By Steven Alford
Corpus Christi Caller-Times
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — It was about 7 p.m. on Aug. 23, 1999, when Hurricane Bret made landfall on Padre Island near Matagorda Bay as a Category 3 storm .
The city was thinned after thousands had evacuated Corpus Christi the previous days. But about 900 inmates remained, hunkered down with the staff at the Nueces County Jail.
That was the jail’s hurricane plan then. Still is the plan now. There is nowhere else for them to go, jail officials said.
Assistant Chief Mike McKenzie of the Nueces County Sheriff’s Office remembers the wind and the rain blowing against the building.
“We spent the night locked down,” he said. “We had enough food and water to last us for several days. “The inmates were worried; the staff were worried and rightfully so,” he said. Tropical Storm Don, the first to threaten Texas this hurricane season, was just a dry run for the jail staff as the storm quickly dispersed, making landfall July 29.
There’s not enough time to evacuate the 600 inmates from the county jail or the 350 extra inmates from the county’s annex building, so they must go to the jail on Lipan Street. Inmates are crowded into common areas, bedding stacked in the gym.
“If we were to evacuate the jail, we would need double the time that a warning would provide,” Nueces County Sheriff Jim Kaelin said. “But where would we go?”
The Texas Department of Corrections doesn’t have room for nearly 1,000 extra inmates, Kaelin said. And it costs about $50 per day to house each one.
To evacuate inmates, it would take school buses, Kaelin said, which would be in use shuttling residents.
Maj. Ray Tuttoilmondo
of the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office remembers when his staff locked down for Hurricane Ike in 2008. More than 1,000 inmates stayed put to ride out the Category 2 storm that destroyed large parts of the city. The jail lost power for three weeks.
“It was an interesting experience, to say the least,” he said.
Staff members had to adapt to things they never considered. A lack of water meant no cool air for the air conditioning. They had to improvise things like toilets, using buckets, plastic bags and disinfectant.
They adapted and overcame together, he said.
“We were pretty fortunate that the inmates were calm; the staff was calm. We didn’t have very many fights or disturbances,” he said. “When we went into lockdown, there was no movement in the jail.”
To bring toilets, showers and the air conditioning back up, the county brought in eighteen- wheelers full of water to pump directly into the jail’s pipes. They brought in large gas grills and cooked hamburgers and hot dogs, comfort food for morale.
“We learned some pretty good lessons from that storm,” he said. “You can plan and prepare all you can, but when it comes, Murphy’s Law always comes into play.”
If a hurricane hit Nueces County, a similar-sized county, every jail employee would be called to work, rotating 12-hour shifts, half a day to work, half a day to sleep. Then there’s medical staff, support staff and a pharmacy to keep open.
According to a report from the jail’s architects, the structure is built to withstand a Category 3 hurricane, up to 130 mph winds.
Beyond that, the building would most likely lose its roof and suffer water damage but would otherwise remain in place.
There’s enough food on hand to last the inmates and staff for a week.
“It wouldn’t be jail regulation food, but it would keep them going,” Kaelin said. “A lot of bologna and cheese sandwiches.” For power, the jail has access to three generators that can provide about 15 hours of power each when topped off with diesel, which the jail keeps stocked.
If those go, it could get tricky.
“The difficult thing is there aren’t any windows in the jail, so there’s not a lot of airflow,” he said.
It would be a challenge to keep up morale among inmates and staff, he said. “You just have to hope you covered all your bases,” Kaelin said. “But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think this building could make it.”
If they were forced to flee, inmates could be housed in tents at the Coastal Bend Detention Center in Robstown. But it would take a massive storm, one that hasn’t been seen for decades.
Inmates stayed put during Hurricane Celia in 1970, and the city rebuilt.
The jail was on lockdown during Hurricane Allen in 1980, a Category 3 storm, and Tropical Storm Beryl in 1988, which struck Texas and Louisiana.
With Tropical Storm Don, jail officials were not very concerned.
With its 50 mph gusts, Don wasn’t much stronger than a stout breeze from Corpus Christi Bay. If anything, jail staff had hoped for rain to the drought-stricken area. But be careful what you wish for, Kaelin said.
“You can’t pray for a storm, because you might get more than you bargained for,” he said.
The moral of the story? Stay out of jail, period, but especially during hurricane season, Kaelin
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