Rose City on road to recovery

Tommy Mann, Jr.

ROSE CITY — One of the smallest communities of Orange County also happened to be one of the hardest hit by Hurricane Ike and is still on the long road to recovery.

Rose City, located west of Vidor, sustained catastrophic damage to a majority of its businesses and residences as a result of Ike’s storm surge. Mayor David Bush said much of his community, located along both sides of Interstate 10, was devastated.

“Most homes on the south side of the Interstate had three to five-feet of water inside them,” Bush said following the storm. “Even City Hall had nearly five-feet of water. It’s safe to say 90 percent of the homes south of the Interstate had water damage, and about 40 percent on the north side of the highway.”

Bush said the majority of the city populace has remained intact, as only a handful of elderly residents have moved away, and expects it to stay as such.

“Most of the people who live in Rose City grew up here,” Bush added. “This is there home and this is where they want to be.”

Most of the cities facilities sustained some form of water damage from Ike’s storm surge, especially City Hall and the city’s water department as both had more than five feet of standing water.

“City Hall was just devastated,” Bush said. “It had about five-and-a-half feet of water in it. We will be meeting to soon to determine whether City Hall can be rebuilt or if we will need to demolish it and build a new one.”

Damage was so extensive in the water department that all electronics were lost, which left the city without the ability to provide water for its residents for some time.

“We had to replace all of that at the water department, including a $50,000 generator which was new and had never been used,” Bush added.

City administrators were forced to exhaust the city’s general fund balance to make as many repairs as possible following the storm. Bush said the city has been running on a day-to-day budget since that time.

“We are still running on a day-to-day budget, but we have finally started getting some money from FEMA and our insurance,” he continued. “We received a $20,000 grant from the Sabine River Authority, and a $723,000 grant from the Southeast Texas Regional Planning Commission. Once we receive the actual funds, people will start seeing a lot of changes.”

Bush said nearly every house still has a FEMA trailer in front of it, but some residents have managed to get back into their homes.

“We have other people who are trying to do so now,” he added. “We have some volunteer organizations which have offered to provide the labor for free once the resident purchases the needed material to make repairs.”

Bush knows it will take some time for the residents of Rose City to get back on their collective feet, but he knows it will happen.

“It’s been a long six months since the storm,” Bush said. “But the future is looking brighter than the past ever did.”