{"id":75527,"date":"2025-07-19T14:03:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T14:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75527\/"},"modified":"2025-07-19T14:03:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T14:03:15","slug":"how-a-hurricane-katrina-victim-is-helping-the-smallest-survivors-of-the-texas-floods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/75527\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Hurricane Katrina victim is helping the smallest survivors of the Texas floods"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Most people don\u2019t expect Mimi Hymel to remember Hurricane Katrina<\/a>. After all, she was only 3 when the Category 5 storm slammed into her Louisiana home in 2005.\n <\/p>\n

\n But nearly 20 years later, as Hymel watched news of the floodwaters inundating Texas Hill Country and saw the harrowing images of destruction from Camp Mystic<\/a>, she said those memories came back with sharp clarity.\n <\/p>\n

\n She can still recall the moment her family decided they couldn\u2019t ride out Katrina and the sinking feeling she felt as her mom placed Hymel and her sister in their car and drove away, leaving their dad behind to work at a nearby hospital.\n <\/p>\n

\n But most of all, Hymel said, she remembers how she struggled to fall asleep for days after they escaped the storm because she didn\u2019t have her favorite stuffed animal.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI just had no idea if my dad was OK or even coming home at all,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI had a teddy bear named Cuddles that I didn\u2019t get to take in the car with me. In a scary time like that, I really wanted it for comfort.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Indeed, the importance of these plush companions was apparent as the floodwaters began seeping through the Chatterbox cabin at Camp Mystic, prompting a 9-year-old to offer her top bunk<\/a> as a safe place for campers to store their stuffies during the storm.\n <\/p>\n

\n Hymel said the trauma of escaping a natural disaster has a way of changing you.\n <\/p>\n

\n But all these years later, she\u2019s found a way of channeling her experience during Katrina into helping today\u2019s youngest survivors.\n <\/p>\n

\"Mimi<\/p>\n

\n In the immediate aftermath of Katrina, Hymel said there was no shortage of local organizations and kind neighbors who tried to meet her family\u2019s immediate needs for food, clothes and shelter.\n <\/p>\n

\n But as a child, she said she struggled to process such dramatic and rapid change.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWhen we finally did get back to our house, everything was destroyed,\u201d she recalled.\n <\/p>\n

\n And Cuddles had been lost to the floodwaters.\n <\/p>\n

\n Studies have long shown<\/a> blankets or stuffed animals can help children adapt to unfamiliar or distressing situations and they become even more important when a child is processing grief<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

\n Although the family ultimately resettled in Texas, as she grew older, Hymel said she noticed how some first responders or families would share photos of stuffed animals they recovered after a disaster.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was once that child so it\u2019s always just emotional seeing those photos,\u201d she said. \u201cI realized that kids experience disasters a little bit differently, so relief needs to work a little differently for them too.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n That realization sparked Hymel to mobilize after catastrophes, coordinating with local businesses to host donation drives for stuffies and then partnering with first responders and other organizations to help distribute the plush toys in the aftermath of a tragedy.\n <\/p>\n

\n After the success of her early donation efforts, Hymel founded Comfort Bears in a Catastrophe<\/a>. The nonprofit not only provides kids with a new stuffed animal after a crisis, but they also connect families to mental health resources.\n <\/p>\n

\n Each stuffed animal is tagged with a card offering free crisis counseling through the national Disaster Distress Helpline<\/a>, which offers children and their families help navigating traumatic events.\n <\/p>\n

\"Hymel<\/p>\n

\n As interest in her work grew, so did the need. From the Miami Surfside condo collapse to the destructive fires in Maui and Los Angeles and countless floods and tornadoes, these days the steady drumbeat of disasters has been relentless, Hymel said.\n <\/p>\n

\n And so far, the nonprofit has donated more than 50,000 stuffed animals to children in need, Hymel said.\n <\/p>\n

\n She has also written a series of children\u2019s books called \u201cMiss Prepared and Captain Ready.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt teaches them important skills to know if a disaster were to hit, but it also encourages kids to get involved in their own way,\u201d she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n But nothing, Hymel added, can compare to the joy of seeing a child receive a new stuffed animal and finding a sense of comfort in the midst of a crisis.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cAfter Hurricane Ian, I was able to donate to the hospital I was actually born in,\u201d Hymel said. \u201cThat was just kind of full circle.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Hymel<\/p>\n

\n From her home in Houston earlier this month, Annie Gully and her daughter watched as reports of flooding in the Texas Hill Country grew more dire by the hour.\n <\/p>\n

\n A close friend, she later learned, lost her niece, 8-year-old Blakely McCrory<\/a>, in the floodwaters at Camp Mystic.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt\u2019s just unfathomable to even wrap your head around something like this happening,\u201d she said. \u201cYou kind of have to go through the sadness and then you\u2019re like, \u2018OK, what can we do to help.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Gully, who owns Tree House Arts and Crafts, a local children\u2019s art studio, said over the years she\u2019s seen how a child\u2019s favorite stuffed animal can become like a family member.\n <\/p>\n

\n So, when her daughter suggested a donation drive for kids, she leaped at the idea. She reached out to Comfort Bears on social media and within hours they had a game plan.\n <\/p>\n

\n Gully\u2019s donation drive was covered on the local news and \u201cthat day alone, I think we collected 600\u201d stuffed animals, she said.\n <\/p>\n

\n After three days they received more than 1,100 donations to be distributed throughout the state.\n <\/p>\n

\"Annie<\/p>\n

\n \u201cChildren don\u2019t really have an outlet to help\u201d after a crisis, Gully said. \u201cYou could tell their parents had explained to them that other kids have lost their lovies and how sad would it be if you lost your(s).\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Gully is also selling \u201cMystic Strong\u201d artwork, and the proceeds will be donated to charity in honor of McCrory and the other lives lost at Camp Mystic.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI feel like every time you turn on the news, there\u2019s just something worse that you hear about,\u201d Gully said.\n <\/p>\n

\n But, she added, watching her community come together to donate comfort to the smallest victims of the floods in Kerr County has given her a reason to hope.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cNo one cares who you are, what you look like or who you voted for,\u201d she said, \u201cWe\u2019re all just doing things together to help.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Facebook Tweet Email Link Most people don\u2019t expect Mimi Hymel to remember Hurricane Katrina. After all, she was…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":75528,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-75527","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114880276660829608","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75527"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75527\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}