Most Viewed Stories
Powerful storm devastated Valley
Hurricane Beulah has become the storm by which all other Rio Grande Valley weather is measured.
It spawned a record 115 tornadoes and winds that uprooted trees and devastated crops.
But the real damage came from the rain.
The Category 3 hurricane, which made landfall in the Valley 40 years ago Thursday, pounded Brownsville and then worked its way up the Valley, dumping massive amounts of rain.
Pharr recorded 21 inches and Matamoros was cut off from the Mexican interior for weeks because of flooding. Some 100,000 Mexicans were forced to abandon their homes.
Insurance adjusters descended on the area to begin the gargantuan task of assessing the extent of damage, however tidal wave, high water or overflow damage was not part of most homeowners’ policies, leaving many with the bill to repair their homes.
The damages eventually topped $200 million, roughly equal to $1.5 billion in today’s money.
Taking into consideration the additional wealth and population in the area today, the actual price tag could have reached $4 billion.
Anatomy of a Storm
On Friday, Sept. 15, 1967, a short story out of Miami reported on the potential threat of Beulah for the first time. The storm had started as a tropical depression east of the Windward Islands on Sept. 5 and became a hurricane three days later.
More than a week later, it was a 400-mile wide monster that veered northward. The National Hurricane Center warned that an eventual strike along the Gulf Coast was a near certainty.
The behemoth — it was a Category 5 shortly before it hit Brownsville — caused significant damage and claimed 18 lives on several Caribbean islands, including Martinique, St. Vincent, St. Lucia and the Dominican Republic.
On Sept. 16, Beulah struck the Mexican resort island of Cozumel and then the Yucatan Peninsula. Forty percent of the homes were destroyed and nearly the entire corn crop devastated.
But Beulah wasn’t finished. Over land, the storm was sapped of its power, but it veered back out into open water. The warm waters of the Gulf recharged the momentum and intensity of the storm.
By Sept. 19, Beulah generated 120 mile per hour winds at its core, and gale force winds 250 miles to the north.
Alonso “Tiny” Barrientes, 58, was living in his parents’ home in the Buena Vida neighborhood in 1967.
A senior in high school, Barrientes, like many in the community, waited until a direct hit was undeniable before making preparations.
Although official warnings were issued, Barrientes recalled information spreading in his neighborhood mostly by word of mouth.
Families hurriedly prepared for the storm, boarding up windows and filling bath tubs with water, and in some cases finding appropriate shelter to ride out the storm.
The Barrientes family sent its 16 children across the community.
Tiny and his sister weathered the storm with several other families at the H-E-B in downtown Brownsville.
They brought sleeping gear, but nobody slept once the winds began.
“We didn’t really understand the danger,” Barrientes said. “Actually, it was kind of exciting.”
At 6 p.m. Sept. 20, Beulah made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane just east of Brownsville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande.
The pressure dropped and the airport reported wind gusts of 109 miles per hour. The National Hurricane Center, however, reported winds of 160 miles per hour, indicating a much stronger storm.
And then the power went out.
“You could hear the windows breaking,” Barrientes remembered. “I don’t think I ever want to experience one of those again.”
Flores, who spent the night at his neighbor’s house, was most afraid of the wind.
“I remember that night when it hit, there was constant wind,” Flores said. “The scariest part were the gusts. The wind would accelerate like an engine.”
It was impossible to sleep with the gusts slamming into the house and uprooting trees every half-hour.
“I had a feeling that the roof wasn’t going to last,” Flores said. “I thought it was going to blow away.”
When the winds stopped, temporarily, Al Roser, 86, peeked outside to glimpse the damage.
Roser hunkered down with his wife and two sons in his office on 400 East 13th St., but he was never really concerned.
“This place is built like a fortress,” he said of the brick building, one of the city’s oldest. “Frankly, I wouldn’t be worried if a Category 5 hit.”
As far as he could tell there hadn’t been too much damage. The worst was yet to come.
Barrientes said after the winds passed, he heard tanks roll down the streets as the National Guard patrolled the area.
Roser, an avid bicyclist, took to the streets to find out how others had fared.
“There was a lot of damage to trees and some homes,” Roser said.
Stories began trickling in of others who survived the worst of the storm. The Brownsville Herald reported at the time that one woman spent three days stranded in her pickup truck.
“I swore out there in that filthy pick-up truck that I never wanted to see water again,” she said afterward. “But now I want a bath more than anything in the world.”
The storm was over, but for many the most trying time was in the days that followed. Power didn’t return for several days, and many citizens had no other option than to wait in long lines for food and water.
In total, Beulah left 59 people dead, including 15 in Texas, and caused millions in property and crop damage.
An estimated 3,000 head of cattle were lost, and flooding damaged pepper, tomato and cucumber crops.
President Lyndon Johnson eventually declared South Texas a disaster area.
Forty years after Beulah, the killer hurricane still has an indelible impression on Rio Grande Valley residents.
The National Hurricane Center pulled its name from the roster of available hurricane names, retiring it for good — as it does with all hurricanes that make landfall.
