A new exhibit at the museum of South Texas History is aiming to teach about the dangers of hurricanes through past experiences.
The museum is hoping to give some insight of what happened during these hurricanes, the aftermath, and some other historical hurricanes in the Rio Grande Valley and the recovery from it all.
"You don't live in the Valley or even Texas and not deal with hurricanes, it's just part of living here," Exhibits and Collections Coordinator Melissa Pena said.
Most Valley residents have lived through one or two hurricanes, and each one brought a lesson with it.
"We want people to come through and see it maybe it will spark a memory, and they can give us more information about what they went through, we're taking in oral histories again and this is one of them," Pena said.
It's those memories Pena hopes will keep Valley residents prepared through their exhibit, Hurricanes: Overcoming catastrophe.
"It is a partnership with Planet Texas which is out of UT Austin and their job is to mitigate. So they do the science portion, and we communicate and so this is our section of it," Pena said.
Dolly, Hannah, Allen, and Buleah are just some of the storms on display, but there are also items and mementos from those storms that remind us it only takes one.
"We have cans that were filled with water, from when Dolly hit. They stopped producing beer and started filling cans with water," Pena said.
Those cans of water were distributed to a colonia in the Valley after bottles of water were hard to find in stores.
There is also a hurricane tracking map and pictures of the aftermath from each storm. The museum is hoping these stories remind everyone, it can happen to us.
Pena says they're having a community day August 5th from 10a.m. to 3 p.m. so the community can share their stories and help their partners at UT Austin do more modeling.
