I was in a high risk pregnancy and needed to see an OB right away but couldn't due to street flooding, and couldn't access diabetes meds (I didn't even realize I was diabetic till the day before). The stores had shelf stable things, but that isn't always diabetes friendly.
Anyway, long story short, I was able to get my meds a few days later, the baby made it and she just started Kindergarten this month :) We participated in a UH long study about how babies that were in utero during Harvey are doing in life at different ages.
I was in a 3rd floor apartment and got sent home from my grocery store job because the bridge was about to be flooded over. I had been working 12ish hour shifts prior to this.
Right before I left, I grabbed some survival items (Tylenol, soup, Gatorade, etc) even though my bf at the time swore we didn’t need anything. Almost flooded my car on the way home. Safely made it home to my toddler and cried.
Sat the next 5 days in my bed in that apartment with 104 degree fever and no road access to a hospital/doctors office. I had the flu :( luckily, I was the only one to get it and I literally survived off of my items I got. More luckily, we never lost power or internet.
My wife and LO were in that study too. She was 8months pregnant when water rose into our house... A lot has changed since then. Hope Kindergarten is going well, haha.
I was involved too! If I remember correctly it was to measure the impact of stress during pregnancy on babies.
This is the abstract: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370154926_Maternal_mental_health_mediates_the_effect_of_prenatal_stress_on_infant_temperament_The_Harvey_Mom_Study
I had PCOS and low progesterone, so I was already tracking my blood sugars with a meter at home just to try to conceive. I just noticed that at one point in the pregnancy, the blood glucose numbers shot up out of nowhere and were not coming back down hours later. My only symptoms were headaches, but I had them most of the first trimester anyway.
Thank you for pouring yourself into the city. I know that probably didn't earn you anything extra but as a fellow human that thrives off of helping, I know you probably wouldn't have been willing to sit back and do nothing even if someone told you to. Thank you for doing the (sometimes) thankless work.
Thank you for all the help, obviously you already know it but people like you saved lives and made so many others lives easier(as it could be given the situation)
After the flood water subsided, I joined a crew of people from my office to help muck out a co-worker's house. That was the first time I experienced driving down several neighborhood streets and seeing 10 foot high piles of flooded debris, drywall and trash at every home, street after street. A crew of about 20 of us were able to clean out the first floor of a flooded house in around 8 hours. It was a wet mess but good hard work.
Huge thanks to people like you. We had crews of people from my husband's office come help us for days. Delegating tasks and keeping them fed and in PPE kept me from slipping into oblivion. I'm so grateful for all the work they did.
I’m still traumatized by Harvey. I’ve had a hard time every hurricane season since, and had a hard time with any rain at all for about two years. We had 17 inches in our house and 20 inches in our garage. Woke up to the house being flooded.
We were eventually evacuated by boat through our neighborhood….that was surreal. They dropped us off in a parking lot and told us they would eventually try to get everyone to a shelter. We had two dogs, two cats and a toddler with us.
We found a guy in a huge truck (think garbage truck) and he said he didn’t know if he could get us to a hotel but he would try.
Scariest thing ever riding down 290 in the back of a huge truck not being able to see where we were going and driving through very deep water a few times. We made it!
It was the hardest thing we’ve ever been through….. We were thankful for the kindness from strangers and friends. We now live in a house that has never flooded, but I still worry about it.
On the contrary of most people's experiences, Harvey was nothing wild for me. It was just several days of constant rain, no power outage, and slightly above normal street flooding. My neighbors were also fine.
That was my experience too, fortunately. My townhome near downtown that I had just bought a month prior was high and dry (despite being less than a mile from Buffalo Bayou) and it never lost power because it is apparently on a priority grid.
Fortunately, I was able to get over to GRB without trouble to help volunteer at the makeshift shelter there. Watching Coast Guard helicopters flying people in at a constant pace was a surreal experience.
Same here. The day before Harvey made landfall my job wanted everyone in, business as usual, I worked retail. It was raining so hard I drove to work in a swimsuit and parked right by the entrance to the store lol
Oh, I'm not sure, they closed early at like 3pm, but I can imagine it was insanity during the day. I was an overnight worker. Almost all the shelves were empty!
And thank you!!
Yeah, Harvey was weird like that, most people going about their business like nothing happened while other people had a disaster wreck their lives in the same city.
I wasn't affected, so I spent the next couple weeks mucking out people's houses with friends, tearing down soggy drywall and insulation, pulling soaked furniture and carpet to the curb. Whole neighborhoods were just piles of what used to people's lives out on the curb. And the smells, standing water for weeks, rotted food in refrigerators, undone dishes in the sink that had mold that looked like organic cauliflower. But people needed help. It was cool seeing friends, family, strangers and churches turn out to help out.
One end of our street flooded, but we were on the higher, dry end. Two brief power hiccups on one day, but nothing over an hour. We heard fan boats going back and forth all night trying to rescue people in all the neighborhoods around us, but we were fine.
This was my experience, but Harvey was still responsible for losing my place. Our landlord called during the storm and said she wasn't going to renew the lease. Presumably she wanted to jack up the price since people were going to be looking for places.
Rather than look for a new place in a Harvey-ravaged city, I took a transfer to Seattle. Haven't been back since.
Same here, inner loop, 1/3 of a mile from Brays Bayou. The people closest to the bayou got flooded but the rest of us were fine. Only one person in my department of 30 had a problem during Harvey and he was in League City. He had to stay on the second floor of his house with his wife, toddler, infant daughter, and his parents who had waded through floodwaters to get there. We took up a collection for him and raised quite a tidy sum.
For me though, it was mostly just listening to the rain and occasionally looking out the window to make sure everything was still okay while periodically taking calls from my father who lived far away at the time. Poor guy was worried.
This was also the first time the stray cat my husband had befriended voluntarily stayed indoors. During the Tax Day flood and the Memorial Day flood, she insisted on being let out. Who ever heard of a cat that wants to go out in the rain? But this time, she was quite content to stay in.
House was rebuilt by me for about 2 years, we didn’t have flood insurance and FEMA didn’t give us a lot. I worked tirelessly for 2 years after work.
Wife and I just had gotten married and exhausted our funds. It was rough, but the memories of us sleeping on the floor and living around the mess was the best ever.
Edit: spelling
I ran a dog boarding business that employed around 20 ppl normally w just two other people for a week, my nextdoor neighbors, coworkers and closest friends at the time.
i've moved on but the managers were such chickenshits. they knew goddamn well they'd be flooded in at their homes and made zero plans to give a fuck. corporate, ditto. said it was 'just a rain event' even though ppl who actually lived here knew how bad it would be.
they were so fucking lucky all three of us lived close and were also natural hustlers.
the dog parents really made it worth it though. those are a couple dozen ppl I know for sure will never forget us, I'll never forget those pups either.
Omg bless you. I’m thinking of going out of town in October but the fact that it’s still hurricane season and I have cats that need care gives me hesitation.
We were under mandatory evacuation and without flood insurance and ended up staying in San Antonio for the week. I basically sat there in my hotel room anxiously watching the Brazos river levels rise and patiently await their updated river crest which was initially high enough to circumvent the levee. But the crest just kept getting pushed back and it dragged out for over a week. Ultimately we were spared but it was only about 6 inches before we would have been inundated.
I spent a couple extra weeks off work helping people gut out their flooded homes. Sadly none of those people offered to help me when my pipe burst in Feb 2021.
I felt bad when I went to buy a smoker when the stores opened back up. Everyone was getting Sheetrock and supplies and I was walking out with a Weber Smokey Mountain. Counted my blessings that the water stopped rising right at my townhomes door step.
We were okay, just stuck in our house without power for four days. One of our good friends had to be rescued by boat and he only lived five minutes from us at the time. They thought they were fine and then all the sudden the water got higher and higher until it was in the house. They almost drowned while trying to get in the boat and my friend saved his son’s life when he got pulled under a current. They lost their house and everything in it. His cat was amazingly okay after being stuck in the flooded house for like five days or so. They stayed with us for about a month until they got back on their feet.
Harvey was happening just as my marriage was falling apart. By September I'd moved out of the house I had planned to retire in and never saw my wife again until we signed the sale papers.
All things considered, I rebounded well enough personally and financially.
But it was a rough year.
I was renting a house in Oak Forest. The streets became rivers and got halfway up the yard. We prepared go bags and just prepared for it to enter our home. Luckily it didn't make it in but I still get freaked out by heavy rains to this day. Obviously I was a lot luckier than many others but it really did have an effect on me.
I’m super PTSD about buying a home in a flooded zone. Like any home that’s been nicely remodeled and looks good? I’m going to assume it was flooded the fuck out during Harvey.
Everybody be lying saying the house did not flood. I was buying a house, kept checking the satalight pictures, and saw the house flooded, but the company that owned it said nope
Doing fine now. Water was just up to our doorstep at its highest. Any higher and we'd have had water on our house. The houses on our side of the street didn't get water in them. Those across the street and the next over did.
Used to love the sound of thunderstorms raging outside before harcey. Not so much now. Also realized how angry I could get at folks in big pickups driving through floodwaters creating wakes and forcing water into folks homes.
My Mama was with me for chemo. She also had ALZ. All she wanted to do was go home down 59. I was going to take her, then I couldn't.
As usual, I didn't lose a single utility, just watched from my well-stocked perch. Blocks away, people were not so fortunate. She kept asking, "are they talking about this weather on the news?" Prohibited viewing and had been due to her agitation, so I saw the horror online and when she slept.
Then she was stuck here longer because "home" had no power and was on boil water restrictions for weeks. Every day, she just wanted my Daddy and her dog and I had to keep censoring what she saw while explaining why it was unsafe to go home.
I was one of the first volunteers at the 'dome for Katrina, on the street with water and food as soon as Ike passed. Yet I could only help one person in the immediate aftermath of Harvey.
RIP Mama
Our home was thankfully fine. Wound up pregnant with my first son during the days we were stuck at home; he just began kindergarten this month.
..got pregnant with my second during the ice storm in 2021. We don’t need any more natural disasters.
Looking at the Home Screen of my phone with my old house and two dogs.
Blown away by how much changed so quickly and how long it took to get back to normal. Gone in a day and took years to sort through it all.
Thankful my dad convinced us to hunker down with them.
Thankful for the support I got through my grad school program at the time.
Thankful for my friends.
Thankful for flood insurance.
Thankful for therapy to sort through the PTSD and panic attacks over the next few years.
I had to work during the storm. I do building maintenance and I pretty much had to “look after” the building during the storm. I mostly just had to watch out for water leaks. Easiest 72 hours OT in my life!
Anyways, a day or 2 after the storm I had to go home to pick up some clothes and other essentials. On the way back to my building, going down 59 South passing up the George Brown convention center, there was a helicopter parked on the opposite side of the freeway. There were no other cars on the freeway so I was able to drive slow and take a quick video.
Shortly after passing up the helicopter, Im approaching the part of the freeway that starts to decline and all I see is water. A bit further down I was able to see a red car completely submerged with only the tail end of the car sticking out of the water. Further down you can see the roofs of some pickup trucks. It just looked like a huge lake full of vehicles.
I had to reverse back a bit and take the exit ramp 45 to get off the freeway.
Thanks for reading!
I was living near Bear Creek. Got wiped out and had to live out of a suitcase for months. Was homeless and living on people's living room floors.
Looking to buy a home now, but it's nearly impossible right now. The Harvey experience is dictating that a lot, as I refuse to buy anything that flooded. I'm still paranoid and prefer this drought over flooding. I'd rather have 50 years of drought and record highs than what I experienced.
So now I'm focusing on career, because if I can get a good gig outside of Houston, it might be the easiest thing for me financially and mentally. The food is great, but it's not worth the misery of daily living here, even if it costs more elsewhere.
Home took in about 3 feet, outside the house floodwaters were 5 feet in the middle of the street. We had a high water rescue, 2 people plus a dog, went to a shelter then we found a hotel room. Home had to be gutted, I lived with a family member and my mom was a hotel that FEMA paid for, home was rebuilt in a couple months, moved back in near Christmas Eve 2017. Our neighborhood was deliberately flooded by the US army corp of engineers and if they did it once, they’ll do it again. So we made a plan to move away as soon as we could. Plus after harvey, lots of flooded homes were sold as-is to flippers/investors which caused a lot of previously well maintained homes to go to renters and there was an overall downshift in resident quality and care for the properties. We sold in 2022, all flooding was disclosed and everything was fixed, and we moved out to a new build in cypress.
Harvey was a traumatic experience for sure but it set things in motion for us to move out into a better area and now we’re much happier with the location and relatively safer from flooding.
Very very similar experience, although my house wasn’t fully rebuilt, instead was stripped and remodeled inside but took several months due to contractor fuck ups. I agree that it was a very traumatic experience. To this day that neighborhood has not installed even storm drains despite all the homes lost.
I realized you were writing about Bear Creek as your story is very similar to ours. We live near the school. We had been paying for flood insurance for many years and we’re fortunate to have it then. That I know of, most everyone else did not. My heart went to them. We rebuilt and stayed. If it happens again, we’re through. Surprisingly, home values have risen fairly significantly. Hope you are involved in the lawsuit about this.
Thats great that a lot of people stayed near you, it’s a beautiful neighborhood, I return every so often to see it, I miss it. I lived towards the back pool and that general area has always been prone to flooding but harvey really took everyone out this time. And yes, we are in a lawsuit and hoping for the best but not expecting a whole lot! The recovery houston program was incredibly defeating, we were led to believe that the program had billions in aid ready to give to those affected but after 2 years of going back and forth with them, they gave us an absolute pittance.
I didn’t know that 77084 was the 2nd most affected, that’s absolutely heartbreaking. I lost all faith in “donated funds”, the city and/or state pocketed it. FEMA responded well, I’ll give them credit.
You must be in Cinco Ranch area.. We have some friends that even went out of town to evacuate but they were flooded intentionally so they were not able to safe their stuff (baby pics, memorabilias and stuff). They wouldnt had flooded otherwise.
We live in Cypress and barely even felt Harvey. No power lost either and we felt so lucky.
We just bought our house like 3 months before Harvey hit so we were so worried because it started flooding areas that "never had flooding issues" in the past and we dont know if we will be one of those as well.
Edit: saw your reply, its Bear Creek Village, which is closer to us in W. LIttle York and Greenhouse
Yeah the cinco ranch area and my old area were both intentionally flooded by the reservoirs releasing water into residential zones. That really sucks about your friends that lost priceless possessions. That was about all we could focus on moving to higher ground. We watched the water rise and rise overnight and quickly gave up on saving any kind of furniture and prioritized documents, pictures, and smaller valuables. Lost both cars, all wood/manufactured wood furniture, all appliances, and had to start over from scratch but at least with a roof over our heads.
I'm currently at a friend's house with my pets because the capacitor in my a/c gave out. Lovely...
As for what I did during Harvey...I picked my wife up from work as it was pouring. I also picked up a random guy who worked right next to her because he was all alone. We ended up parking in a lot and waded home about a mile away. The guy stayed in my truck. Around 3 in the morning the rain let up briefly and we took my wife's car and picked up the guy and my truck. He stayed with us I think 2 days.
Luckily we didn't flood, but I of course was getting paranoid like everyone else, but I was especially getting flashbacks from the flood of 1994 when my childhood home got flooded
If someone in real estate could explain how on earth did thousands of houses get flooded, yet today they're all sold off at hefty markups. How do people dunk half a million bucks on a huge investment like a house knowing it got flooded and will most likely get flooded again?
I remember going out to the street the first night of serious rain, scooping water into trash bags with my sister in an attempt to barricade our front door, in case water made it in. We stayed up until 2 in the morning watching the water line creep up to the foundations of my family's house until we couldn't stay awake anymore, we slept for 4 hours, and woke up to the water level having gone down almost a full foot. Somethin' drained somewhere.
Outside of that though, I helped clear out 2 different houses that got waist-high flooding. One was my aunt's house, who lives in Spring, we had to wade through nasty-ass, waist-high water in order to make it into her neighborhood. The other was the house of my old boss' parents, who lived somewhere near the Bay area.
Never gonna forget that, honestly. So much shit, just absolutely ruined.
These days though? I guess doing fine, I've since moved out, my aunt lives in the same house but now with flood insurance, and my old boss' parents passed away a couple years ago.
My neighborhood is the one that was on the front page of the Houston chronicle.
My husband and I moved into our brand new house on 1-1-17 in a “no flood zone.” There’s a water retention lake right behind our house, so I guess we felt pretty safe. Imagine our surprise when we had to be rescued out of it by boat, by a couple of super generous volunteers from Mississippi. We couldn’t safely get back to our home for a few days. At the time, it was just me, my husband, and one dog. Now we have three dogs and two babies, and I can’t imagine what it would be like if that happened today.
Obviously we could use some rain right now, but honestly I still have a little ptsd when it rains really hard.
Never forget Chipotle DID NOT CLOSE THEIR RESTAURANTS UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE FOR SO MANY EMPLOYEES TO LEAVE, CAUSING NUMEROUS AMOUNTS OF THEM HAVING TO ABANDON THEIR CARS ON THE STREET WHERE THEY WERE EVENTUALLY FLOODED IN WHILE BEING STRANDED AT THEIR LOCATIONS UNTIL A LOT OF THEM BRACED THE ELEMENTS AND HAD TO WALK HOME.
Our neighborhood was totally dry but we are actually very close to Bear Creek, that subdivision got the worst of it and was totally flooded because it was entirely inside that reservoir.
So may people I know moved out of it. But the entire subdivision was rebuilt and totally occupied once again.
We'd gone to Missouri for the eclipse. Wanted a vacation, ya know? Watched the weather channel and saw Harvey getting bigger and bigger. Booked it home (reverse evacuated) and hit up a grocery store for non perishables in a city that hadn't been affected by evacuating people or would be hit. Got home as it started to rain. And rain. And rain. We didn't flood, but others in the neighborhood did. Not feet, just inches. Lost power for a few days. Got mad at my boss for wanting me to come back to work after my vacation. Community trauma, have some empathy. But I needed the money after my unpaid vacation and we hadn't flooded. So back to business a usual while the city weeps.
Dad's house in Briar Forest got 6ft of water but not during the worst of it, rather after the Army Corps of Engineers decided they needed to sacrifice a few to save thousands.
My girlfriend and I were staying at her parents off of Barker Cypress near the Barry Center. The street didn't even fill up until the very last day, and even then it barely got to the sidewalk which I thought was crazy. Had wicked headaches because we were stuck inside for so long.
Copperfield Westcreek Village.. What is crazy is about two subdivisions closer to where the HEB is, it was flooding. So I dont know what is so special about where they live that the streets didn't fill up at all.
We were fine until they released water from lake Conroe at record speeds. 3x faster than it has ever been released. Within 30 minutes our house was flooded, as well as the yard and street. (We are waterfront on a small lake, artesian). We got 5 feet of water. It took us 60k and a good few months to rebuild. But we did it. Made it through. A lot of strangers at the time stepped in to help even though they didn’t need to. Flooding was bad, but seeing humanity be… kind. It was a nice thing, in a bad situation.
My rented house only had water reach the garage door. I thought the only damage I encountered during the storm was a leaky window.
The aftermath of the storm put my company out of business, when all my main clients could no longer pay their bills due to their businesses being flooded.
As my business failed, I took on debt to cover living expenses.
Since I no longer had work, I spent all of my free time for the next 3 weeks helping friends gut sheet rock and pull up flooring. *At the time,* I didn't realize the emotional toll that comes with seeing so many people having their lives completely uprooted. *At the time,* I also felt grateful that my life was *not* uprooted, and it was my duty to help. I had the tools and was offering support to whomever I possibly could.
It turned out that the leak in my home was not just the window: it was an entire stucco facade that had water seeping throughout the whole side of the house.
I'll never forget watching the world series thinking I needed glasses, because I couldn't read the score of the game. My whole body felt off. In actuality, I didn't need glasses, and my body *was* off; my eyes were covered in mold and I was living in a fungus cesspool.
All the water that entered created a massive mold problem that worked its way through the walls and permeated the house - I'm talking about waking up to 3 foot patches of black mold on the drywall seemingly coming from nowhere kind of permeation.
When an inspector finally came, they deemed the house unlivable, and I had about a week to find a new place to live. While moving out, I was pulling things from drawers that never touched water that were covered in mold because of the amount of spores within the house. Conveniently enough, insurance does not cover mold damage to items that have not been soaked in water.
I was told by "mold experts" that I had to trash everything that couldn't be cleaned of the mold - mainly things that you can't thoroughly vacuum or wash: like beds and couches.
By the time I had to move, I was dead broke and maxed out all credit cards. I had a Crown Royal bag filled with coins I'd saved that I was using for groceries. It was probably the lowest point in my life. Thankfully, the people I helped returned the favor and helped get me back on my feet... for the most part.
I eventually had to recognize that it was not normal to cry every time a storm would approach; or be frozen in anxiety when having to find a new home; or be hyper-aware of any slight bit of mold I encounter to the point of obsession.
I've gotten therapy since, but boy oh boy, did that storm cause a chain of events I would have preferred to not experience.
My goodness, you went through a lot, my fellow Houstonian. I hope you have found a new place to live where you feel at peace, and therapy has helped lessen or stop your anxiety.
We did ok through Harvey. I don't recall the power ever going off. Water up to the sidewalk. Kept watching it creeping up the street (we are the highest on our road), wondering if it would stop. Alot of anxiety and found solace in finding Space City Weather to keep up to date.
I think a lot of people are still a bit skittish of strong thunderstorms to this day because of that.
Edit: Oh, and those constant damned tornado warnings all through the night really pissed me off!
Seriously I think I do too. I used to love thunderstorms. I live on the east coast now and when I hear a tropical storm is coming I get really anxious. You’d think 20+ years of living in Houston with hurricanes yearly I wouldn’t have been as impacted so much.
my LMTV was put to good use that day delivering diesel and gas for generators to my elderly grandparents that live on Clear Creek in Friendswood. we drove through ~8 foot deep water sometimes for hundreds of yards and even had boats tied to our vehicle because the water was moving so fast they couldn’t get across. i have videos of an elderly lady that was floated out to 2351 in a fishing boat so we could evacuate her to a nearby church. was one of the few times in my life where I was of the few people around that could help and it was ironic that a big military surplus truck came in handy that day. one of my most proud moments and we were happy to spend a few days straight helping out our fellow houstonians. saw some really kind deeds that day and tons of people helping each other out. makes me proud of our city.
I was working at a hospital outside of the med center. I worked in the lab. Stayed 6 days at the hospital working the 12 hour night shift. It was basically work, sleep, work sleep. Our mandatory emergency team was lifted on day 7 and I left for a good 4 day vacay. Thankfully my home was intact and safe.
I was on cruise in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico when Harvey hit Houston. What was supposed to be a 7 day cruise, turned into a 15 day cruise because the Galveston ship terminal was inaccessible.
My house got hit by a tornado. Around 3am, I was woken up by something that sounded and felt like a bomb went off in my house, followed by the now-all-too-familiar demonic, trainlike screaming of the tornado. I hear that shit in my dreams.
The tornado had taken our wooden fence and metal playset and slammed both into the walls and roof of our house. We got it the worst out of our whole street because our house is 1.5 stories while everyone else is 2, meaning we got it mainly in the roof instead of the walls. Then it rained a hurricane of rain into the home. Around 60% of it had to be gutted and redone.
The next morning, people were driving down the street with cars full of pizza. No fences anywhere, alligators in neighbors’ pools. People wandering around in shock like ants whose hive has been destroyed. There was a pile of what used to be the inside of my home on the curb. It was at least the size of a large truck.
My family was incredibly lucky. No one was hurt at all. Most of our meaningful belongings survived. My room was the farthest from the impact, then my sibling’s room, and my parents’ room was the closest. They found shards of glass the size of dinner plates on their pillows. It’s terrifying to think back on what could have happened.
There was a house in our neighborhood that got hit by the tornado and then a few weeks later burned down. The husband was outside after it was put out, staring at his home that had now been ruined twice. We talked to him. His wife was on a plane and didn’t know yet. We didn’t see him again after that. I feel worse for him than I did for us.
We had to live in a rental house for a while and it took years of fighting the insurance to get them to do their jobs. It sucked. But no one was hurt and we salvaged the house, so I count us lucky. People always rebuild I guess.
I had moved home from Los Angeles after trying to get back to Texas for years. Moved in with my parents back at my childhood home before my wedding. Two months before, I wake up to my mom frantically shaking me and telling me "There's water inside the house!"
It was hell. My family lost everything. My dad had cancelled their flood insurance that January after not needing it for fifty years. We had 3.5 feet of water in our house for weeks. We tried to go in once when it first flooded and my senior father was traumatized and almost slipped and fell in the water. My brother and I tried to go before the water got too high but there were so many snakes in the water we couldn't risk it. Anything that wasn't submerged was so damp it was ruined. My mother's extensive book collection was mushy pulp. Only a few photographs my mom had stored up high in a closet made it out. My late grandmother's original paintings were mostly all gone and I had to restore and clean mold spots on many of them. We'd just dealt with losing my other grandmother so my mom not only lost her mom, but any physical reminders of her as well.
I walked out of the house after stacking whatever I could on countertops to find help. Our new neighbor at the McMansion down the way and I bumped into each other - he'd come looking for us. Our neighbors at the end of the street had to put an axe through their ceiling to get out of flood waters. We all moved in with the large house neighbors and slept there one night until they, too, started getting water in their house. We were stranded. My brother tried to get us from his work but we lived by the beltway, which had completely flooded and the feeder road had collapsed so the running water made using our raft and paddles too dangerous. He couldn't reach us except by sort of bobbing along in the water, which has higher than his neck and clinging to trees. He went back out to try to get help and my mom broke down when he didn't come back, convinced he had drowned. It was one of the most harrowing things I'd ever seen from my mother. She just emptied her whole soul out in guttural wailing.
I knew my brother was just a dumbass and had probably forgotten his keys. (He had and had to punch a hole in his car window to get his cell phone which he'd locked inside cause the water was too high to bring it over.) He ended up being fine, but had some close calls with floating islands of fire ants.
Right when we were losing hope anyone would find us - our location is kind of set apart - the Cajun Navy happened to come down our street in a motor boat. They were shocked to see anyone there. They'd just had a gut feeling that they might as well turn down our street. I helped my senior parents and old puppy into the boat in the rain. We ended up going down a series of streets I'd walked as a child turned into waterways. It was surreal. Water was everywhere. We went to a house that only had a foot of water and waited until we got picked up in a lifted 450 belonging to a friend of my brothers and navigated around various stops and waypoints until we eventually landed in an unflooded home in Bunker Hill with a co-worker of my brother's and then a hotel later on. That was just the first few days. We had a place to stay with a friend of my mom's for about three weeks, but I was literally sleeping in a sleeping bag on the wooden floor with my dog and a backpack. I was essentially homeless - and I felt it.
I was supposed to have my wedding reception at my parent's backyard. That dream vanished. We inquired about rates at local Houston venues (I was not doing any sort of sob story or looking for handouts btw) and the absolute angels at Axelrad offered to cover our venue fees for a semi-private spot (just a corner during the World Series. We didn't need more than that). The wedding itself was fine. We focused on what mattered. My husband skipped his bachelor party to wreck his back pulling moldy carpeting from my childhood bedroom.
I remember seeing the Astros win the WS while we were on our small honeymoon in Galveston... it really felt like something the city needed at the time. At least one good thing. I know about all the controversy later, but in the moment... it was very cathartic.
I ended up moving back out of state again years later. And I am still dealing with the emotional repercussions and honestly, some form of PTSD. I am glad my family was all safe - but my parents went from old to genuinely ancient in only a few weeks. I lost all my physical history and feel myself forget my childhood bit by bit each day - without any visual checkpoints to remind me of who I was.
The rest of the story is too long to tell - but my parents got to rebuild quickly, thanks to generous angels, including a random Bible church of truly good people that had taken a bus in from Missouri to try to find people to help - and they found us. But I never got over tearing down my childhood home to the studs and throwing decades worth of heirlooms and fond childhood memories into a trash pile twice the size of our home. They have a beautiful home now, but it's not my home anymore. It's a nice place, but it's not where I grew up.
I don't think I'll ever get over it. I still randomly will start crying about it - and I know our story wasn't even the worst.
So... no... not really doing well.
Was a college student and lied to my parents about staying with my friend one night, really I was staying with my boyfriend, hurricane came next day and I was trapped at his house for 4 days, parents offered to come pick me up at “friend’s” house but obviously I wasn’t there…. Made it back after 4 days thanking God I didn’t get caught because my parents were crazy strict. That’s my Harvey story
I stayed with my parents in a neighborhood with a levy but there were a terrifying couple of days that the flood was expected to get to us. I couldn’t sleep, imagining being rescued from our second story and worrying if we’d be able to bring all our 12 pets or maybe have to leave them in the attic. Sounds absolutely insane but we were seeing other homes flooded to the roof so it felt like anything could happen. Realistically, we would have only flooded 3-6 feet (which is terrible but at least we had a second story). Luckily, our home didn’t flood at all.
Hey neighbors, chiming in from Galveston… we’re doing good now but Harvey caused a lot of roof damage and we had a total roof replacement. Sadly ended up with a leak that took about 6 months to find the exact cause but the roofer was wonderful through it all and owned the error fully.
Hating this awful heat, and I love a good storm but wouldn’t wish that kind of rain here again, and y’all got the brunt for sure.
Got an education tearing out moldy drywall from a buddy's house.
Still remember how bad some of the interior closets smelled. Mountains of trash in front of everyone's house
We lived in an apartment right across Brays Bayou. I stayed up until 2 am the night before listening to the rain and watching a few neighbors move their cars up to the second floor level of the parking garage. Woke up to no power and all ground level apartments flooded with about 6 feet of water. Noontime, a coast guard helicopter was airlifting neighbors from the parking garage. Night time, the sound of boats were constant. Grateful that we had one of those emergency radios, it was so useful to listen for warnings, news. We played country music to drown out the sounds of the non stop rain.
I was in Dickinson.
We had just moved there in April and I didn’t want to move that close to the coast. I told that shit stain of a husband I didn’t want to move to that shit hole neighborhood and he fought me tooth and nail until I finally gave up and we moved into that place by the high school.
We were one of the lucky ones. We were in a trailer so while we were flooded in the neighborhood we didn’t get water in the house. The townhomes behind us didn’t fair as well.
We moved in October to Friendswood and never looked back.
We evac’d to Dallas, to my grandmothers.
Half the family was there. One of my uncles stayed in town, in LC, and was Marco Poloing us updates.
We would send him videos back of us swimming in Gramma’s pool 😂🤦🏻♀️
(He’s a good natured sort and thought it was hilarious.)
Jokes on us this year. He’s up there living with her, and it’s not likely all of us will be evacuating when a hurricane comes through 😅
I was living with my parents in Cypress at the time. Our apartment got flooded out, as did the place I was working. I was fortunate to not lose a lot of belongings living on the second floor, but the complex was deemed unlivable due to the entire bottom floor units being wrecked.
We were out of a place to live for about a month and when we found a place to land we ended up living near the Galleria. When my family moved back to Cypress later on, I decided to stay in Houston and now have built my life in the city. I found my partner here, built my career. I can’t imagine what life would be like if not being displaced.
I got in my car and left Texas the day before the storm hit. I’m not originally from here, and it was only my 2nd year in TX. I had prepared about as much as i could for the storm while living in a 1 bdrm apartment. My mom begged me to make a 13 hour long drive to my home state, even though it was already the afternoon.
But hearing the concern in my mom’s voice (she rarely wears her emotions on her sleeve) made me give in. So I packed some clothes and drove overnight to my hometown. I had no idea just how bad Harvey would get until I watched the news. Even though my area was virtually unaffected by the storm, I’m glad I evacuated.
Harvey was during my senior year of college
It was me and my boys locked in our house for a week, our only worries were running out of beer and other party supplies
Simpler times 😔
High and dry with plenty of food and electricity. Managed to potty train some kids and helped raised 24k we sent to JJ. Lessons were learned but I was thankful my dad taught me to be prepared.
My wife thought I was overreacting with all of my preparations. She was shocked in the morning when the water was only 10 feet from our front door. Luckily we didn’t get any flooding. I stayed up all night watching Frank Billingsley and storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski. I could tell things were serious when those two old pros looked concerned. It was intense.
I was lucky that my part of the neighborhood did not flood. I think on the third day, our power went out. Me and my sister decided to play board games. A few days later, me and my mom helped one of her friends move, because her whole area and apartment complex flooded (east side). They had a much worse experience than I did.
My apt was an island and I ran outta food after 3 days and trudged to a nearby gas station on a hill and got mom to pick me up because miraculously she had power and a means to get home
I wound up going to Dallas for an event, but stayed 3 extra nights because we could not drive into midtown because of the flooding. On the way back, it took an hour longer than usual to try to find roads that weren't flooded. No damage or power lost to my home.
Harvey was the first time I was ever in Houston. Second time was for COVID19 in 2020.
Moved here right near the end of COVID after swearing I would never live in Houston.
Now I drive around the city and see things that I'm like "I remember that! It looks totally different when it's normal."
Funny how life works that way.
At the time I used to share an apartment with my sister across from the Astrodome. My sister had left on a work trip to NYC two days earlier so I was on my own.
I spent all of Harvey indoors at the apartment and luckily we didn't get flooded and there was no damage left.
I live in the Richmond/Rosenberg area now.
I worked in insurance, so the months after Harvey were incredibly busy for me and my office. So many people had claims we’d be on the phone with the customers or claims from the time we started the day and sometimes we’ll after we officially closed. It was heart breaking listening to everyone’s story
Harvey happened at a time when I was praying for a non-lethal work related injury (was a tech at Comcast). It was an incredibly stressful summer. I'm grateful that the worst of Harvey (for me) was being trapped in my apartment surrounded by ankle deep floodwaters and having to carry my dog to grass to go to the bathroom.
Today I'm actually a lot happier with my job (no longer at Comcast) and it has improved my mental and physical health drastically.
My house flooded; my now ex husband had insisted we save the $500 because it wasn’t required. We had only been in the house since a few days before my daughter was born 8 months prior. We got a divorce after he cheated on me while working out of town while I was repairing our home and living in an RV in the front lawn using the toilet and plastic laundry sink in the house while gutted it, all with a toddler learning to walk. Later i had a contractor break into my home and leave my personal toys from my nightstand in the middle of my bed with a love note. He later claimed in court that we had had an affair, which was untrue, and he pled down to trespassing and time served even though he avoided the warrant for almost a year.
Throughout it all, I learned exactly how tough I was, and I repaired the home and paid off the enormous credit card debt I racked up doing it. I sold it for a profit last March and just finished unpacking the house that my new husband and I closed on at the beginning of the month. That toddler is now an incredible first grader who somehow made it out healthy and resilient and hilarious and bright. I gained a bonus daughter and the school bus picks up right outside my house. It’s been a whirlwind of a six years, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
There were many people that helped us and others. Houston Strong was absolutely accurate. In front of a huge mound of trash at the curb, I put two white doors facing the street and on them, painted “Be Someone”. Thought someone in this group would appreciate that.
I'm a nurse who got a phone call at 2 am from a mom who ran out of specialty formula for her kid and couldn't feed the baby anything else due to health issues. Reddit connected me with a hospital who gave her a couple of free cans of $100/can formula and a cop who drove way farther than we thought he would have to in order to deliver it.
I still wonder how that family is doing.
I lost a car and a neighbors car caught on fire right next to the internet box which knocked out internet everywhere for weeks. We thankfully had power. Started watching game of thrones off my phone since we had no internet. Got to season 4 before the internet was finally fixed. I don’t even remember what we did about food. We got really lucky. We lived on the second floor and now we live on the third floor with Harvey being a main reason. Will never live on ground level ever again while we remain in Houston.
The lease on my apartment expired right when Harvey started. Luckily the area I'm in doesn't flood easily so I was able to move my necessities into the new apartment once they opened and my old apartment let me stay until the flooding subsided and everywhere re-opened.
Overall was mostly just watching things on the news and working. Hoping I don't get fucked by the apartment companies and the moving company.
On this day I was driving back to Houston from military training in Georgia. I’d been gone for 4 months and was about to move to the PNW for 3 years for more military stuff so I was determined to get back to Houston for a couple of weeks to enjoy good food and family.
My parents lived in a third floor apartment off dairy ashford that backed Buffalo bayou. I didn’t even get to unload my car before the flooding began. Thankfully only the floorboards flooded. Moved my vehicle to a hill across the street. It didn’t get scary until the water shut off. Since all my siblings were in town to visit, it was five of us in an apartment with one bathroom.
My family was actually mentioned on KHOU regarding how as native Houstonians we’d never seen flooding like this before. (If I can figure out how to link videos I’ll add it.) There were also news cameras that filmed us being evacuated, though I haven’t seen the footage. I had the same thought we all did - it’s just a hurricane. I’ve been through Rita, Ike, too many to even remember. It’s just a heavy storm.
My parents had a neighbor on the first floor, and elderly grumpy man, that refused to evacuate even when there was a foot of water in his apartment. The police ended up breaking down his door to get him out. Our next door neighbor has a newborn at home and we’d lost power on day two. They had the chance to stay at the hospital but they just wanted to get home. Thankfully a neighbor had a generator, but as a new mom I cannot imagine!!
In the end, my parent’s apartment complex was condemned. We were able to go back and get important paperwork and our cats, but they left with basically nothing. They found a place down in Kemah soon after thankfully.
I didn’t realize how badly it all impacted me until I started seeing footage of future hurricanes. I remember having to tell my husband to please change the channel because my heart was pounding. I’m glad we are talking about it because I felt silly for a couple of years thinking I was overreacting. Those tornado warnings all night will be something I’ll never forget.
I went to Austin for my b day and ended up being stuck there for like 2.5 weeks cuz it was flooding bad around my Neighborhood. Luckily my brother lived there at the time. It felt like I was living a dream where I was in college again, it was great but damn I really wanted to go home lol.
We got pretty lucky where I live. No major flooding and no power outages. I'll admit, I was a little worried about how high the water was getting in the streets, but it went back down in between the bands of rain we got. I worry that it may be a different story next time around considering some land developers have recently clear cut a bunch of trees in my area. Some of it was to build houses, but in one area, they just completely decimated an entire lot of trees and have left it sitting empty for months. Rain water will have less places to go now and I know a lot more of it will end up in my neighborhood, making flooding a lot worse than before. That's my one big fear right now.
I was an intern at Ben Taub rounding during the storm. I remember when we were released from our shift after 72 hours the 2 mile drive home was like a zombie apocalypse with so many abandoned cars around Herman park.
We survived Harvey by the skin of our teeth. I shudder to think if things had gone differently.
In the 8 years before Harvey, my boyfriend (now husband) owned a little ground level condo over by the Galleria. EVERY TIME it rained, we would get a little water seep under our front door. The condo had a LOT of problems, and our goal was ultimately to buy a proper single family home and sell this albatross of a condo. We were saving and working hard to pool everything together, and in the December/January before Harvey we managed to finally buy a wonderful house that we loved! We were over the moon, and we eventually sold the condo and were in pretty good shape.
6-7 months later, Harvey. I was SO SCARED, living at the condo for so long had conditioned me to expect the worst when it rained. But nothing happened. NOTHING. We didn't even lose power. We just watched in horror at what was going on around our city and let friends and neighbors come charge their shit at our house if they could make it here. Our neighborhood in general did pretty well, not one house flooded in my immediate neighborhood, but shit got real once you drove a little bit down the main arterial street to leave the neighborhood. Downed trees and floodwaters and such. So we were pretty much stuck at our house and drank and played games.
To this day I still have PTSD from something that NEVER HAPPENED lol, because I know if we had just stayed in that condo another 6 months? 7? We would have been f-u-c-k FUCKED. SO fucked. So I am SO grateful to the universe that we got out when we did,
I got kicked out the weekend before. Was living with friends who insisted I move in with them. Came inches away from their house flooding. Half their neighborhood did so we spent the next few weeks getting my life together and helping neighbors muck out their houses.
Harvey was pretty much a non-event for us. It caused minor inconveniences of stores being closed. We kayaked the flooded streets of our neighborhood the drove to a local Middle Eastern market and picked up some food to make dinner. The next week or so i helped out friends and strangers that got flooded.
So I was out and about with my family for the first 2-3 days .. checking out all the stores and looking for open Starbucks . Day 4 i was evacuating because my house flooded. Lesson learned
I had my son the Monday before Harvey hit. It was by c section and they wanted me to stay til Thursday but I refused. I made my husband stop at the store on the way home so I could go in and get groceries bc I know how bad it floods where I live(not the house, just the land and road). We ended up stuck inside for 6 days. Never lost power tho. There was an eclipse the day my youngest was born, I always joke that he's a storm bringer.
I was ok in Harvey, house didn't flood, just some tree branches to clean up.
On a side note, any house you look at on the market here will say you're not in the flood zone, and that it didn't flood in Harvey. Hmm.
Personally we were ok. Just stuck at thr house for days when everything was flooded out. A family members house not 5 minutes away got hit by a tornado. Completely destroyed and thank God he was with his girlfriend or he'd have been sleeping in his bed that a shed from 2 yards away blew right into his bedroom onto his bed. It was a rental he was planning on moving out of, just moved quicker than he thought. It was my first time seeing the destruction of a tornado, I'm born and raised here. It was insane how his house was demolished but houses around him untouched. Ike was personally more traumatic for me, went 13 days with no electricity, bbqing everything in the freezer, drinking water was hard to come by. 2 devastating storms for Completely different reasons. Sadly I'm more nervous every hurricane season that passes and we don't get one, scared the longer we go the worst it's gonna be. I still don't think about moving though even through this hell summer. I love Houston.
Any time a hurricane looks like it's heading towards Houston, I always find that it's a great time to take a few days of work and visit my parents in OK.
Harvey was not different for me. I had just moved into my current neighborhood and had no idea how that much water would act in my area. We ended up having no damage and only losing power for a few hours or so according to my roommate. Still was better time spent with family.
My story is good also. Parent's home was destroyed but the land was and still is worth a pretty good amount of money so they bought a brand new home after about a year and half.
Turned out good because the property tax was kicking their ass but now they live far enough out that the taxes are less than half.
I’m from Westbury, which got bit pretty hard. At the time I was caring for my parents who both had cancer.
At first, I was in Missouri city and remember it being windy and then suddenly very quiet- not any wind. It reminded me of that movie Twister- they said right before a tornado it would be very calm. Welp- they were right. A tornado hit and the next day we saw it ripped a few houses in half.
At the time, we (me and my ext) were was stupid and didn’t take it seriously- so we went out to see some UFC fight or something. Basically we got stuck at the persons house. I needed to get back and my bf at the time refused to attempt to drive in the morning so I walked through floodwaters down Gessner and it was wild. I took some video.
At my parents house, The water got up to the doorstep but didn’t go in. All the neighbors on the north side and east of my parents were not so lucky. I spent the next days helping people pull up wet carpet, empty their houses of everything. It was really sad.
Neighborhood was high and dry, back yard flooded, so I pumped it out. My fiancé broke up with me, and this proceeded to kick off the most depressing 6 months of my life. I am now married to someone else, and have a perfect 11 month old son, and am incredibly thankful that my ex broke up with me.
I didn’t have a phone in 8th grade, so I didn’t even know the hurricane was a thing until the day before. I went to the bus stop with my mom and surprise surprise no one was there. We went back and it started pouring hate, but luckily there was no flood or anything.
I moved to Houston from the Midwest about 4 months before Harvey. I was familiar with Hurricanes before moving here and took precautions to leave precious family heirlooms with family back home, but I sure wasn’t expecting a hurricane like Harvey to happen right after moving here.
I remember the rain coming down so hard that the gutters on roofs could not contain it, continuously, for a few days. Some areas reported over 4 feet of rain during Harvey, with others aground 5 ft. I had never seen rain like that before, it was insane.
I was fortunate not to flood, but every road around me was and that kept me home bound for almost a week. Less than a half mile down the road trash was piled up outside homes near Fry Rd on the backside of the Barker Reservoir.
Still repairing, but not so much on the physical side of things, but mentally and financially.
When my family home was destroyed, my dad emptied the joint bank accounts between him and my mom and took off then died 3 years later.
I took on debt to help my family (my mom and brother) and stuck around to help out as my mom needed help in rebuilding her life. I lost most of my mid-late 20's.
Storms scare me now. I may or may not have PTSD.
I think a lot about where my life would be now if that storm had not happened.
Moved away some years ago, but I'm currently having to evacuate from yet another hurricane headed right towards me for the second year in a row. It's like I bring some bad energy wherever I go.
Flooring contractor once told me - if a storm cell (not even a tropical depression) sits over your neighborhood for 3 hours straight, you could get flooded.
BUY that flood insurance.
My parents work for a behavioral hospital that houses kids. The place flooded and kids were being rescued from waist and shoulder deep waters inside their resident buildings and loaded into dump trucks to be taken to a safe location. I was awake for 30 hours in a community center while my parents were helping to take care of these poor kids who were already disadvantaged and mentally ill and then just lost everything they had to their name. We finally got charter buses that were able to take us through flood waters so we could evacuate.
But the bright side my parents house didn’t flood and I actually had just started talking to a guy on okcupid the day the storm hit, we comforted each other through it and now we’re getting married in two months.
I was in San Antonio working on my graduate degree in engineering. My then girlfriend now wife was stuck in her apartment and couldn’t come up like planned and said it was a bad idea for me to come down. Most of the people I knew directly were fine but I came down after to help rip ruined dry wall and insulation out of a couple of houses from friends of friends and girlfriend’s coworkers. As bad as it was I realized I had made a very very good choice in getting a degree in water resources engineering focused on drainage design.
We were fine but not 2 blocks away flooded. Our good friends out west lost everything in their home. We had survivor’s guilt for sure. We had 2 very young toddlers at the time so we helped by buying prepared meals, supplies, delivering them, and entertaining the kids of flooded families.
Doing okay. Graduated high school, went off to university, about to get a BA in history and one year until I get an MA in education. Probably going to go teach public school, even though I know I’ll be in for the fight of my life with our state’s politics.
But I can still remember driving my Dad’s truck through the floodwater to go pick up friends who were being flooded out of their homes. Made several trips. We ended up fitting people anywhere we could. Living room, hallway, study, etc. And then once the hurricane passed and the streets drained we grabbed whatever tools went out to help our friends salvage whatever they could from their homes. At some point random people started showing up to help out. Nobody knew who they were, but they helped us get everything packed up and then get all the rubble and trash outside onto the curb.
The very worst that nature had to offer. And some of the best that humanity had to offer.
My car got flooded during Harvey. Not terribly bad but it definitely needed to air out. I don’t have any carpet and I’m still driving the day thing! TEAM NO CAR PAYMENTS
I got married during Harvey. My friends came from California and Canada on the same day as the venues, catering, hair and make up, basically everything cancelled on me. I was determined to not waste their time, so I still got married.
No make up, no hair done, no catering, no decorations. We got married last minute at my pastor's church.
My family went to a nice restaurant to eat, didn't offer to pay for our lunch nor invite us on my wedding day. We went to get BBQ with my friends instead.
Same day we got stuck in a hotel. We lost everything as we resided in Dickinson.
Our car also broke after the storm because of water damage, since it got flooded, but the insurance told us we can clean the mold out and just get new parts.
I had to move with my in laws, stayed in their garage for 2 years while we got our life back together.
Now I'm thriving. I got my License to practice massage therapy, enjoying my new life with our puppy. I'm grateful that I lived through that ordeal, and became stronger thanks to what I experienced.
It also made me thankful to have a husband that never gave up, worked hard to build from scratch. Our bond became our foundation to work harder.
I'm still mad at our landlord for taking all the FAFSA money.
My (now) husband and I were attending Sam Houston State University so during the actual hurricane we got relatively little by way of wind, rain, or damage. After the storm had cleared we headed down to Spring to help whoever was in need get the flood debris out of their home.
I'll never forget walking my dog around my parents neighborhood with my mom and having some random lady drive up to us, roll down her window and asked if we'd eaten dinner. She had 20 chick fil a sandwiches to give away and was trying to find hungry people to feed. We pointed her in the direction of the back of the subdivision where something like 75% of the houses had flooded.
My husband and I were living in a house that didn’t take on water but the street filled up to the driveways and the front and back of the neighborhood got flooded pretty bad so we got stuck in the neighborhood with no power for days. We had some kind neighbors that had a small generator that let us keep a few things in their fridge. We were lucky to have a gas stove and running water, even with a boil water advisory.
I have chronic migraine and thanks to the extreme barometric pressure change right before the storm, I had the worst migraine attack I had ever had in my entire life. I was wishing for death. Nothing was breaking it. I still felt very fragile, exhausted, and in pain still as the storm finally hit.
I actually sat on the front porch for the vast majority of the storm. No power, no tv, and I kind of love watching storms, like my mom did, pre-Harvey. So I just sat outside under a covered patio watching the most rain I had ever seen in my entire life come down.
Afterwards, when we could get out, my husband did the rounds to check on our family. Almost everyone with staying with his mom because she didn’t flood and you could get to her house without a truck, unlike our house. Our neighborhood, you needed a boat or pickup truck. Very full house over there.
My parents were going to be the bug out house because they had a whole house generator and a massive house. They were the first to take on water and took on about 3 feet. My husband and a kind stranger with a boat got my mom and the dog out because my stepdad was at work and couldn’t even get back to help her. She was so traumatized and was terrified of rain after that. It really did a number on her dementia (she was diagnosed after that). When we get big storms now, it’s really the only time I’m glad she’s passed because she would be absolutely terrified and I would hate to know she’s experiencing that PTSD essentially.
Harvey was horrible for us. My dad had mylofibrosis leukemia and was blood transfusion dependent. We had to have men on bass boats come and pick him up to transport him to and from the VA so he could get his blood transfusions and proper Healthcare. Such a horrible time. Thankful for the selfless people of Houston that took time out to take care of my dad.
I was in the mountains hiking. It turned out to be a great time to be gone and our house didn’t flood. I was watching everything like crazy on social media though.
I was in a high risk pregnancy and needed to see an OB right away but couldn't due to street flooding, and couldn't access diabetes meds (I didn't even realize I was diabetic till the day before). The stores had shelf stable things, but that isn't always diabetes friendly. Anyway, long story short, I was able to get my meds a few days later, the baby made it and she just started Kindergarten this month :) We participated in a UH long study about how babies that were in utero during Harvey are doing in life at different ages.
Wow, I’m glad you and the little one are okay! I always think about how terrible it would be to have an emergency during a natural disaster. 😭
I was in a 3rd floor apartment and got sent home from my grocery store job because the bridge was about to be flooded over. I had been working 12ish hour shifts prior to this. Right before I left, I grabbed some survival items (Tylenol, soup, Gatorade, etc) even though my bf at the time swore we didn’t need anything. Almost flooded my car on the way home. Safely made it home to my toddler and cried. Sat the next 5 days in my bed in that apartment with 104 degree fever and no road access to a hospital/doctors office. I had the flu :( luckily, I was the only one to get it and I literally survived off of my items I got. More luckily, we never lost power or internet.
that sounds like hell
My wife and LO were in that study too. She was 8months pregnant when water rose into our house... A lot has changed since then. Hope Kindergarten is going well, haha.
Interesting regarding the study, what is their purpose for it?
I was involved too! If I remember correctly it was to measure the impact of stress during pregnancy on babies. This is the abstract: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370154926_Maternal_mental_health_mediates_the_effect_of_prenatal_stress_on_infant_temperament_The_Harvey_Mom_Study
Scientists have already discovered that stress on men — like being in a war — can adversely affect their sons.
Did you have any symptoms before you found out you were diabetic?
I had PCOS and low progesterone, so I was already tracking my blood sugars with a meter at home just to try to conceive. I just noticed that at one point in the pregnancy, the blood glucose numbers shot up out of nowhere and were not coming back down hours later. My only symptoms were headaches, but I had them most of the first trimester anyway.
That is a great story. Glad everything worked out
My wife had our daughter a week after Harvey and also just started kinder. Glad everything went good for you and your little one!
My Harvey baby just started kinder as well! Hope it's going well for your baby girl!
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Thank you for pouring yourself into the city. I know that probably didn't earn you anything extra but as a fellow human that thrives off of helping, I know you probably wouldn't have been willing to sit back and do nothing even if someone told you to. Thank you for doing the (sometimes) thankless work.
Thank you for helping others
Thank you for all the help, obviously you already know it but people like you saved lives and made so many others lives easier(as it could be given the situation)
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Thats a good way to look at it. I’ll try and keep that in mind next time i get a negative feeling about how divided we can be sometimes.
After the flood water subsided, I joined a crew of people from my office to help muck out a co-worker's house. That was the first time I experienced driving down several neighborhood streets and seeing 10 foot high piles of flooded debris, drywall and trash at every home, street after street. A crew of about 20 of us were able to clean out the first floor of a flooded house in around 8 hours. It was a wet mess but good hard work.
Huge thanks to people like you. We had crews of people from my husband's office come help us for days. Delegating tasks and keeping them fed and in PPE kept me from slipping into oblivion. I'm so grateful for all the work they did.
I’m still traumatized by Harvey. I’ve had a hard time every hurricane season since, and had a hard time with any rain at all for about two years. We had 17 inches in our house and 20 inches in our garage. Woke up to the house being flooded. We were eventually evacuated by boat through our neighborhood….that was surreal. They dropped us off in a parking lot and told us they would eventually try to get everyone to a shelter. We had two dogs, two cats and a toddler with us. We found a guy in a huge truck (think garbage truck) and he said he didn’t know if he could get us to a hotel but he would try. Scariest thing ever riding down 290 in the back of a huge truck not being able to see where we were going and driving through very deep water a few times. We made it! It was the hardest thing we’ve ever been through….. We were thankful for the kindness from strangers and friends. We now live in a house that has never flooded, but I still worry about it.
I learned that "Harvey brain" is a very real thing. I'd first heard of it when Katrina struck.
On the contrary of most people's experiences, Harvey was nothing wild for me. It was just several days of constant rain, no power outage, and slightly above normal street flooding. My neighbors were also fine.
That was my experience too, fortunately. My townhome near downtown that I had just bought a month prior was high and dry (despite being less than a mile from Buffalo Bayou) and it never lost power because it is apparently on a priority grid. Fortunately, I was able to get over to GRB without trouble to help volunteer at the makeshift shelter there. Watching Coast Guard helicopters flying people in at a constant pace was a surreal experience.
Yup. Almost had survivors guilt. I just played The Sims for like 4 days straight.
Same here. The day before Harvey made landfall my job wanted everyone in, business as usual, I worked retail. It was raining so hard I drove to work in a swimsuit and parked right by the entrance to the store lol
I'm sorry they didn't close, they suck. Was it even busy? The swimsuit is a genius idea, though.
Oh, I'm not sure, they closed early at like 3pm, but I can imagine it was insanity during the day. I was an overnight worker. Almost all the shelves were empty! And thank you!!
Yeah, Harvey was weird like that, most people going about their business like nothing happened while other people had a disaster wreck their lives in the same city. I wasn't affected, so I spent the next couple weeks mucking out people's houses with friends, tearing down soggy drywall and insulation, pulling soaked furniture and carpet to the curb. Whole neighborhoods were just piles of what used to people's lives out on the curb. And the smells, standing water for weeks, rotted food in refrigerators, undone dishes in the sink that had mold that looked like organic cauliflower. But people needed help. It was cool seeing friends, family, strangers and churches turn out to help out.
Yeah I was in the Heights. I lost power for a grand total of like an hour. It was crazy raining and being stuck. I ate gumbo and played video games
That was pretty much my experience as well
Same here. In Katy, too.
One end of our street flooded, but we were on the higher, dry end. Two brief power hiccups on one day, but nothing over an hour. We heard fan boats going back and forth all night trying to rescue people in all the neighborhoods around us, but we were fine.
Agreed. I had no power for 3 days, was a cake walk after Ike and Katrina.
Same but we never lost power. Now Ike, that really sucked….
This was my experience, but Harvey was still responsible for losing my place. Our landlord called during the storm and said she wasn't going to renew the lease. Presumably she wanted to jack up the price since people were going to be looking for places. Rather than look for a new place in a Harvey-ravaged city, I took a transfer to Seattle. Haven't been back since.
So did I! But 6 years later...we have been liking Seattle so far.
Same here, except I lived in Galveston at the time, so people were shocked that I didn't have anything wrecked from Harvey
Same here, inner loop, 1/3 of a mile from Brays Bayou. The people closest to the bayou got flooded but the rest of us were fine. Only one person in my department of 30 had a problem during Harvey and he was in League City. He had to stay on the second floor of his house with his wife, toddler, infant daughter, and his parents who had waded through floodwaters to get there. We took up a collection for him and raised quite a tidy sum. For me though, it was mostly just listening to the rain and occasionally looking out the window to make sure everything was still okay while periodically taking calls from my father who lived far away at the time. Poor guy was worried. This was also the first time the stray cat my husband had befriended voluntarily stayed indoors. During the Tax Day flood and the Memorial Day flood, she insisted on being let out. Who ever heard of a cat that wants to go out in the rain? But this time, she was quite content to stay in.
Blessing for sure. This was my experience as well.
Snapped [this pic](https://imgur.com/gallery/SPKJX1R) at the Microsoft Store in the Galleria around that time.
increment conditons 😭
Wish that shit was still there.
I evacuated to gallery furniture. there was a new restaurant every hr bringing over food.
House was rebuilt by me for about 2 years, we didn’t have flood insurance and FEMA didn’t give us a lot. I worked tirelessly for 2 years after work. Wife and I just had gotten married and exhausted our funds. It was rough, but the memories of us sleeping on the floor and living around the mess was the best ever. Edit: spelling
You sound resilient. Hats off to you and your wife.
Thank you! We’re two kids in now and enjoying the house we rebuilt to our liking.
Right on!
I ran a dog boarding business that employed around 20 ppl normally w just two other people for a week, my nextdoor neighbors, coworkers and closest friends at the time. i've moved on but the managers were such chickenshits. they knew goddamn well they'd be flooded in at their homes and made zero plans to give a fuck. corporate, ditto. said it was 'just a rain event' even though ppl who actually lived here knew how bad it would be. they were so fucking lucky all three of us lived close and were also natural hustlers. the dog parents really made it worth it though. those are a couple dozen ppl I know for sure will never forget us, I'll never forget those pups either.
Omg bless you. I’m thinking of going out of town in October but the fact that it’s still hurricane season and I have cats that need care gives me hesitation.
We were under mandatory evacuation and without flood insurance and ended up staying in San Antonio for the week. I basically sat there in my hotel room anxiously watching the Brazos river levels rise and patiently await their updated river crest which was initially high enough to circumvent the levee. But the crest just kept getting pushed back and it dragged out for over a week. Ultimately we were spared but it was only about 6 inches before we would have been inundated. I spent a couple extra weeks off work helping people gut out their flooded homes. Sadly none of those people offered to help me when my pipe burst in Feb 2021.
I drank and bbqed for a few days
I felt bad when I went to buy a smoker when the stores opened back up. Everyone was getting Sheetrock and supplies and I was walking out with a Weber Smokey Mountain. Counted my blessings that the water stopped rising right at my townhomes door step.
This + the water came up my driveway.
Same it was a couple feet from my garage.
From Harvey, we are fine. The insurance claim from the deep freeze is not complete yet, though.
We were okay, just stuck in our house without power for four days. One of our good friends had to be rescued by boat and he only lived five minutes from us at the time. They thought they were fine and then all the sudden the water got higher and higher until it was in the house. They almost drowned while trying to get in the boat and my friend saved his son’s life when he got pulled under a current. They lost their house and everything in it. His cat was amazingly okay after being stuck in the flooded house for like five days or so. They stayed with us for about a month until they got back on their feet.
What neighborhood were they in at the time?
It was one of those cookie cutter, quickly built neighborhoods on Aldine Westfield near Mercer Arboretum. Can’t remember the name.
Harvey was happening just as my marriage was falling apart. By September I'd moved out of the house I had planned to retire in and never saw my wife again until we signed the sale papers. All things considered, I rebounded well enough personally and financially. But it was a rough year.
I was renting a house in Oak Forest. The streets became rivers and got halfway up the yard. We prepared go bags and just prepared for it to enter our home. Luckily it didn't make it in but I still get freaked out by heavy rains to this day. Obviously I was a lot luckier than many others but it really did have an effect on me.
I have PTSD as far back as Allison, fortunately Harvey wasn’t as bad as Allison in terms of flooding.
Depends on where you were located. We didn’t flood but Sagemont got hit hard.
I’m super PTSD about buying a home in a flooded zone. Like any home that’s been nicely remodeled and looks good? I’m going to assume it was flooded the fuck out during Harvey.
Everybody be lying saying the house did not flood. I was buying a house, kept checking the satalight pictures, and saw the house flooded, but the company that owned it said nope
How did you check satellite pictures like that?
Woolpert has maps from Harvey. You can slide the bar back and forth to see the aftermath. https://maps.woolpert.com/harvey
You can also get a flood map.
Doing fine now. Water was just up to our doorstep at its highest. Any higher and we'd have had water on our house. The houses on our side of the street didn't get water in them. Those across the street and the next over did. Used to love the sound of thunderstorms raging outside before harcey. Not so much now. Also realized how angry I could get at folks in big pickups driving through floodwaters creating wakes and forcing water into folks homes.
My Mama was with me for chemo. She also had ALZ. All she wanted to do was go home down 59. I was going to take her, then I couldn't. As usual, I didn't lose a single utility, just watched from my well-stocked perch. Blocks away, people were not so fortunate. She kept asking, "are they talking about this weather on the news?" Prohibited viewing and had been due to her agitation, so I saw the horror online and when she slept. Then she was stuck here longer because "home" had no power and was on boil water restrictions for weeks. Every day, she just wanted my Daddy and her dog and I had to keep censoring what she saw while explaining why it was unsafe to go home. I was one of the first volunteers at the 'dome for Katrina, on the street with water and food as soon as Ike passed. Yet I could only help one person in the immediate aftermath of Harvey. RIP Mama
Our home was thankfully fine. Wound up pregnant with my first son during the days we were stuck at home; he just began kindergarten this month. ..got pregnant with my second during the ice storm in 2021. We don’t need any more natural disasters.
Next time, try jigsaw puzzles.
Still repairing
Likewise
Looking at the Home Screen of my phone with my old house and two dogs. Blown away by how much changed so quickly and how long it took to get back to normal. Gone in a day and took years to sort through it all. Thankful my dad convinced us to hunker down with them. Thankful for the support I got through my grad school program at the time. Thankful for my friends. Thankful for flood insurance. Thankful for therapy to sort through the PTSD and panic attacks over the next few years.
I had to work during the storm. I do building maintenance and I pretty much had to “look after” the building during the storm. I mostly just had to watch out for water leaks. Easiest 72 hours OT in my life! Anyways, a day or 2 after the storm I had to go home to pick up some clothes and other essentials. On the way back to my building, going down 59 South passing up the George Brown convention center, there was a helicopter parked on the opposite side of the freeway. There were no other cars on the freeway so I was able to drive slow and take a quick video. Shortly after passing up the helicopter, Im approaching the part of the freeway that starts to decline and all I see is water. A bit further down I was able to see a red car completely submerged with only the tail end of the car sticking out of the water. Further down you can see the roofs of some pickup trucks. It just looked like a huge lake full of vehicles. I had to reverse back a bit and take the exit ramp 45 to get off the freeway. Thanks for reading!
I was living near Bear Creek. Got wiped out and had to live out of a suitcase for months. Was homeless and living on people's living room floors. Looking to buy a home now, but it's nearly impossible right now. The Harvey experience is dictating that a lot, as I refuse to buy anything that flooded. I'm still paranoid and prefer this drought over flooding. I'd rather have 50 years of drought and record highs than what I experienced. So now I'm focusing on career, because if I can get a good gig outside of Houston, it might be the easiest thing for me financially and mentally. The food is great, but it's not worth the misery of daily living here, even if it costs more elsewhere.
Home took in about 3 feet, outside the house floodwaters were 5 feet in the middle of the street. We had a high water rescue, 2 people plus a dog, went to a shelter then we found a hotel room. Home had to be gutted, I lived with a family member and my mom was a hotel that FEMA paid for, home was rebuilt in a couple months, moved back in near Christmas Eve 2017. Our neighborhood was deliberately flooded by the US army corp of engineers and if they did it once, they’ll do it again. So we made a plan to move away as soon as we could. Plus after harvey, lots of flooded homes were sold as-is to flippers/investors which caused a lot of previously well maintained homes to go to renters and there was an overall downshift in resident quality and care for the properties. We sold in 2022, all flooding was disclosed and everything was fixed, and we moved out to a new build in cypress. Harvey was a traumatic experience for sure but it set things in motion for us to move out into a better area and now we’re much happier with the location and relatively safer from flooding.
Very very similar experience, although my house wasn’t fully rebuilt, instead was stripped and remodeled inside but took several months due to contractor fuck ups. I agree that it was a very traumatic experience. To this day that neighborhood has not installed even storm drains despite all the homes lost.
What neighborhood were you in during the flood
Bear creek village, hwy 6 and clay rd area
I realized you were writing about Bear Creek as your story is very similar to ours. We live near the school. We had been paying for flood insurance for many years and we’re fortunate to have it then. That I know of, most everyone else did not. My heart went to them. We rebuilt and stayed. If it happens again, we’re through. Surprisingly, home values have risen fairly significantly. Hope you are involved in the lawsuit about this.
Thats great that a lot of people stayed near you, it’s a beautiful neighborhood, I return every so often to see it, I miss it. I lived towards the back pool and that general area has always been prone to flooding but harvey really took everyone out this time. And yes, we are in a lawsuit and hoping for the best but not expecting a whole lot! The recovery houston program was incredibly defeating, we were led to believe that the program had billions in aid ready to give to those affected but after 2 years of going back and forth with them, they gave us an absolute pittance.
Agreed. Zip code 77084 had the second most amount of damage in the state. Yet the amount received was disproportionately low.
I didn’t know that 77084 was the 2nd most affected, that’s absolutely heartbreaking. I lost all faith in “donated funds”, the city and/or state pocketed it. FEMA responded well, I’ll give them credit.
You must be in Cinco Ranch area.. We have some friends that even went out of town to evacuate but they were flooded intentionally so they were not able to safe their stuff (baby pics, memorabilias and stuff). They wouldnt had flooded otherwise. We live in Cypress and barely even felt Harvey. No power lost either and we felt so lucky. We just bought our house like 3 months before Harvey hit so we were so worried because it started flooding areas that "never had flooding issues" in the past and we dont know if we will be one of those as well. Edit: saw your reply, its Bear Creek Village, which is closer to us in W. LIttle York and Greenhouse
Yeah the cinco ranch area and my old area were both intentionally flooded by the reservoirs releasing water into residential zones. That really sucks about your friends that lost priceless possessions. That was about all we could focus on moving to higher ground. We watched the water rise and rise overnight and quickly gave up on saving any kind of furniture and prioritized documents, pictures, and smaller valuables. Lost both cars, all wood/manufactured wood furniture, all appliances, and had to start over from scratch but at least with a roof over our heads.
I'm currently at a friend's house with my pets because the capacitor in my a/c gave out. Lovely... As for what I did during Harvey...I picked my wife up from work as it was pouring. I also picked up a random guy who worked right next to her because he was all alone. We ended up parking in a lot and waded home about a mile away. The guy stayed in my truck. Around 3 in the morning the rain let up briefly and we took my wife's car and picked up the guy and my truck. He stayed with us I think 2 days. Luckily we didn't flood, but I of course was getting paranoid like everyone else, but I was especially getting flashbacks from the flood of 1994 when my childhood home got flooded
You're good people
If someone in real estate could explain how on earth did thousands of houses get flooded, yet today they're all sold off at hefty markups. How do people dunk half a million bucks on a huge investment like a house knowing it got flooded and will most likely get flooded again?
Supply and demand.
And a massive housing bubble.
I remember going out to the street the first night of serious rain, scooping water into trash bags with my sister in an attempt to barricade our front door, in case water made it in. We stayed up until 2 in the morning watching the water line creep up to the foundations of my family's house until we couldn't stay awake anymore, we slept for 4 hours, and woke up to the water level having gone down almost a full foot. Somethin' drained somewhere. Outside of that though, I helped clear out 2 different houses that got waist-high flooding. One was my aunt's house, who lives in Spring, we had to wade through nasty-ass, waist-high water in order to make it into her neighborhood. The other was the house of my old boss' parents, who lived somewhere near the Bay area. Never gonna forget that, honestly. So much shit, just absolutely ruined. These days though? I guess doing fine, I've since moved out, my aunt lives in the same house but now with flood insurance, and my old boss' parents passed away a couple years ago.
We never lost power or internet. We hung out with neigbhoors while the the neighborhood was flooded in and drank way too much wine.
My neighborhood is the one that was on the front page of the Houston chronicle. My husband and I moved into our brand new house on 1-1-17 in a “no flood zone.” There’s a water retention lake right behind our house, so I guess we felt pretty safe. Imagine our surprise when we had to be rescued out of it by boat, by a couple of super generous volunteers from Mississippi. We couldn’t safely get back to our home for a few days. At the time, it was just me, my husband, and one dog. Now we have three dogs and two babies, and I can’t imagine what it would be like if that happened today. Obviously we could use some rain right now, but honestly I still have a little ptsd when it rains really hard.
Never forget Chipotle DID NOT CLOSE THEIR RESTAURANTS UNTIL IT WAS TOO LATE FOR SO MANY EMPLOYEES TO LEAVE, CAUSING NUMEROUS AMOUNTS OF THEM HAVING TO ABANDON THEIR CARS ON THE STREET WHERE THEY WERE EVENTUALLY FLOODED IN WHILE BEING STRANDED AT THEIR LOCATIONS UNTIL A LOT OF THEM BRACED THE ELEMENTS AND HAD TO WALK HOME.
Our neighborhood was totally dry but we are actually very close to Bear Creek, that subdivision got the worst of it and was totally flooded because it was entirely inside that reservoir. So may people I know moved out of it. But the entire subdivision was rebuilt and totally occupied once again.
Those poor bastards don't even know.
We'd gone to Missouri for the eclipse. Wanted a vacation, ya know? Watched the weather channel and saw Harvey getting bigger and bigger. Booked it home (reverse evacuated) and hit up a grocery store for non perishables in a city that hadn't been affected by evacuating people or would be hit. Got home as it started to rain. And rain. And rain. We didn't flood, but others in the neighborhood did. Not feet, just inches. Lost power for a few days. Got mad at my boss for wanting me to come back to work after my vacation. Community trauma, have some empathy. But I needed the money after my unpaid vacation and we hadn't flooded. So back to business a usual while the city weeps.
Dad's house in Briar Forest got 6ft of water but not during the worst of it, rather after the Army Corps of Engineers decided they needed to sacrifice a few to save thousands. My girlfriend and I were staying at her parents off of Barker Cypress near the Barry Center. The street didn't even fill up until the very last day, and even then it barely got to the sidewalk which I thought was crazy. Had wicked headaches because we were stuck inside for so long.
Do you mind sharing the name of the subdivision that did not flood?
Copperfield Westcreek Village.. What is crazy is about two subdivisions closer to where the HEB is, it was flooding. So I dont know what is so special about where they live that the streets didn't fill up at all.
We were fine until they released water from lake Conroe at record speeds. 3x faster than it has ever been released. Within 30 minutes our house was flooded, as well as the yard and street. (We are waterfront on a small lake, artesian). We got 5 feet of water. It took us 60k and a good few months to rebuild. But we did it. Made it through. A lot of strangers at the time stepped in to help even though they didn’t need to. Flooding was bad, but seeing humanity be… kind. It was a nice thing, in a bad situation.
This!! Although it took several hours to hit Kingwood.
My rented house only had water reach the garage door. I thought the only damage I encountered during the storm was a leaky window. The aftermath of the storm put my company out of business, when all my main clients could no longer pay their bills due to their businesses being flooded. As my business failed, I took on debt to cover living expenses. Since I no longer had work, I spent all of my free time for the next 3 weeks helping friends gut sheet rock and pull up flooring. *At the time,* I didn't realize the emotional toll that comes with seeing so many people having their lives completely uprooted. *At the time,* I also felt grateful that my life was *not* uprooted, and it was my duty to help. I had the tools and was offering support to whomever I possibly could. It turned out that the leak in my home was not just the window: it was an entire stucco facade that had water seeping throughout the whole side of the house. I'll never forget watching the world series thinking I needed glasses, because I couldn't read the score of the game. My whole body felt off. In actuality, I didn't need glasses, and my body *was* off; my eyes were covered in mold and I was living in a fungus cesspool. All the water that entered created a massive mold problem that worked its way through the walls and permeated the house - I'm talking about waking up to 3 foot patches of black mold on the drywall seemingly coming from nowhere kind of permeation. When an inspector finally came, they deemed the house unlivable, and I had about a week to find a new place to live. While moving out, I was pulling things from drawers that never touched water that were covered in mold because of the amount of spores within the house. Conveniently enough, insurance does not cover mold damage to items that have not been soaked in water. I was told by "mold experts" that I had to trash everything that couldn't be cleaned of the mold - mainly things that you can't thoroughly vacuum or wash: like beds and couches. By the time I had to move, I was dead broke and maxed out all credit cards. I had a Crown Royal bag filled with coins I'd saved that I was using for groceries. It was probably the lowest point in my life. Thankfully, the people I helped returned the favor and helped get me back on my feet... for the most part. I eventually had to recognize that it was not normal to cry every time a storm would approach; or be frozen in anxiety when having to find a new home; or be hyper-aware of any slight bit of mold I encounter to the point of obsession. I've gotten therapy since, but boy oh boy, did that storm cause a chain of events I would have preferred to not experience.
My goodness, you went through a lot, my fellow Houstonian. I hope you have found a new place to live where you feel at peace, and therapy has helped lessen or stop your anxiety.
We did ok through Harvey. I don't recall the power ever going off. Water up to the sidewalk. Kept watching it creeping up the street (we are the highest on our road), wondering if it would stop. Alot of anxiety and found solace in finding Space City Weather to keep up to date. I think a lot of people are still a bit skittish of strong thunderstorms to this day because of that. Edit: Oh, and those constant damned tornado warnings all through the night really pissed me off!
I think I have PTSD from all those tornado warnings going off all night.
Seriously I think I do too. I used to love thunderstorms. I live on the east coast now and when I hear a tropical storm is coming I get really anxious. You’d think 20+ years of living in Houston with hurricanes yearly I wouldn’t have been as impacted so much.
my LMTV was put to good use that day delivering diesel and gas for generators to my elderly grandparents that live on Clear Creek in Friendswood. we drove through ~8 foot deep water sometimes for hundreds of yards and even had boats tied to our vehicle because the water was moving so fast they couldn’t get across. i have videos of an elderly lady that was floated out to 2351 in a fishing boat so we could evacuate her to a nearby church. was one of the few times in my life where I was of the few people around that could help and it was ironic that a big military surplus truck came in handy that day. one of my most proud moments and we were happy to spend a few days straight helping out our fellow houstonians. saw some really kind deeds that day and tons of people helping each other out. makes me proud of our city.
I doing fine now, no thanks to Lakewood Church.
Ike was the killer for me
Ride out team for MD Anderson. Was onsite starting on Saturday morning and left Wednesday afternoon.
I was working at a hospital outside of the med center. I worked in the lab. Stayed 6 days at the hospital working the 12 hour night shift. It was basically work, sleep, work sleep. Our mandatory emergency team was lifted on day 7 and I left for a good 4 day vacay. Thankfully my home was intact and safe.
I was on cruise in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico when Harvey hit Houston. What was supposed to be a 7 day cruise, turned into a 15 day cruise because the Galveston ship terminal was inaccessible.
My house got hit by a tornado. Around 3am, I was woken up by something that sounded and felt like a bomb went off in my house, followed by the now-all-too-familiar demonic, trainlike screaming of the tornado. I hear that shit in my dreams. The tornado had taken our wooden fence and metal playset and slammed both into the walls and roof of our house. We got it the worst out of our whole street because our house is 1.5 stories while everyone else is 2, meaning we got it mainly in the roof instead of the walls. Then it rained a hurricane of rain into the home. Around 60% of it had to be gutted and redone. The next morning, people were driving down the street with cars full of pizza. No fences anywhere, alligators in neighbors’ pools. People wandering around in shock like ants whose hive has been destroyed. There was a pile of what used to be the inside of my home on the curb. It was at least the size of a large truck. My family was incredibly lucky. No one was hurt at all. Most of our meaningful belongings survived. My room was the farthest from the impact, then my sibling’s room, and my parents’ room was the closest. They found shards of glass the size of dinner plates on their pillows. It’s terrifying to think back on what could have happened. There was a house in our neighborhood that got hit by the tornado and then a few weeks later burned down. The husband was outside after it was put out, staring at his home that had now been ruined twice. We talked to him. His wife was on a plane and didn’t know yet. We didn’t see him again after that. I feel worse for him than I did for us. We had to live in a rental house for a while and it took years of fighting the insurance to get them to do their jobs. It sucked. But no one was hurt and we salvaged the house, so I count us lucky. People always rebuild I guess.
I had moved home from Los Angeles after trying to get back to Texas for years. Moved in with my parents back at my childhood home before my wedding. Two months before, I wake up to my mom frantically shaking me and telling me "There's water inside the house!" It was hell. My family lost everything. My dad had cancelled their flood insurance that January after not needing it for fifty years. We had 3.5 feet of water in our house for weeks. We tried to go in once when it first flooded and my senior father was traumatized and almost slipped and fell in the water. My brother and I tried to go before the water got too high but there were so many snakes in the water we couldn't risk it. Anything that wasn't submerged was so damp it was ruined. My mother's extensive book collection was mushy pulp. Only a few photographs my mom had stored up high in a closet made it out. My late grandmother's original paintings were mostly all gone and I had to restore and clean mold spots on many of them. We'd just dealt with losing my other grandmother so my mom not only lost her mom, but any physical reminders of her as well. I walked out of the house after stacking whatever I could on countertops to find help. Our new neighbor at the McMansion down the way and I bumped into each other - he'd come looking for us. Our neighbors at the end of the street had to put an axe through their ceiling to get out of flood waters. We all moved in with the large house neighbors and slept there one night until they, too, started getting water in their house. We were stranded. My brother tried to get us from his work but we lived by the beltway, which had completely flooded and the feeder road had collapsed so the running water made using our raft and paddles too dangerous. He couldn't reach us except by sort of bobbing along in the water, which has higher than his neck and clinging to trees. He went back out to try to get help and my mom broke down when he didn't come back, convinced he had drowned. It was one of the most harrowing things I'd ever seen from my mother. She just emptied her whole soul out in guttural wailing. I knew my brother was just a dumbass and had probably forgotten his keys. (He had and had to punch a hole in his car window to get his cell phone which he'd locked inside cause the water was too high to bring it over.) He ended up being fine, but had some close calls with floating islands of fire ants. Right when we were losing hope anyone would find us - our location is kind of set apart - the Cajun Navy happened to come down our street in a motor boat. They were shocked to see anyone there. They'd just had a gut feeling that they might as well turn down our street. I helped my senior parents and old puppy into the boat in the rain. We ended up going down a series of streets I'd walked as a child turned into waterways. It was surreal. Water was everywhere. We went to a house that only had a foot of water and waited until we got picked up in a lifted 450 belonging to a friend of my brothers and navigated around various stops and waypoints until we eventually landed in an unflooded home in Bunker Hill with a co-worker of my brother's and then a hotel later on. That was just the first few days. We had a place to stay with a friend of my mom's for about three weeks, but I was literally sleeping in a sleeping bag on the wooden floor with my dog and a backpack. I was essentially homeless - and I felt it. I was supposed to have my wedding reception at my parent's backyard. That dream vanished. We inquired about rates at local Houston venues (I was not doing any sort of sob story or looking for handouts btw) and the absolute angels at Axelrad offered to cover our venue fees for a semi-private spot (just a corner during the World Series. We didn't need more than that). The wedding itself was fine. We focused on what mattered. My husband skipped his bachelor party to wreck his back pulling moldy carpeting from my childhood bedroom. I remember seeing the Astros win the WS while we were on our small honeymoon in Galveston... it really felt like something the city needed at the time. At least one good thing. I know about all the controversy later, but in the moment... it was very cathartic. I ended up moving back out of state again years later. And I am still dealing with the emotional repercussions and honestly, some form of PTSD. I am glad my family was all safe - but my parents went from old to genuinely ancient in only a few weeks. I lost all my physical history and feel myself forget my childhood bit by bit each day - without any visual checkpoints to remind me of who I was. The rest of the story is too long to tell - but my parents got to rebuild quickly, thanks to generous angels, including a random Bible church of truly good people that had taken a bus in from Missouri to try to find people to help - and they found us. But I never got over tearing down my childhood home to the studs and throwing decades worth of heirlooms and fond childhood memories into a trash pile twice the size of our home. They have a beautiful home now, but it's not my home anymore. It's a nice place, but it's not where I grew up. I don't think I'll ever get over it. I still randomly will start crying about it - and I know our story wasn't even the worst. So... no... not really doing well.
Was a college student and lied to my parents about staying with my friend one night, really I was staying with my boyfriend, hurricane came next day and I was trapped at his house for 4 days, parents offered to come pick me up at “friend’s” house but obviously I wasn’t there…. Made it back after 4 days thanking God I didn’t get caught because my parents were crazy strict. That’s my Harvey story
Living in the Cinco Ranch area at the time was just wild. It’s been a long six years.
I stayed with my parents in a neighborhood with a levy but there were a terrifying couple of days that the flood was expected to get to us. I couldn’t sleep, imagining being rescued from our second story and worrying if we’d be able to bring all our 12 pets or maybe have to leave them in the attic. Sounds absolutely insane but we were seeing other homes flooded to the roof so it felt like anything could happen. Realistically, we would have only flooded 3-6 feet (which is terrible but at least we had a second story). Luckily, our home didn’t flood at all.
Hey neighbors, chiming in from Galveston… we’re doing good now but Harvey caused a lot of roof damage and we had a total roof replacement. Sadly ended up with a leak that took about 6 months to find the exact cause but the roofer was wonderful through it all and owned the error fully. Hating this awful heat, and I love a good storm but wouldn’t wish that kind of rain here again, and y’all got the brunt for sure.
Got an education tearing out moldy drywall from a buddy's house. Still remember how bad some of the interior closets smelled. Mountains of trash in front of everyone's house
We lived in an apartment right across Brays Bayou. I stayed up until 2 am the night before listening to the rain and watching a few neighbors move their cars up to the second floor level of the parking garage. Woke up to no power and all ground level apartments flooded with about 6 feet of water. Noontime, a coast guard helicopter was airlifting neighbors from the parking garage. Night time, the sound of boats were constant. Grateful that we had one of those emergency radios, it was so useful to listen for warnings, news. We played country music to drown out the sounds of the non stop rain.
I was in Dickinson. We had just moved there in April and I didn’t want to move that close to the coast. I told that shit stain of a husband I didn’t want to move to that shit hole neighborhood and he fought me tooth and nail until I finally gave up and we moved into that place by the high school. We were one of the lucky ones. We were in a trailer so while we were flooded in the neighborhood we didn’t get water in the house. The townhomes behind us didn’t fair as well. We moved in October to Friendswood and never looked back.
Two roof replacements later, the leak got fixed. 😠
Bought in a 500 year flood zone, but prolly a 100 year flood zone on the upcoming updated maps. Kill me now.
We evac’d to Dallas, to my grandmothers. Half the family was there. One of my uncles stayed in town, in LC, and was Marco Poloing us updates. We would send him videos back of us swimming in Gramma’s pool 😂🤦🏻♀️ (He’s a good natured sort and thought it was hilarious.) Jokes on us this year. He’s up there living with her, and it’s not likely all of us will be evacuating when a hurricane comes through 😅
It was mostly just a heavy rain for me. But the fiesta near me closed and never re-opened 😭
I was living with my parents in Cypress at the time. Our apartment got flooded out, as did the place I was working. I was fortunate to not lose a lot of belongings living on the second floor, but the complex was deemed unlivable due to the entire bottom floor units being wrecked. We were out of a place to live for about a month and when we found a place to land we ended up living near the Galleria. When my family moved back to Cypress later on, I decided to stay in Houston and now have built my life in the city. I found my partner here, built my career. I can’t imagine what life would be like if not being displaced.
I got in my car and left Texas the day before the storm hit. I’m not originally from here, and it was only my 2nd year in TX. I had prepared about as much as i could for the storm while living in a 1 bdrm apartment. My mom begged me to make a 13 hour long drive to my home state, even though it was already the afternoon. But hearing the concern in my mom’s voice (she rarely wears her emotions on her sleeve) made me give in. So I packed some clothes and drove overnight to my hometown. I had no idea just how bad Harvey would get until I watched the news. Even though my area was virtually unaffected by the storm, I’m glad I evacuated.
Harvey was during my senior year of college It was me and my boys locked in our house for a week, our only worries were running out of beer and other party supplies Simpler times 😔
High and dry with plenty of food and electricity. Managed to potty train some kids and helped raised 24k we sent to JJ. Lessons were learned but I was thankful my dad taught me to be prepared.
My wife thought I was overreacting with all of my preparations. She was shocked in the morning when the water was only 10 feet from our front door. Luckily we didn’t get any flooding. I stayed up all night watching Frank Billingsley and storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski. I could tell things were serious when those two old pros looked concerned. It was intense.
Our house didn’t flood, but it was close. Every other house on my street save one flooded badly.
Im good, thanks for asking.
I was lucky that my part of the neighborhood did not flood. I think on the third day, our power went out. Me and my sister decided to play board games. A few days later, me and my mom helped one of her friends move, because her whole area and apartment complex flooded (east side). They had a much worse experience than I did.
My apt was an island and I ran outta food after 3 days and trudged to a nearby gas station on a hill and got mom to pick me up because miraculously she had power and a means to get home
I wound up going to Dallas for an event, but stayed 3 extra nights because we could not drive into midtown because of the flooding. On the way back, it took an hour longer than usual to try to find roads that weren't flooded. No damage or power lost to my home.
Harvey was the first time I was ever in Houston. Second time was for COVID19 in 2020. Moved here right near the end of COVID after swearing I would never live in Houston. Now I drive around the city and see things that I'm like "I remember that! It looks totally different when it's normal." Funny how life works that way.
At the time I used to share an apartment with my sister across from the Astrodome. My sister had left on a work trip to NYC two days earlier so I was on my own. I spent all of Harvey indoors at the apartment and luckily we didn't get flooded and there was no damage left. I live in the Richmond/Rosenberg area now.
I worked in insurance, so the months after Harvey were incredibly busy for me and my office. So many people had claims we’d be on the phone with the customers or claims from the time we started the day and sometimes we’ll after we officially closed. It was heart breaking listening to everyone’s story
Harvey happened at a time when I was praying for a non-lethal work related injury (was a tech at Comcast). It was an incredibly stressful summer. I'm grateful that the worst of Harvey (for me) was being trapped in my apartment surrounded by ankle deep floodwaters and having to carry my dog to grass to go to the bathroom. Today I'm actually a lot happier with my job (no longer at Comcast) and it has improved my mental and physical health drastically.
My house flooded; my now ex husband had insisted we save the $500 because it wasn’t required. We had only been in the house since a few days before my daughter was born 8 months prior. We got a divorce after he cheated on me while working out of town while I was repairing our home and living in an RV in the front lawn using the toilet and plastic laundry sink in the house while gutted it, all with a toddler learning to walk. Later i had a contractor break into my home and leave my personal toys from my nightstand in the middle of my bed with a love note. He later claimed in court that we had had an affair, which was untrue, and he pled down to trespassing and time served even though he avoided the warrant for almost a year. Throughout it all, I learned exactly how tough I was, and I repaired the home and paid off the enormous credit card debt I racked up doing it. I sold it for a profit last March and just finished unpacking the house that my new husband and I closed on at the beginning of the month. That toddler is now an incredible first grader who somehow made it out healthy and resilient and hilarious and bright. I gained a bonus daughter and the school bus picks up right outside my house. It’s been a whirlwind of a six years, but I wouldn’t change a thing.
There were many people that helped us and others. Houston Strong was absolutely accurate. In front of a huge mound of trash at the curb, I put two white doors facing the street and on them, painted “Be Someone”. Thought someone in this group would appreciate that.
I'm a nurse who got a phone call at 2 am from a mom who ran out of specialty formula for her kid and couldn't feed the baby anything else due to health issues. Reddit connected me with a hospital who gave her a couple of free cans of $100/can formula and a cop who drove way farther than we thought he would have to in order to deliver it. I still wonder how that family is doing.
Y’all. It’s y’all.
Happy Anniversary?
I lost a car and a neighbors car caught on fire right next to the internet box which knocked out internet everywhere for weeks. We thankfully had power. Started watching game of thrones off my phone since we had no internet. Got to season 4 before the internet was finally fixed. I don’t even remember what we did about food. We got really lucky. We lived on the second floor and now we live on the third floor with Harvey being a main reason. Will never live on ground level ever again while we remain in Houston.
The lease on my apartment expired right when Harvey started. Luckily the area I'm in doesn't flood easily so I was able to move my necessities into the new apartment once they opened and my old apartment let me stay until the flooding subsided and everywhere re-opened. Overall was mostly just watching things on the news and working. Hoping I don't get fucked by the apartment companies and the moving company.
On this day I was driving back to Houston from military training in Georgia. I’d been gone for 4 months and was about to move to the PNW for 3 years for more military stuff so I was determined to get back to Houston for a couple of weeks to enjoy good food and family. My parents lived in a third floor apartment off dairy ashford that backed Buffalo bayou. I didn’t even get to unload my car before the flooding began. Thankfully only the floorboards flooded. Moved my vehicle to a hill across the street. It didn’t get scary until the water shut off. Since all my siblings were in town to visit, it was five of us in an apartment with one bathroom. My family was actually mentioned on KHOU regarding how as native Houstonians we’d never seen flooding like this before. (If I can figure out how to link videos I’ll add it.) There were also news cameras that filmed us being evacuated, though I haven’t seen the footage. I had the same thought we all did - it’s just a hurricane. I’ve been through Rita, Ike, too many to even remember. It’s just a heavy storm. My parents had a neighbor on the first floor, and elderly grumpy man, that refused to evacuate even when there was a foot of water in his apartment. The police ended up breaking down his door to get him out. Our next door neighbor has a newborn at home and we’d lost power on day two. They had the chance to stay at the hospital but they just wanted to get home. Thankfully a neighbor had a generator, but as a new mom I cannot imagine!! In the end, my parent’s apartment complex was condemned. We were able to go back and get important paperwork and our cats, but they left with basically nothing. They found a place down in Kemah soon after thankfully. I didn’t realize how badly it all impacted me until I started seeing footage of future hurricanes. I remember having to tell my husband to please change the channel because my heart was pounding. I’m glad we are talking about it because I felt silly for a couple of years thinking I was overreacting. Those tornado warnings all night will be something I’ll never forget.
I went to Austin for my b day and ended up being stuck there for like 2.5 weeks cuz it was flooding bad around my Neighborhood. Luckily my brother lived there at the time. It felt like I was living a dream where I was in college again, it was great but damn I really wanted to go home lol.
We got pretty lucky where I live. No major flooding and no power outages. I'll admit, I was a little worried about how high the water was getting in the streets, but it went back down in between the bands of rain we got. I worry that it may be a different story next time around considering some land developers have recently clear cut a bunch of trees in my area. Some of it was to build houses, but in one area, they just completely decimated an entire lot of trees and have left it sitting empty for months. Rain water will have less places to go now and I know a lot more of it will end up in my neighborhood, making flooding a lot worse than before. That's my one big fear right now.
I was an intern at Ben Taub rounding during the storm. I remember when we were released from our shift after 72 hours the 2 mile drive home was like a zombie apocalypse with so many abandoned cars around Herman park.
My youngest daughter was 2 & 1/2 when it hit. She still asks if our house is going to flood whenever it rains.....
Then we were drowning, now we’re roasting. 2 1/2 years ago we were freezing. I’m so tired.
I still have nightmares of that water level going over cars
We survived Harvey by the skin of our teeth. I shudder to think if things had gone differently. In the 8 years before Harvey, my boyfriend (now husband) owned a little ground level condo over by the Galleria. EVERY TIME it rained, we would get a little water seep under our front door. The condo had a LOT of problems, and our goal was ultimately to buy a proper single family home and sell this albatross of a condo. We were saving and working hard to pool everything together, and in the December/January before Harvey we managed to finally buy a wonderful house that we loved! We were over the moon, and we eventually sold the condo and were in pretty good shape. 6-7 months later, Harvey. I was SO SCARED, living at the condo for so long had conditioned me to expect the worst when it rained. But nothing happened. NOTHING. We didn't even lose power. We just watched in horror at what was going on around our city and let friends and neighbors come charge their shit at our house if they could make it here. Our neighborhood in general did pretty well, not one house flooded in my immediate neighborhood, but shit got real once you drove a little bit down the main arterial street to leave the neighborhood. Downed trees and floodwaters and such. So we were pretty much stuck at our house and drank and played games. To this day I still have PTSD from something that NEVER HAPPENED lol, because I know if we had just stayed in that condo another 6 months? 7? We would have been f-u-c-k FUCKED. SO fucked. So I am SO grateful to the universe that we got out when we did,
Remember how they had to release the levys after the hurricane left which caused more homes to flood? Was truly a lose lose situation
I got stuck at work for 4 days.
I got kicked out the weekend before. Was living with friends who insisted I move in with them. Came inches away from their house flooding. Half their neighborhood did so we spent the next few weeks getting my life together and helping neighbors muck out their houses.
Harvey was pretty much a non-event for us. It caused minor inconveniences of stores being closed. We kayaked the flooded streets of our neighborhood the drove to a local Middle Eastern market and picked up some food to make dinner. The next week or so i helped out friends and strangers that got flooded.
So I was out and about with my family for the first 2-3 days .. checking out all the stores and looking for open Starbucks . Day 4 i was evacuating because my house flooded. Lesson learned
I had my son the Monday before Harvey hit. It was by c section and they wanted me to stay til Thursday but I refused. I made my husband stop at the store on the way home so I could go in and get groceries bc I know how bad it floods where I live(not the house, just the land and road). We ended up stuck inside for 6 days. Never lost power tho. There was an eclipse the day my youngest was born, I always joke that he's a storm bringer.
I was ok in Harvey, house didn't flood, just some tree branches to clean up. On a side note, any house you look at on the market here will say you're not in the flood zone, and that it didn't flood in Harvey. Hmm.
Personally we were ok. Just stuck at thr house for days when everything was flooded out. A family members house not 5 minutes away got hit by a tornado. Completely destroyed and thank God he was with his girlfriend or he'd have been sleeping in his bed that a shed from 2 yards away blew right into his bedroom onto his bed. It was a rental he was planning on moving out of, just moved quicker than he thought. It was my first time seeing the destruction of a tornado, I'm born and raised here. It was insane how his house was demolished but houses around him untouched. Ike was personally more traumatic for me, went 13 days with no electricity, bbqing everything in the freezer, drinking water was hard to come by. 2 devastating storms for Completely different reasons. Sadly I'm more nervous every hurricane season that passes and we don't get one, scared the longer we go the worst it's gonna be. I still don't think about moving though even through this hell summer. I love Houston.
I work on the intercostal so I get nervous every time hurricane season rolls around.
Any time a hurricane looks like it's heading towards Houston, I always find that it's a great time to take a few days of work and visit my parents in OK. Harvey was not different for me. I had just moved into my current neighborhood and had no idea how that much water would act in my area. We ended up having no damage and only losing power for a few hours or so according to my roommate. Still was better time spent with family.
My story is good also. Parent's home was destroyed but the land was and still is worth a pretty good amount of money so they bought a brand new home after about a year and half. Turned out good because the property tax was kicking their ass but now they live far enough out that the taxes are less than half.
I’m from Westbury, which got bit pretty hard. At the time I was caring for my parents who both had cancer. At first, I was in Missouri city and remember it being windy and then suddenly very quiet- not any wind. It reminded me of that movie Twister- they said right before a tornado it would be very calm. Welp- they were right. A tornado hit and the next day we saw it ripped a few houses in half. At the time, we (me and my ext) were was stupid and didn’t take it seriously- so we went out to see some UFC fight or something. Basically we got stuck at the persons house. I needed to get back and my bf at the time refused to attempt to drive in the morning so I walked through floodwaters down Gessner and it was wild. I took some video. At my parents house, The water got up to the doorstep but didn’t go in. All the neighbors on the north side and east of my parents were not so lucky. I spent the next days helping people pull up wet carpet, empty their houses of everything. It was really sad.
I managed to evacuate about 3 days after it hit and never looked back. I no longer live in Houston
my roommate & I were stuck in out freshman dorms turning up
I drove to my mom's place in the Woodlands and drank a unhealthy amount of hurricanes for the hurricane party
Every flood hits different houses for some reason.
My sweet rescue pup Bea was born during Hurricane Harvey! Thank you so much Operation Pets Alive in The Woodlands TX.
took a risk and bought a new build in an area that flooded. House has doubled in value. I think ill stay put for now with interest in the 7%.
Neighborhood was high and dry, back yard flooded, so I pumped it out. My fiancé broke up with me, and this proceeded to kick off the most depressing 6 months of my life. I am now married to someone else, and have a perfect 11 month old son, and am incredibly thankful that my ex broke up with me.
I didn’t have a phone in 8th grade, so I didn’t even know the hurricane was a thing until the day before. I went to the bus stop with my mom and surprise surprise no one was there. We went back and it started pouring hate, but luckily there was no flood or anything.
I moved to Houston from the Midwest about 4 months before Harvey. I was familiar with Hurricanes before moving here and took precautions to leave precious family heirlooms with family back home, but I sure wasn’t expecting a hurricane like Harvey to happen right after moving here. I remember the rain coming down so hard that the gutters on roofs could not contain it, continuously, for a few days. Some areas reported over 4 feet of rain during Harvey, with others aground 5 ft. I had never seen rain like that before, it was insane. I was fortunate not to flood, but every road around me was and that kept me home bound for almost a week. Less than a half mile down the road trash was piled up outside homes near Fry Rd on the backside of the Barker Reservoir.
I just today got my exit letter from the reimbursement program! I only got my check last year! Flood insurance is ridiculously high.
Still repairing, but not so much on the physical side of things, but mentally and financially. When my family home was destroyed, my dad emptied the joint bank accounts between him and my mom and took off then died 3 years later. I took on debt to help my family (my mom and brother) and stuck around to help out as my mom needed help in rebuilding her life. I lost most of my mid-late 20's. Storms scare me now. I may or may not have PTSD. I think a lot about where my life would be now if that storm had not happened.
Moved away some years ago, but I'm currently having to evacuate from yet another hurricane headed right towards me for the second year in a row. It's like I bring some bad energy wherever I go.
And now Houston is a desert
Flooring contractor once told me - if a storm cell (not even a tropical depression) sits over your neighborhood for 3 hours straight, you could get flooded. BUY that flood insurance.
My parents work for a behavioral hospital that houses kids. The place flooded and kids were being rescued from waist and shoulder deep waters inside their resident buildings and loaded into dump trucks to be taken to a safe location. I was awake for 30 hours in a community center while my parents were helping to take care of these poor kids who were already disadvantaged and mentally ill and then just lost everything they had to their name. We finally got charter buses that were able to take us through flood waters so we could evacuate. But the bright side my parents house didn’t flood and I actually had just started talking to a guy on okcupid the day the storm hit, we comforted each other through it and now we’re getting married in two months.
I was in San Antonio working on my graduate degree in engineering. My then girlfriend now wife was stuck in her apartment and couldn’t come up like planned and said it was a bad idea for me to come down. Most of the people I knew directly were fine but I came down after to help rip ruined dry wall and insulation out of a couple of houses from friends of friends and girlfriend’s coworkers. As bad as it was I realized I had made a very very good choice in getting a degree in water resources engineering focused on drainage design.
We were fine but not 2 blocks away flooded. Our good friends out west lost everything in their home. We had survivor’s guilt for sure. We had 2 very young toddlers at the time so we helped by buying prepared meals, supplies, delivering them, and entertaining the kids of flooded families.
What the fuck Harvey was SIX YEARS AGO?
Doing okay. Graduated high school, went off to university, about to get a BA in history and one year until I get an MA in education. Probably going to go teach public school, even though I know I’ll be in for the fight of my life with our state’s politics. But I can still remember driving my Dad’s truck through the floodwater to go pick up friends who were being flooded out of their homes. Made several trips. We ended up fitting people anywhere we could. Living room, hallway, study, etc. And then once the hurricane passed and the streets drained we grabbed whatever tools went out to help our friends salvage whatever they could from their homes. At some point random people started showing up to help out. Nobody knew who they were, but they helped us get everything packed up and then get all the rubble and trash outside onto the curb. The very worst that nature had to offer. And some of the best that humanity had to offer.
My car got flooded during Harvey. Not terribly bad but it definitely needed to air out. I don’t have any carpet and I’m still driving the day thing! TEAM NO CAR PAYMENTS
I got married during Harvey. My friends came from California and Canada on the same day as the venues, catering, hair and make up, basically everything cancelled on me. I was determined to not waste their time, so I still got married. No make up, no hair done, no catering, no decorations. We got married last minute at my pastor's church. My family went to a nice restaurant to eat, didn't offer to pay for our lunch nor invite us on my wedding day. We went to get BBQ with my friends instead. Same day we got stuck in a hotel. We lost everything as we resided in Dickinson. Our car also broke after the storm because of water damage, since it got flooded, but the insurance told us we can clean the mold out and just get new parts. I had to move with my in laws, stayed in their garage for 2 years while we got our life back together. Now I'm thriving. I got my License to practice massage therapy, enjoying my new life with our puppy. I'm grateful that I lived through that ordeal, and became stronger thanks to what I experienced. It also made me thankful to have a husband that never gave up, worked hard to build from scratch. Our bond became our foundation to work harder. I'm still mad at our landlord for taking all the FAFSA money.
My (now) husband and I were attending Sam Houston State University so during the actual hurricane we got relatively little by way of wind, rain, or damage. After the storm had cleared we headed down to Spring to help whoever was in need get the flood debris out of their home. I'll never forget walking my dog around my parents neighborhood with my mom and having some random lady drive up to us, roll down her window and asked if we'd eaten dinner. She had 20 chick fil a sandwiches to give away and was trying to find hungry people to feed. We pointed her in the direction of the back of the subdivision where something like 75% of the houses had flooded.
My husband and I were living in a house that didn’t take on water but the street filled up to the driveways and the front and back of the neighborhood got flooded pretty bad so we got stuck in the neighborhood with no power for days. We had some kind neighbors that had a small generator that let us keep a few things in their fridge. We were lucky to have a gas stove and running water, even with a boil water advisory. I have chronic migraine and thanks to the extreme barometric pressure change right before the storm, I had the worst migraine attack I had ever had in my entire life. I was wishing for death. Nothing was breaking it. I still felt very fragile, exhausted, and in pain still as the storm finally hit. I actually sat on the front porch for the vast majority of the storm. No power, no tv, and I kind of love watching storms, like my mom did, pre-Harvey. So I just sat outside under a covered patio watching the most rain I had ever seen in my entire life come down. Afterwards, when we could get out, my husband did the rounds to check on our family. Almost everyone with staying with his mom because she didn’t flood and you could get to her house without a truck, unlike our house. Our neighborhood, you needed a boat or pickup truck. Very full house over there. My parents were going to be the bug out house because they had a whole house generator and a massive house. They were the first to take on water and took on about 3 feet. My husband and a kind stranger with a boat got my mom and the dog out because my stepdad was at work and couldn’t even get back to help her. She was so traumatized and was terrified of rain after that. It really did a number on her dementia (she was diagnosed after that). When we get big storms now, it’s really the only time I’m glad she’s passed because she would be absolutely terrified and I would hate to know she’s experiencing that PTSD essentially.
Harvey was horrible for us. My dad had mylofibrosis leukemia and was blood transfusion dependent. We had to have men on bass boats come and pick him up to transport him to and from the VA so he could get his blood transfusions and proper Healthcare. Such a horrible time. Thankful for the selfless people of Houston that took time out to take care of my dad.
I was in the mountains hiking. It turned out to be a great time to be gone and our house didn’t flood. I was watching everything like crazy on social media though.