Memories of Beulah’s wrath still haunt area residents

HARLINGEN — As President Lyndon Johnson gazed out of the helicopter, the Rio Grande Valley “looked like a lake,” former Harlingen Mayor Sam Lozano said.

In the days after Hurricane Beulah slammed into the Brownsville coast, Johnson toured the flood-ravaged region that he declared a disaster area, said Lozano, who escorted the president.

From Harlingen, he guided Johnson on a helicopter tour to calculate the damage, said Lozano, then a city commissioner.

“We went up and down the Valley,” Lozano said. “There was water all over the Valley, but particularly in Harlingen.”

Along the Arroyo Colorado, floodwaters rushed through hundreds of homes, Lozano said.

“All the way from Mercedes down, the arroyo was over its banks,” Lozano said as he recalled touring the Valley with Johnson.

Forty years ago, Beulah blasted into Brownsville with 100-mph winds, spawning 155 tornadoes before unleashing torrential rains that sired raging floodwaters. In Texas, the storm left 15 dead.

Not since 1933 had a hurricane of such magnitude thrashed the region.

After days of heavy rain, a third of Harlingen lay under water. It took a long chain of volunteers to build a 12-foot wall of sandbags and caliche to stop the storm’s floodwaters from engulfing the city.

Memories of Beulah’s wrath still haunt the Valley.

On Sept. 20, 1967, the storm’s eye passed over Richard Moore’s home on Lamar Street in Harlingen.

“After the terrific winds, there was an eerie calm,” said Moore, a photojournalist. “There were a lot of birds knocked to the ground. We had some trees that went down.”

Then came the rains that flooded much of the city, he said.

“It wasn’t so much the wind, but the rain,” Moore said. “The arroyo was definitely a raging river. A great number of houses were literally under water. Some, you could barely see the rooftop. We went rafting down the arroyo and swam through people’s houses from room to room.”

For 13 days, Jerry Macmanus manned Texas National Guard troops who helped evacuate residents from flood-ravaged homes.

“When the rains came, Harlingen was probably hit harder than anybody,” said Macmanus, the National Guard’s battalion commander in San Benito.

After about five days of heavy rain, more than 50 inches had fallen on parts of the Valley, he said.

In the Harlingen’s Parkwood subdivision, the arroyo belched floodwaters that buried much of the neighborhood, Macmanus said.

“Down in Parkwood, all you could see was rooflines,” he said.

Even as the water rose, officials couldn’t talk many residents into leaving their homes, Macmanus said.

“There was a recommendation they get out and get their valuables out and put furniture on a second floor if they could, but people couldn’t believe the water was coming up so fast because it never happened before, so they did not evacuate until they had to,” he said. “There was tremendous amount of property loss.”

Forty years ago, Beulah’s wrath taught the Valley to prepare for hurricanes, Macmanus said.

“It was a good experience for us — a lot of lessons,” he said. “I think people are more aware and they’re more prepared than we were. I think people will be ready for the next one.”