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Greater Houston Partnership outlines Beryl's impacts Staff Reports Editor’s Note: In its “Economy at a Glance” report for August, the Greater Houston Partnership - the regional chamber of commerce - outlines many of the most important impacts of Hurricane Beryl, which made landfall on January 8 and cut a destructive path through the Houston region, including Fort Bend County. The main body of the report is presented here with permission.
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American Red Cross offers back-to-school safety tips Community Reports The American Red Cross, a nonprofit organization which shelters, feeds and provides comfort to victims of disasters; supplies about 40 percent of the nation’s blood; teaches skills that save lives; distributes international humanitarian aid; and supports veterans, military members and their families, offers this guide for back-to-school safety. Reminder for drivers as school buses take to the road again The American Red Cross offers this checklist you can
follow to help make sure your student is safe as they go back to the classroom. If your student is younger or going to school for the first time, teach them: • Their phone number, address, how to get in touch with their parents at work, how to get in touch with another trusted adult and how to dial 911. • Not to talk to strangers or accept rides from someone they don’t know. If your child walks to school, teach them to: • Walk on the sidewalk. If
no sidewalk is available, walk facing traffic. • Stop and look left, right and left again to see if cars are coming. • Cross the street at the corner, obey traffic signals and stay in the crosswalk. • Never run out into the street or cross between parked cars. If your student takes the bus to school, teach them to: • Get to their bus stop early and stand away from the curb
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The American Red Cross reminds students and drivers to be extra cautious as school resumes this month. File photo by Ken Fountain
Summer camp nurtures young gardeners
Hurricane Beryl made landfall near Matagorda, Texas as a Category 1 Hurricane around 4 a.m. Monday, July 8. The hurricane’s path took it through parts of Brazoria, Fort Bend, Harris and Montgomery Counties. These four represent 90 percent of the region’s 7.5 million residents. Hurricane Beryl was primarily a wind event, with most of the damage caused by fallen trees and downed power lines. Maximum sustained winds were 80 miles per hour (mph). By comparison, maximum sustained winds for Hurricane Ike were 110 mph and for Hurricane Harvey 115 mph. The Texas A&M Forest Service estimates that Hurricane Beryl affected 50 percent of Houston’s urban tree coverage. Beryl passed through Houston in half a day, unlike Harvey which stalled over Houston and dropped rain for five days. Beryl’s short duration helped limit property damage. Local rainfall was four to eight inches, with 10 to 15 inches in a few isolated spots. Ike dropped six to 10 inches on the region and Harvey 30 to 60 inches. Power Outages Beryl knocked out electrical power to nearly 2.3 million CenterPoint customers, about 81 percent of its base. The company lost 20,000 utility poles during the storm. By comparison, 2.2 million customers lost power during Ike. Power outages exceeded 1.7 million statewide for Harvey. To put Beryl’s 2.3 million outages in perspective, metro Houston had a population of 5.7 million when Ike hit. During Harvey, Houston’s population topped 6.9 million. As of July 1, 2023 (latest data available), the region had 7.5 million residents. Given Houston’s growth over the past 12 months, the region’s population likely topped 7.6 million residents during Beryl. Service Restoration CenterPoint restored service to 53 percent of its impacted customers within 48 hours and to 92 percent within seven days. By comparison, with Ike 53 percent of CenterPoint’s customers had their power restored within seven days. Comparable numbers for Hurricane Harvey are not readily available.
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Alex decorates his rain stick during a recent summer camp organized by the Fort Bend County Master Gardeners.
Community Reports A four-day summer camp recently introduced elementary-age students to horticulture, gardening and the environment in an atmosphere that fostered friendships and fun while they learned. The 14th annual EarthKind Kids Camp at the Fort Bend County Fairgrounds, July 22-25, was a hands-on experience organized and managed by the Youth Activities Committee of the Fort Bend County Master Gardeners that allowed campers to make paper mache infused with seeds, toad abodes and rain sticks while learning about Zen gardens, parts of a plant and medicinal plants. But it’s the fun atmosphere that stuck with participants. Alex, 9, and Corbyn, 10, were among the 24 young campers - pupils entering third through fifth grade. Fourth-grader Alex said this was his second year at camp. “I like camp because we get to do fun activities,”
he said. “We get to make new friends. We made a frog house and a Zen garden. I like coming here. It’s really fun.” Fifth-grader Corbyn agreed. “We get to make new friends that we’ve never met.” This was Corbyn’s third year to attend the summer camp. “We get to learn about the environment and helping the environment,” he said. “So, we can help clean up the earth.” Creating a cleaner environment was one aspect of Wednesday’s program which focused on water, and which featured for the first time a program by SPLASh (Stopping Plastics and Litter Along Shorelines), a regional environmental nonprofit. During one of four handson SPLASh activities, Alex was tested to look in a tray for food as a bird might without including microplastics. His hunt occurred under the supervision of Master Gardener Clarence Gray of Missouri City. Mi-
Jayda decorates her rain stick during a recent summer camp organized by the Fort Bend County Master Gardeners. Courtesy Fort Bend County Master Gardeners
croplastics are the size of a grain of rice or the tip of a pencil eraser, according to SPLASh, and they can be mistaken for food or are accidentally eaten by wildlife. “Seabirds ingest more plastics than any other animal,” according to SPLASh, which was represented by Chloe Dannenfelser of the American Bird Conservancy and Celeste Silling of the Gulf Coast Bird Observatory. Seeing the impact that trash pollution has on birds and other wildlife, the Conservancy partnered with the Observatory and Black Cat GIS to form SPLASh in 2020. Each youth also received a bag from SPLASH and the North Fort Bend Water Authority that included a water meter, a hose sprayer and other water-related items, said Master Gardener Donna Blackburn of Sugar Land who also is FBMG Youth Activities Director and has worked on the YAC camp since 2013. “Camp gives us an opportunity to reach out to
children about horticulture and environmental sciences and they seem to learn a lot from it,” Blackburn said. “Instructors are very knowledgeable in what they’re sharing with the kids. There’s always a follow-up activity to re-enforce what we talk about.” She said it’s not unusual for a youngster to attend more than one year of camp, either. “We get a lot of repeats.” Five of this year’s campers participated in earlier camps. Several students wanted to return to camp but aged out and couldn’t participate this year, she added. Another first-time activity for campers came from JMG Advance Trained Master Gardener Lynn Lucas of Fulshear who provided materials for them to create and decorate rain sticks from thick cardboard cylinders lined with metal screening and then filled with stones. When the sticks are turned, they make a noise similar to falling rain.
“One thing man always wanted to do was to figure out a way to make it rain,” she said, talking of how humans did rain dances with gourds and rain sticks and dumped dry ice in moisture-filled clouds to produce rain. Lucas went back thousands of years to talk of humans and their relationship with water from following animals, to locating near streams/lakes, digging tunnels and using terracotta pots for subterranean irrigation. Wells have served as water sources and sprinklers and irrigation systems have been used to meet water needs. She stressed the importance of people needing to use their water sources well and not waste the resource. “We have to have water in order to have plants. Without plants there’s no life here.” Her presentation prompted comments from 10-year-old Jaideep about
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