Bun B on Hurricane Harvey: ‘It’s Worse Than Everyone Thought It Was’
Houston rapper Bun B called the devastation of Hurricane Harvey “worse than everyone thought” and discussed the ways people could help as flooding continues to ravage his hometown.
“It’s a 24-hour thing now,” Bun B told Mass Appeal Monday. “Right now we can’t… We need boats, right? We need shallow water boats that can get into these communities and get people out. There are hundreds of families right now as we’re talking, stuck in the attics of their homes and on the roofs of their houses and on the top floors of their buildings right now. They’re stuck right now. Phones are dead. Finally the sun is up, so they can get on the roof and get out somewhere and start waving to make people aware. But it’s all about if somebody’s got a boat in your neighborhood. All the money in the world can’t help these people.”
Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Rockport, Texas Friday night and continues to dump rain on Houston and the surrounding areas. Per The New York Times, the storm is expected to move on later this week, but has already caused catastrophic flooding, with more than 30 inches of rain falling in certain parts of the Houston region.
While some evacuation orders were given, Bun B said those warnings were primarily directed at cities like Rockport and Corpus Christi, which sit on the water. Furthermore, the rapper said, Houston didn’t begin prepping shelters for large numbers of people until Saturday, with the city’s convention center not opening up as a shelter until Sunday.
Bun B criticized the lack of information provided to Houston residents, saying he believed more people would have left if they had been made aware of how bad the storm was going to be. But he refrained from blaming local, state or federal officials, and noted no amount of information would’ve made it any easier for the elderly, the poor and the homeless to evacuate.
“We can’t get caught up in who’s to blame or any of that,” Bun B said. “We’ll have plenty of time to do that when this is over. But right now, we need to save lives. That’s the goal, that’s the game plan right there. Let’s save as many lives as we can. Let’s get people to safety, because it’s still raining. When it stops raining and the sun comes back out, then we have those issues to talk about. What do we do with all these displaced people? How long does it take people to rebuild their homes. Those are the long-term questions that [Trump] will have to answer, and that’s when we’re going to need our government to step up.”