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Report from a Harvey House
If you look at Kelley’s Restaurant (appears at about 0:45 seconds, long building with the black roof), the street where I live is opposite the Kelley’s. I live about half a mile from FM-518 up that road.
Since everyone has been hearing about Hurricane Harvey on the news, I though folks might be interested in a typical experience by someone who went through Harvey in the Houston area. When I say a typical experience I mean just that — typical, not what you are seeing on the news.
Quilter and I left our home in League City last Friday. At that time it was still Hurricane Harvey and looked as if it would hit land near Corpus Christi. My instinct was to stay, but the problem with that is Quilter is receiving cancer treatment at MD Anderson in downtown Houston. My fear was Clear Creek, north of my house would flood. With my house on the south side of the creek that would leave us neatly cut off from MD Anderson. We decided the percentage move was to relocate to my brother’s place on the west side of Houston. What I did not consider was his place was north of Buffalo Bayou, and MD Anderson is south of the bayou.
So what happened? It rained. And rained some more, and rained still more. Storm hits land, marches inland, turns around and heads back the Gulf and east on the Texas coast. Really slo-o-owly. Dumping an inch or two of rain every hour. From Friday through Tuesday. (By the fourth day we were looking for some old guy building a big boat surrounded by cages filled with animals.)
We watch lots of the weather channel. And the local news and checked the National Hurricane Center on the Internet. And watched movies. (And I wrote and worked on the day job. The problem with working remotely is you do not get hurricane days.) That’s right, through the whole rainy period we had power and Internet connectivity. Then Tuesday evening about 6:00 the rain stops and the sun comes out and we are thinking we are through the worst of it.
Then the power goes out. It stays out for a day. Next morning my brother goes to the store for ice and charcoal. (Sun’s shining – remember?) We barbecue all the meat in the fridge and the freezer. Take a big pot of water, put that on the grill, get the water boiling. We pour some of it into the drip coffee maker for our morning coffee. Then we boil all the eggs in the refrigerator with the rest of the water. Fortunately weather is not too hot. The storm is sucking cool air from the north into Houston.
What we cannot do is go to MD Anderson or home. Quilter has an immunotherapy infusion scheduled Tuesday and a Supportive Care appointment on Wednesday. Remember all that rain? It has turned Houston into a city of moats. Every river, bayou, creek, or drainage ditch is filled with water. Quilter and I are cut off from MD Anderson by Buffalo Bayou. Would not matter anyway since MD Anderson is an island thanks to a moat provided by Brays Bayou near the Medical Center. So MD Anderson is shut down.
Power comes back almost 23 hours after it went out. Then goes away. Finally after almost exactly a full day it comes back for good.
We spend Thursday getting an emergency prescription filled for Quilter. We left League City with a week’s worth. Which meant she was out on Thursday. Get the prescription at a local pharmacy. The real issue is the rest of the prescription is sitting waiting for us at a pharmacy in League City, closed by the storm. Which we cannot reach, and is closed anyway. So we cannot transfer it. After about four hours of phone calls to MD Anderson, an open pharmacy we can reach, and our medical insurance company the prescription is filled and I get it. Our medical insurance company even okayed it – they actually were cutting red tape for Harvey.
Finally, today the waters part enough for us to return home. Actually they receded enough yesterday, but there were still issues, and we stayed put.
So what happened in my neighborhood? It rained. And rained some more, and rained still more. And Clear Creek flooded. It filled up the area with runoff. Everything north of FM-518 (League City’s Main Street) flooded. So did FM-518. At one point there was four-five feet of water in FM-518. And the entrance to the subdivision was flooded. But, just as at my brother’s none of the houses near mine (including my own) flooded. So my neighbors watched lots of the weather channel. And the local news and checked the National Hurricane Center on the Internet. And watched movies. That’s right, through the whole rainy period they had power and Internet connectivity. And sure enough – they lost power for a day.
The only difference between their experiences and mine were that they could not leave the neighborhood until Thursday and the local Walgreen flooded, so I would not have been able to fill the prescription.
I am back at my house in League City after a week away from it. The roof leaked in one spot, but not badly. The food in the freezer and refrigerator had to be tossed. And that was our great Harvey adventure. It was probably similar or even identical to the Harvey experience of 90% of the folks in the Greater Houston Metropolitan Area. Yes, there were 80,000 houses that took water, but there is something on the order of 2.2 million households in the GHMA.
Anyhow for me and my neighbors (and everyone at my brother’s neighborhood except one guy who got panicked by the weather channel and managed to drown his truck on Wednesday seeking safety) Harvey was mostly boring. Even the guy who drowned his truck managed to walk back to his place. The sun was shining, after all.
Seawriter
Published in General
S.A., you haven’t told us much about your experiences during the hurricane. Feel like sharing?
And Umbra Australis, except asking for prayers, haven’t state much about her trials either.
Prayers and blessing for all of our families and friends in the area.
I presume you mean me. Thanks!
Had I world enough and time, I would. As it is, only kinda–b/c I’m busy and tired and distracted. Nothing much about the hurricane specifically.
Here’s the gist, without proofing or pretty writing.
Mrs. Augustine and the kids and I are staying at a mission house in Channelview, TX. We’ve stayed here before and I notice the backyard drainage was very poor and a threat to the house. I bought a shovel more than a month ago for the house, and I’ve used it. The land is shaped much better now; or, we might say, I dug some ugly trenches. Either way, it saved the house.
But during the storm we were in Friendswood, TX, at my parents’ home. My father woke me up Sunday morning around 2 AM. He prudently said very little at first, only asking me to look out the window.
There I saw Chigger Creek flowing within inches of the house, instead of the usual 30 or 50 feet away. I woke up my wife and had her look rather than true to explain much.
Two nieces and two nephews were with us as well, with my sister and her husband having had their flight diverted to DFW.
That made 9 kids plus my elderly grandmother to get out of the house in pouring rain around 2:30 AM. But it worked.
The house next door is my uncle’s. In 1979, when my parents’ house (then my grandparents’) flooded, the uncle’s house was fine. They were out of town. We moved over ok, and then my parents and I went back to try to save things in the house. Mercifully, the creek started to fall before 5 AM, so we quit.
Sunday-Wednesday we were trapped in our bit of Friendswood by risen creeks. I think it was Monday night that it got bad again. My alarm was set to 4 AM for checking the water level, but my father’s alarm was first at 2 AM, and the water was higher than before.
Parents and I worked for a few hours, but again the creek fell around 5 or 6 and we quit. It was all downhill from there, but roads were still unsafe for cars until midmorning Wednesday.
Bless your heart, St. A! It sounds horrible! It also sounds like you were enormously helpful to your family, all the generations. I’m so glad you are safe. Stay that way, ya hear! ;-)
Matthew, Chapter 6: 19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
I’m in Austin, so I have nothing first hand to report. Last I heard my sister has about six inches of water in her home and is currently staying with her in-laws in Katy.
(Also: I’m not sure if your pronoun referred to me or my sister, but just in case: I’m a him, not a her. :) )
Your sister, she is the one having the trials is she not? Prayers for everybody all around. Even us in Montana, as we are near most of the fires, wind from the east blowing it into the valley. No danger but the smoke is supper bad.
Love that post. So (hate this cliche expression) “authentic”. But it was! Great piece of work. BTW did you take the drone video? Very well done! Slow, HD, very moving.
Thanks for the post
I did not make the video. My youngest son found it on a newspaper web site and sent me the link.
Seawriter