![]() ![]() ![]() Most back-of-house employees are paid on an hourly basis, which means that wages lost during a restaurant closure can be financially disastrous. Texan servers, the majority of whom are paid the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour, can’t earn tips when a restaurant’s doors are closed - or when people can’t afford to dine out. And restaurant employees - nearly 330,000 Houstonians work in the leisure and hospitality industry - are particularly vulnerable in events like natural disasters, especially when restaurants are forced to close their doors en masse. Harvey’s economic impact in Houston is expected to top $180 billion, and those numbers are rising. At present, Harris County officials estimate that upwards of 136,000 homes were damaged in the storm. ![]() The devastation in Houston is extensive: At one point, somewhere near 85 percent of the city was under water. When Dam returned to her apartment a few days later, it was totally destroyed - the walls were falling down, furniture was broken, rooms were infested with insects and covered in mud.ĭam’s story isn’t uncommon. Brown Convention Center in downtown Houston, where volunteers from the American Red Cross and other relief organizations centered their efforts. We had to wait 12 hours for our turn to get to higher land.”ĭam was one of more than 9,000 Harvey evacuees sheltered at the George R. I saw helicopters and boats coming to rescue the residents, and that’s when I felt so panicked and scared. “We started packing our things and went to a friend’s apartment on the third floor, but it kept raining heavily and the water kept rising. “We woke up and the water had risen to the middle of the first floor,” Dam says. Thi Dam, who just started as an assistant at South African restaurant Peli Peli’s corporate office three weeks ago, saw water pouring into her vehicle and apartment on August 25, in the hours after Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Houston. ![]()
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