The Cost of Staying: living with risks in the Golden Triangle

Living with risk in Texas’s Golden Triangle is shaped by disaster experience, mutual aid, and the costs of leaving. The article describes how long-time Southeast Texas residents choose to stay despite evacuation plans, grants, and insurance created after storms such as Harvey and Imelda. Corey and Christy Mendes, Beaumont residents who had moved to the city two years earlier, cite limited finances and close neighborhood ties as reasons to remain, saying community groups such as Cajun Navy provided on-the-ground rescue when government response seemed delayed. During Hurricane Harvey’s 2017 flooding, they used personal boats and helped shelter 25 people in their home, working with local volunteers on dispatch and shelter operations. The piece connects such decisions to an earlier plan-making process, citing a 2021 Rice University study of 59 middle-class households in Friendswood. It also references economic damage estimates for Harvey ($125 billion to $158 billion) and Imelda ($5 billion), underscoring the long-term challenge of rebuilding support systems after relocation.