HURRICANES’ AFTERMATH By Steve Trusty
If you’ve been wondering how your fellow sod producers in the South and Southeast fared with the August and September hurricanes please read on. We reached out to TPI members in the affected areas and received mixed reports on damages.
Hurricane Harvey Harvey was formed over the Atlantic Ocean on August 17 and made initial landfall in the Houston, TX, area on August 26. Pounding downpours dropped 40 inches or more of rain over a two-day period with a peak accumulation of 64.58 inches. Harvey moved North and East and finally dissipated on September 13. Most TPI members in the area were on high enough ground that they didn’t experience major flooding. For the most part, those that did experience flooding reported that the most damage was to equipment with minimal structural damage. Te water drained off their fields soon enough that their sod received little damage. A typical comment was, “Tere were certainly people that got hit a lot worse than we did.”
Equipment may have been more than just inaccessible. Damage could take time to manifest itself. Photo by Keith Wittig
Wittig reports, “Quite a bit of our equipment was damaged, well—almost all.” Some of the damage was apparent right away, but much of it is showing up over time. He says, “You might think a piece of equipment is dried up and all of a sudden, a problem shows up.” He says another frustration has been that when you track down an apparent problem and fix it, another one shows up. Sometimes you end up taking out the part you just replaced so you have two, or more, things to fix or replace.
Most of Wittig’s sod is coming out of the flooding in fairly good shape. He says, “Te sod that was under water for up to 12 days is coming back OK.” He adds, “We did totally lose about 50 acres of sod that was under water for about 15 days. It is not all in one field, maybe 5 acres here and 10 there.”
It isn’t as easy as drying out the equipment to get it back to work. Various parts react differently and problems may not show up immediately. Photo by Keith Wittig
It appears that the sod farm hit hardest, with the most damage was Central Turf Farms in Wharton, TX, located Southwest of Houston. Keith Wittig, Central Turf Farms owner, is a TPI Board of Trustees member. He reported an average of four to five feet of water over his entire farm. Some areas had as much as six to eight feet and some with as little as two feet. Te entire area not only had to deal with the rain falling (about 25 inches), but the amount of rainfall caused the Colorado River to flood, adding to the deluge. Te major flooding occurred three to four days after the hurricane. Te rain water was being absorbed into the soil but with what wasn’t running off, the river flooding was too much.
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Almost all of Wittig’s employees were affected. Tere was a great community effort to help. All employees were back to work by the first part of October. Wittig also wanted to make it known that he was very appreciative of the TPI members’ outreach. On Saturday, September 2, TPI Associate Executive Director Karen Cooper, who live in New Braunfels, TX, delivered 221 pounds of chicken, 20 bags of potato chips, 350 paper plates, napkins, and plastic-ware to provide meals to over 200 first responders in the Wharton area. Wittig says, “We have been really blessed. People brought food. Calls from all over the country offered trucks, generators, anything that we might need or use.”
Tis harvested field could take some time to again become productive. Photo by Keith Wittig
TPI Turf News November/December 2017
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