As powerful Hurricane Irma barrels toward Florida, contractors with restoration crews from the sunshine state are busy helping southeast Texans deal with the flooding aftermath of Tropical Storm Harvey.

Florida native Zach Broch, owner and president of Secure Restoration, which has offices in Florida and North Carolina, and his crew are working to gut and restore the Port Arthur News office while millions of Floridians are either evacuating or hunkering down.

Broch lives in North Carolina and still has family in Florida; employee Anthony Hickman has a home and family in Florida.

“Unfortunately some of my family has chosen, against my advice, to not evacuate at this point,” Broch said via phone on Friday. “They’re die hard, born and raised Floridians and they’re battening down the hatches.”

Broch is keeping in touch with family and monitoring the massive hurricane. He expects cell towers to go down during Irma but has a list of contacts that can check on his family if needed.

“We’re going to stay put here and our crew will stay to fulfill our responsibilities,” he said. “We are looking at our homes and families impacted by the same thing here. We know what it’s like but when we make a commitment, we follow through.”

Secure Restoration has stopped taking new contracts as they focus on the current work, he said.

Hickman is also not a stranger to the devastation of hurricanes having lost three homes so far while living in other areas of the country. He is also keeping on close contact with family and loved ones in Florida.

“My other half lives there — we have a trailer — and will be staying with a friend who has a brick house,” Hickman said.

Broch said it is company policy to take care of their own first.

“They (employees) have gone around and boarded and shuttered all of the employees’ homes and made sure they were stocked with food and water if they were staying,” Broch said. “A lot of employees and their families evacuated and we are making sure their property is safe. The guys here know we take care of their family as top priority.”

Even the local crew who were hired to work is worried about their co-workers’ families.

“It’s crazy,” James Keller of Port Arthur said as he swept up sheetrock dust from a back room. “They’re out here trying to help us and now they have to worry about their own state.”

Keller had been working at ExxonMobil with Axion Logistics until Harvey hit the area.

Harvey’s flooding also affected Don Veazie of Port Arthur, a scaffold builder with Brock who had been working with Orascom. He’s now doing temporary work with Secure Restoration.

Hurricane Irma was a category 4 storm as of Friday afternoon, powered up to a category 5, then lost speed again.  Evacuations were ordered for more than 1 million people along the southeast coast. Saturday, the storm began moving to the west, and was expected to move up the west coast of Florida on Sunday.