CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Rockport residents and business owners are all too familiar with what extreme hurricane conditions can do. Even though the worst of Beryl missed the community, they say they're staying ready for what could be a very busy hurricane season.
Like most Rockport business owners, Marsha Reid and her husband spent their morning taking down the boards they used to protect their store from Hurricane Beryl.
"We're taking all the boards down off the windows and we had lifted everything off the floor inside the store, so I'm rearranging the store," Marsha said. "We really dodged a bullet and we're very blessed."
She said it was a close call that reminded her of Hurricane Harvey in 2017.
"We have a little PTSD and we remember how horrible that was for our whole town and our community, so we are very pleased that we did not get hit by the hurricane, but I am sorry for all those in the Houston area and Galveston area that were affected."
Owner of Mermaid Ranch in downtown Rockport, Susan Gerhartt said she stayed prepared ahead of Beryl's possible landfall. After seeing what Harvey did to her community, she says they'll always be ready.
"We were kind of prepared to at least sit around in the rain and hunker down, but we're very relieved that it went by us," Gerhartt said. "We do take it seriously, we're not messing around because we've been through it before."
Even though Aransas County advised people to leave ahead of the potential storm, Reid, Gerhartt and Teresa Sladecek over at 4-The Birds Salt Flat Galleries say that business stayed steady for the most part, having little affect on the holiday weekend.
"It was kind of slow because of people leaving because of the storm, but actually we did pretty good," Sladecek said. "The business will always be back, we'll always have people coming and visiting the coast."