Texas Rural Home Insurance

Eyewitness to Texas Wildfires Watches Austerity Burn Rural Community

I knew the economic and political situation in Texas was dire, but I was completely unprepared for just how appalling conditions have become. As an emergency medical technician (EMT) from a large city, I volunteered to go to rural Bastrop, Texas, to assist the residents who are fleeing from the wildfires raging there; many of them have been injured. I was looking forward to working in a small community for a change. As an urban EMT, I have witnessed too many drug and alcohol overdoses, stabbings, beatings and shootings, along with vehicular fatalities. 

On the drive to Bastrop, I learned that the town was originally a small Spanish fort. It came under Texas' control when Texas fought a secessionist war against Mexico. Overlooking Bastrop is the Lost Pines Forest, which contributed to the local economy by supplying Austin and San Antonio with large supplies of lumber. A fire destroyed Bastrop during the Civil War, but the town was soon rebuilt. Bastrop has only 5,000 residents, while Bastrop County's population is over 70,000. Many people commute to work Austin, making Bastrop a wealthy county.Hollywood filmmakers shooting in Austin when they need to create historically accurate images of the former border.

When I arrived in Austin, I met a second series of forest fires: angry, bitter people. At a meeting, residents - who had spent nearly a week wondering if their homes were destroyed by fire or stand - shouted questions to county officials.While some owners Bastrop demanded an immediate return of their property (even made threats to state and federal authorities), other paid "facilitators" to drive without being detected in areas off-limits to retrieve their items value and memories. Frustration raised at the meeting, after an announcement that, due to some type of administrative confusion, some evacuees Bastrop would be a new demand for hotel vouchers.

Bastrop most residents did not make the connection between the governor Rick Perry's deep budget cuts to local police and fire departments and the chaos they were facing, or criticize the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) stripping of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of funding and staff to address national disasters (nor did they mention the ongoing wars around the globe sucking money from domestic programs). Meanwhile, dozens of impersonators traveled hundreds of miles to claim their moment of fame. Individuals dressed as firefighters, medical personnel and police officers were eager to be interviewed by television crews.

World News : Hairy, crazy ants invade from Texas to Miss.:LATEST ...

NEW ORLEANS (World News) -- It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper's metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops them for only a day, and then a fresh horde shows up, bringing babies. Stand in the yard, and in seconds ants cover your shoes.

It's an extreme example of what can happen when the ants - which also can disable huge industrial plants - go unchecked. Controlling them can cost thousands of dollars. But the story is real, told by someone who's been studying ants for a decade.

"Months later, I could close my eyes and see them moving," said Joe MacGown, who curates the ant, mosquito and scarab collections at the Mississippi State Entomological Museum at Mississippi State University.

He's been back to check on the hairy crazy ants. They're still around. The occupant isn't.

The flea-sized critters are called crazy because each forager scrambles randomly at a speed that your average picnic ant, marching one by one, reaches only in video fast-forward. They're called hairy because of fuzz that, to the naked eye, makes their abdomens look less glossy than those of their slower, bigger cousins.

And they're on the move in Florida, Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana. In Texas, they've invaded homes and industrial complexes, urban areas and rural areas. They travel in cargo containers, hay bales, potted plants, motorcycles and moving vans. They overwhelm beehives - one Texas beekeeper was losing 100 a year in 2009. They short out industrial equipment.

If one gets electrocuted, its death releases a chemical cue to attack a threat to the colony, said Roger Gold, an entomology professor at Texas A&M.

"The other ants rush in. Before long, you have a ball of ants," he said.

A computer system controlling pipeline valves shorted out twice in about 35 days, but monthly treatments there now keep the bugs at bay, said exterminator Tom Rasberry, who found the first Texas specimens of the species in the Houston area in 2002.

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