PORT NECHES — Neighbors helped neighbors Friday as Port Neches Middle School served as a shelter for evacuees from Hurricane Harvey.

The vast majority of evacuees were from Port Arthur who called the school home sweet shelter for a couple of days, Principal Kyle Hooper said.

The shelter was a place at which residents could sleep, shower and have something to eat and drink while they are displaced from their houses. Transportation was also provided to their houses, to other shelters or to the airport.

The school was nearly empty of the 200 residents staying there by Friday afternoon. Most were on their way to the Jack Brooks Regional Airport for shelter in Dallas.

“We have a lot of volunteers,” he said. “We have a lot of kids volunteering, a lot of them PNG students from the middle school and the high school. Some even slept here.

“They never shut down holding babies, praying and talking to people, holding hands.”

Hooper said the volunteers set up the shelter with donations of food and water from Chicken Express, Joe’s Italian Restaurant, several pizza chains, First Baptist Church of Port Neches and of Nederland, First United Methodist Church of Port Neches and the Knights of Columbus. A nurse also was available around the clock.

“We were fortunate to have a lot of help. We’re thankful to everyone. They’re the best. They took care of everyone,” he said.

One resident thanked Hooper and said, “All you guys are wonderful.”

Some of that help also came from our neighbors to the east.

Volunteers from Covington, Louisiana, nicknamed “Cajun Gravy,” cooked all of the meals.

Corie Herberger with the group said they cooked 800 plates of jambalaya and thousands of other plates during the week. 

Herberger said he was going to foot the bill when he came here, but instead several restaurants and stores in Covington stepped up such as S&W Seafood in Hammond, Double D in Bogalusa, a Chevron station in Covington donated ice, Grace & Lola’s donated, the Dollar General Store donated 18 cases of food, New Zion Pentecostal Church also bought food for Southeast Texans. Locally, Mark Leckich with JBS Packing donated 200 pounds of shrimp.

Herberger brought 40 bags of clothes for the children. 

He was going to buy a freezer from a local woman, but she told him he could have it for free because it was such a good cause.

“’I’m not taking your money,’ she said to me,” he said. “We all try to help when we can.”

Herberger said he knows what it is like to go through a natural disaster.

He went through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. His home was without power for 38 days. Shelters were sparse. Fuel had to be delivered to New Orleans from trucks traveling to Shreveport. 

“We decided to come here on Wednesday,” he said. “I contacted Mark (Leckich) and came here. We try to do what we can do. People helped us after Katrina.

“My brother in law and others came here and rescued over 400 people in their boats.”