As Hurricane Harvey approached Houston last year, thousands of people began gathering their emergency kits and mapping out evacuation routes. Not many Houstonians prepared the way Jim McIngvale did.
“We’d done a fairly decent job of preparing for this hurricane,” said McIngvale, owner of Gallery Furniture, who is better known in the area as “Mattress Mack.” “We had rented about 20 of these 24-foot trucks with 26-foot beds on them, very high off the ground, to get through a lot of water.”
What McIngvale hadn’t anticipated was that Harvey would drop so much rain that his drivers wouldn’t be able to get from their homes to the trucks at the stores. With plenty of trucks but no drivers, he got on Facebook and broadcasted live, telling Houston-area residents two of his stores were open as shelters.
Watch the FEMA video: