When state emergency authorities pulled into the storm shelter in the small city of Rockport, Texas, on Saturday, they asked the obvious first question: Who's in charge here?
Everyone pointed to Zachary Dearing, who didn't exactly look the part. The 29-year-old was wearing shorts, an olive-green T-shirt and curly blond hair pulled into a "man-bun."
Yet he seemed to have keen command of a desperate situation playing out in this beach community of about 10,000 people, which took catastrophic damage from a direct hit by Hurricane Harvey.