Harvey to make a return trip after returning again from the Gulf of Mexico before it’s done. Some prediction models see 50 inches of rain by the end of the week for the area– double the water that has already fallen.
“They’re working 24 hours a day down there to keep people safe, and they’re still in the emergency phase,” Collins said. “What they’re probably not looking forward to is the recovery phase. Even when the water starts coming down and when the water goes away, they have recovery — they have to get back to normal and the people back to normal. That recovery phase could last years.”
Collins said there will be many comparisons of Harvey to Hurricane Katrina, which pummeled New Orleans from Aug. 23-31 in 2005.
Collins said FEMA-owned mobile homes continued to have a presence in New Orleans for 10 years after the flooding and destruction there. While he couldn’t say if such a prolonged recovery phase will be the case for Houston, he was confident such measures will be taken.
“You’re going to have mobile home parks pop up, you’re going to have people relocated, you’re going to have people that move away and don’t come back,” he said. “This hurts businesses. Of course, it stresses the government, it stresses taxes, so anything that we can do to help them, I think we need to do it.”
