BEAUMONT, Texas -- It’s hurricane season, and we’re supposed to get prepared.

But many Houstonians have never actually lived through a direct hit from a major storm.

Hurricane Alicia was the last one, and that was in 1983. But there are some Texans who just did live through a really bad hurricane just a few years ago.

This is what it took for them to survive for a month without electricity.

Hurricane Rita was the hurricane that was supposed to hit Houston. Instead, its 115 mph winds bashed Beaumont.

“Looked like a war zone,” Ronnie Pfleider said.

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Damage from Hurricane Rita

And now three years later, we returned to one of Beaumont’s hardest hit neighborhoods.

“The damage was just incredible,” Ray Moore said.

“We did not have electricity here for over a month,” Tracy Maxwell said.

The Pinewood subdivision is a pretty good distance from the coast: about 35 miles, roughly the same distance as living in Pearland. If you want to get an idea what a hurricane hitting a Houston suburb would do, this is a pretty good place to start.

Maxwell is a working mom. Pfleider manages the subdivision’s golf course.

Moore is a retired lawyer.

All of them and their families evacuated.

“Few of my neighbors did stay, mostly men, said they’ll never stay again,” Maxwell said. “They were terrified.”

When the Maxwell’s returned the day after the storm, they found a tree in their living room.

The Pfleiders and Moores had only minor damage, and no one flooded.

But for the next month, they would all live like pioneers.

“I wasn’t prepared for it,” Pfleider said. “I didn’t have extra batteries; I didn’t have a generator.”

While they had no electricity they did have running water.

But then, the drains backed-up because their sewer system uses electric motors.

So they rigged an outdoor shower using a garden hose for water and patio umbrella for privacy, and they built an outhouse.

“The men built a toilet,” Maxwell said. ”They built a toilet out of wood.”

One neighbor had a generator, enough to run a window air conditioning unit that allowed them to keep one room cool at night.

“And we all laid on the floor and slept,” Maxwell said.

It would be the heat during the day It would be the heat during the day.

“The minute the sun comes up you get up and work really, really hard because the minute sun goes down, you’re finished,” she said.

What’d they eat? Whatever people had in their freezers.

For the first week, meat mostly, before it spoiled.

“One day we’d have chicken on the grill, the next day we’d have hamburgers,” Pfleider said.

“Its like you’re on a protein diet,” Maxwell said.

After 10 days, the meat was running out, but then the Red Cross showed up with army rations, water and ice.

“You could manage, but some of the food wasn’t the greatest in the world,” Pfleider said.

They missed the Internet and TV.

But after 32 days, the power finally came back on.

And eventually, the downed trees were cleared, and homes were repaired and remodeled.

“It didn’t happen overnight,” Moore said.

What’s the biggest lesson learned?

“The most important thing is a generator, and pretty much everyone here owns a generator now,” Maxwell said.

Three years later, you can still find shattered utility poles left behind but otherwise, Pinewood has been put back together as a subdivision where neighbors know first-hand what it takes to survive when disaster strikes the Texas Gulf Coast.