Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Ramadan 17, 1445 H
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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

Back to work, but not back to normal

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After one of the worst weeks in their city’s history, the Houston Astros gave local baseball fans something to cheer about last weekend. While homeowners, work crews and volunteers were busy with mops and hammers, cleaning and gutting tens of thousands of flooded homes,


the Astros brought out the brooms to sweep a three-game series from the visiting New York Mets.


In the wake of Hurricane Harvey, which brought five days of record-setting rain and widespread flooding in the Houston area, the city’s airports resumed flights last Thursday, while many shops and restaurants reopened on Friday.


Mayor Sylvester Turner said city employees were due at work on Tuesday, following Monday’s observance of the US Labour Day holiday.


“The city of Houston is open for business,” he said on Sunday.


Chris Vanderslice, 36, manager of an Italian trattoria located a block from the Astros’ Minute Maid Stadium and owned by Astros chairman Jim Crane, said that the weekend’s baseball games,


including a Saturday double-header, brought “decent crowds.”


“It seemed like people were happy to get out, support the home team,” he said.


Outside the stadium, Jonathan Wagner, 29, a Houston pedicab driver, was hoping for customers among the 32,000 fans in attendance on Sunday, after the Astros overcame an early 4-1 deficit to beat the Mets 8-6 and complete the sweep.


Downtown sporting events cancelled last week amounted to “a few hundred dollars I missed out on,” he said.


Wagner is normally undeterred by rain, carrying a poncho on his bicycle for himself and an umbrella for his customers in the seat behind him, but the storm left water “pedal deep” around his house: “It was just a lake everywhere.”


Since Harvey struck, Houston authorities have kept a nightly curfew in place from midnight to 5 am, dampening nightlife. “People definitely aren’t amped up,” Wagner said.


Rodolfo Rubio, an accountant and native of the New York borough of Queens, experienced the destructive Hurricane Sandy in 2012 on the Atlantic Coast.


Three years after moving to Texas, his house in Katy, west of Houston, sustained roof damage and leaking as Harvey dumped more than 100 centimetres of rain on the region.


Other residents on Rubio’s street had to evacuate due to flooding, and his workplace remains inaccessible due to water that has yet to recede.


The disappointed New York Mets fan, 28, said that baseball gave disaster-weary Houstonians an “escape,” especially with the Astros holding the best record this season in the US League.


Attending Sunday’s game was “a little weird,” with so many people still suffering dislocation from the storm, “but at the same time it gives the community something to look forward to,” he said.


Texas is world famous for its barbecue, but among locals the kolach — a pastry adapted from recipes brought by Czech immigrants in the 1800s — is


equally beloved.


The Mars Bakery in Houston’s downtown Theatre District had a handful of both sweet and savoury versions — from strawberry and cream cheese, to jalapeno, sausage and cheese — but the weekend selection of flavours was limited post-Harvey.


“I would have about four or five more flavours, but we’ve had a hard time getting supplies,” said baker Pete Bennett, 39. Bennett missed a week of work, only returning when the bakery reopened on Friday. He called it “surreal” to commute to work on a trolley that was also carrying flood victims to the city’s largest shelter at George R Brown Convention Centre, barely one kilometre away.


“I think we’re all in a daze,” he said.


“Everybody’s just trying to get back to normal, but people are still on edge.”


While some Houstonians were back at work, others were still volunteering to help those in need.


At the convention centre, members of a civic group set up tables on the footpath to distribute sandwiches as night


fell on Sunday. — dpa


Frank Fuhrig


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