Waiting Out the Storm in Prison

Incarcerated Texans describe conditions in prison following Hurricane Beryl.

James Guevara has ridden out three hurricanes sheltered in-place in Texas prisons. Hurricane Beryl, which blew into Texas on July 8, knocked out power at the prison where he lives, among several other Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) facilities. The lights went off at Ramsey, a maximum-security prison in Brazoria County where Guevara lives, around 3 a.m. about an hour before the storm hit in earnest.

The outer windows in his cell were no match for the heavy rains, Guevara said. “When the winds began to blow, water began pouring in,” he wrote in a message to the Texas Observer shortly after the storm. Men in his housing area used rags, mops, and other cloths to sop up the rainwater, wringing them out over mop buckets or toilets. Without power, they couldn’t use the fans, and the heat in the un-airconditioned unit kept building. “It was a long and exhausting night,” he wrote.

Two days later, portable generators had been brought in and industrial-sized fans provided some relief from the heat and dried the remaining dampness. Guevara was grateful for the fans, as “No one [had] slept very well the last few nights because of the heat. I can see it wearing everyone down. Tonight should be easier.”

On July 14, the sixth day after the storm, his unit was still without regular power, he said, and the generators weren’t providing a steady stream of energy. The fans were helping, but his dorm had retained heat, and a persistent mildew odor. His biggest concern was not having any idea of when things would get back to normal. “Communication about what’s being done and what to expect is nil, so the men are getting antsy,” he wrote. “Prisoners are used to routine. Stuff like this without communication causes a lot of anxiety.”

The Observer spoke with about a dozen currently incarcerated people at several different units in Hurricane Beryl’s path. They reported rain breaching their cells, power outages, heat, and fear and frustration over the lack of communication from prison officials in the leadup to and aftermath of the storm.

Hurricane Beryl, which brought 80-mph winds and up to 15 inches of rain to the Houston area and the Gulf Coast, knocked out power for an estimated 3 million Texans. TDCJ, which runs about 100 prison and state jail facilities in Texas, is one of the designated “Texas Emergency Management Council Agencies” that Governor Greg Abbott put on alert about the pending storm as early as July 3, shortly before he left for an economic development tour in Asia. As the storm approached, 121 of the state’s 254 counties were put under disaster declarations. Thirty-two of those counties contain about two-thirds of all of Texas’ prisons and state jails.

According to Amanda Hernandez, director of communications for TDCJ, prisons were put on lockdown ahead of the storm, per the agency’s policy. This means all programs were canceled, and prisoners say they were kept in their housing areas and fed sack-meals of cold sandwiches and cereal instead of going to the chow hall. Hernandez said the agency did not have to evacuate any prisons, although it has in the past. Previous storms, like Hurricane Rita in 2005, inflicted notable damage on prison facilities.

Guevara remembers watching as Hurricane Rita ripped off the tin roof of a building at his then-unit, peeling it away “like a sardine can lid. It was fantastic and horrible in its destructive power,” he wrote the Observer. By comparison, structural damage from Beryl was “minimal.”

Ahead of potential storms, TDCJ stocks up on food, bottled water, and ice, and the agency has portable toilets and showers in case a unit’s water goes out. (Another man at the Ramsey unit told the Observer that he had no access to showers or clean clothes for five days after the storm. A man at the Memorial Unit, also in Brazoria County, said prisoners were given cool water three or four times a day, while guards received cold water bottles every hour.) Each unit is outfitted with a backup generator for essential functions, and portable generators are brought in to supplement as-needed, Hernandez said.

Julio Padilla, housed at the Terrell Unit, a medium security prison co-located with Ramsey in Brazoria County, said the prison building is sturdy, and he felt safe sheltering in place. The “extreme conditions,” he said, were in the steamy days without power that followed. Padilla said power was restored around 11 p.m. on July 17, nine days after the storm. “Heat rash, and sleepless nights wondering if your family is OK are the hard things of not having power or communication,” he wrote in a message.

Several men complained of a lack of communication from unit staff, saying they received all weather-related updates from the local news.

Hernandez, the TDCJ spokesperson, said the agency typically uses prisoners’ tablets to communicate, but in emergencies like hurricanes, sometimes the tablets aren’t usable. In those cases, she said, each prison’s officers and warden decide how to handle communication with prisoners. Men at the Memorial Unit, the Terrell Unit, and the Ramsey Unit all said prisoners were largely left in the dark.

“There was no communication from the staff on what was happening, though there rarely ever is,” wrote Eric White from the Memorial Unit in a July 15 message.