Last Saturday, September 9, I happily took a big bite out of a Double California Style from Freddy's Frozen Custard and Steakburgers. Ordinarily, this would be unremarkable. But to me it fulfilled a two week odyssey back to normalcy after life was rudely interrupted by trillions of gallons of rainfall.
Back on Saturday, August 26, I was also craving a steakburger. We pulled into the parking lot of Freddy's on Dairy Ashford only to find out that they had closed due to the approach of Tropical Storm Harvey; the first outer feeder band had rained upon us that morning. After finding another place that was open, we went home with that night's dinner. As I crossed Buffalo Bayou, I had no idea that I wouldn't see the other side of the Dairy Ashford bridge for quite a while. The previous night, Harvey had made landfall as a category 4 hurricane at Rockport and then stalled not very far away. This set up a terrible rainfall scenario where the northeast quadrant of the storm would begin acting as a conveyor belt scooping up moisture from the Gulf of Mexico and dumping it on us.
The overnight period of August 26-27 brought us three drenching thunderstorms that rocked us awake and terrified us like the ghosts out of Charles Dickens'
A Christmas Carol. After each visitation, the street intersection at our Ten Tree Corner would fill with water and then drain. Each time, the water would take a longer time to drain away. When daybreak arrived on the morning of Sunday, August 27, the website for the Harris County Flood Warning System was showing Buffalo Bayou close to top-of-bank.
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| Rainfall Totals on Buffalo Bayou @ Dairy Ashford. Chart taken from Harris County Flood Warning System website. |
After a daytime period with a continuous drizzle, the bloggers over at
Space City Weather advised that we were in for another "show" in the overnight period. We would see one more drenching storm that ended at 11 p.m. and our flooded intersection did not drain until around midnight. It was apparent that the storm drain network was straining under the deluges. But the worst of the overhead threat was over. By the morning of Monday, August 28, my smartphone had rung with 10 tornado alerts and 20 flash flood alerts, but we were safe. My yard was turned into a swamp, but the house itself was mostly dry, thanks to Gorilla Tape strategically applied to vulnerable areas. Experience from the previous two years (Memorial Day 2015, Tax Day 2016) had armed me with valuable knowledge in preparing for Harvey.
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| Buffalo Bayou @ Dairy Ashford stream elevation |
This is the point where things turned catastrophic for many on Houston's west side. Prior to Harvey, the Corps of Engineers was able to protect areas adjoining Buffalo Bayou by controlling the spillways of the Addicks and Barker reservoirs. Even the previous stream elevation level record of 70 feet during the Tax Day 2016 event still had the bayou within its banks. This time, however, the reservoirs were reaching capacity, and a decision was made to accelerate the release of water over the spillways. When I awoke on the morning of Tuesday, August 29, I looked out my front window to see puddles of still water standing at the mouths of the street drains. My heart sank. My own street was a mile away and many feet above Buffalo Bayou, but I knew that if I was seeing even a single drop of standing water on my street, it meant that nearby streets and homes at lower elevations were severely flooded.
We had sunshine again, and floodwaters had receded from nearly every other part of Houston, but the bayou-adjacent area remained inundated for several days. We were far enough away to be safe, but close enough to observe the breadth of the disaster response. Coast Guard helicopters were in the sky. Units from the El Paso and Fort Worth police departments patrolled our streets. A Fire and Rescue team from Lincoln, Nebraska ferried people out of flooded homes by boat. A steady stream of privately-owned trucks and trailers hauling watercraft turned our corner as they made their way to and from the disaster scene; that was the "Cajun Navy" in action.
In the week before Labor Day weekend, those of us who could were trying to return back to normal routines. Commuting was definitely not back to normal, though. Every north-south bayou bridge between the Grand Parkway in Katy to Voss Road near the Galleria area -- a distance of 17 miles right through the middle of the metro area -- was underwater. Motorists who depended on these bridges -- especially the West Sam Houston Tollway -- were making long diversions that exacerbated traffic woes in areas of town that were un-flooded. On normal days, the Galleria area is notoriously congested. After Harvey, gridlock on the westside was so bad I had dubbed it "California Traffic Simulator." One afternoon, I sat in in my car after office hours and realized that I could make a drive all the way to Austin in same amount of time that it was going to take simply to go home to the other side of the bayou -- a drive I normally make in a leisurely 30-45 minutes on local roads and bridges.
By last weekend, the outflows from the dams had been reduced to the point where the city and TxDOT were able to re-open nearly of our bridges again. I had my celebratory Freddy's burger. But my temporary traffic gripes are trivial compared to the immense losses of lives and homes. I will be looking for those small favors I can do to ease the burdens of friends, neighbors, and people I'll probably never meet in person.
