Our old home survived the flooding in the Houston area caused by Hurricane Harvey. The new owners contacted us last Friday after the rain had started. He had questions on hooking up his generator to the house. Bruce had walked him through the connections the day before the closing but he wanted to go through it again. He had left the house earlier in the day to get a new plug for the generator as his generator had a different style plug from the one that we had used. At the point he said there was already streets covered with water. Bruce walked him through everything again.
On Saturday he sent us a text saying they were fine, still had power and were high and dry at the house. He did sent us pictures and you could see that the creek had overflowed its banks (that means coming up at least 20 feet deeper) and had flowed into the back of the property and had flooded the mini barn. The ditches were full in the front of the house but they had not overflowed yet.
Bruce check with him yesterday as we had not heard anything and they said they were find. The water had come all the way to the house but with the house being between 3 to 4 feet off the ground they did not get any water in the house. It flowed under the house and he said they had about 2 foot of clearance above the water. That is the same situation we had in 1994 when Houston flooded. He said they were fine, lost some stuff in the mini barn but otherwise no problems.
Heather was stuck in her apartment from Friday afternoon when she got off work early until sometime on Wednesday when she ventured out to a grocery store that was open. Fortunately her apartment parking area is a couple of feet higher than the surrounding roads so the vehicles did not get flooded even though there was water in the parking lot for awhile. Both vehicles (one hers and one ours) are SUVs so they are higher up. For future emergencies of this type she plans on leaving one of the vehicles at her office parking garage and having someone bring her home. That way she has one car up high in a garage in case the other floods. She made it to the store but had to get pass lots of abandoned vehicles in the road ways.
Being on the second floor she was also safe from having water come in her apartment. Although apparently she has a small leak in her chimney as she had water dripping through it during all the heavy rains. Her power, water, cable TV and cell phone kept working the whole time but she was going stir crazy stuck in the apartment all that time by herself. We were talking with her frequently but I am sure it is not fun being stuck by yourself for that long with no way to get out. It doesn’t help that you are hearing all the news reports about dams that are having emergency releases of water that are in her area and then there are all those emergency warnings they send on your phone. Her office is closed all week and then with Monday being a holiday it will be Tuesday before she goes back to work.
Most of the roads around her were impassable because of water and even if she could have got to one of the major highways most of them were under water at certain points so there was no way for her to leave and go stay with someone. Houston does not recommend evacuation because of a disaster they had as a result of a hurricane 10 or 12 years ago when everyone tried to leave and got stranded on the roads. They only recommend evacuation for those areas close to the coast.
The rest of Bruce’s family are also fine. Stuck at their homes until the water recedes but no one had any flood damage.
The pictures we have been seeing are unbelievable, hard to comprehend that much water coming down in such a short time. Some of the numbers we are hearing are in the 50 inch range.