Harvey: End
A cool breeze flows through Houston on the night of November 1st, 2017. The city is quiet tonight, transfixed in front of the television screen. It’s the bottom of the 9th in Los Angeles, and the Astros are up 5-1. Charlie Morton commands the pitcher’s mound as a tense Corey Seager approaches home plate. An eternity passes as Morton winds up for the pitch while an entire city leans closer to their screens.
The ball flies, the bat cracks, the ball flies once more.
“Here’s a ground ball, right side- could do it! The HOUSTON ASTROS ARE WORLD CHAMPIONS! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FRANCHISE HISTORY!”
Somewhere in the city, a broken home is whole again. The hum of industrial fans become the roar of a crowd’s cheers, sawdust becomes confetti, and a cold beer starts tasting a little bit more like champagne. The drywall will still need to be installed tomorrow, and the garbage piles still won’t be picked up for another week or so, but the city will still celebrate tonight.
I can hear the cheers of everyone in our apartment complex through the open balcony door. My sister screams in happiness with my mom, and my dad smiles as he walks out of the living room. I’m melting in my seat and cry tears of joy. For the first time in a long time, I will fall asleep on my air mattress and forget about the loss of the past two months. I am a world champion, and floodwaters couldn’t take that away from me tonight.
Harvey VI
I can smell the dust settling in the house from inside my car. I park behind our now-totaled CR-V and open the center console, taking from it my face mask and a pair of gloves. I exit the car into the heat of a Houston summer, feeling moisture collect under my long sleeves. Today, I’m demolishing the tile from the foundation.
Walking up to the house, the sounds of half a dozen industry grade fans grow louder, and as I walk inside I’m instantly greeted by a refreshing cool breeze of air conditioning. We kept the fans blowing and the temperature really low to remove moisture from the air and to keep mold from growing.
My heart sinks a little as I stare at the empty skeleton of the place I called home for 17 years. The walls of the first floor are torn down, revealing the inner workings of the house. Most of the furniture and fixtures were removed and now lie on the curb in mountains of garbage, waiting for waste management to take it away. The floor is barren except for spray painted construction notes: “Stairs,” “Carpet,” Power outlet.” It never got any easier to come by, knowing that every time I visit I would just strip more memories away from the house and dump them out on the front lawn.
I pick up the sledgehammer and walk into the kitchen. I raise it above my head with both hands and slam it onto the tile. Small cracks form, and some chips fly in all directions. I swing the hammer over my head, and I bring it down on the tiles once again. And again. And again. Years of fantasizing about breaking something in the house during my teenage years were finally coming to fruition. I put all my anger into those tiles, and they fractured underneath me.
It takes me an hour to get through the kitchen, at which point I’m already beat. I still had the foyer and the bathrooms to demolish as well, but I might as well take a break. My muscles were sore from shuffling huge piles of garbage around yesterday anyway.
I walk up to my room to relax and take my mind off of the work. Aside from some moving boxes and other random things, my room is exactly how I left it - my little sanctuary of normal. I lied down on my bed and tried to imagine that everything outside the door to my room was back to the way it was, that Harvey didn’t happen, that I was still somewhat complete. But all I can do is remember. Frustrated, I get out of bed and walk out of my room to sit on the stairs and watch the memories that fill my empty house.
I remember when couches were mountains for my Lego Star Wars ships to navigate through. When I could swing on banister posts without risk of breaking them. I can hear my sisters’ laughter from across the hall, playing hide-and-seek in the curtains. I can smell bacon and eggs on a Saturday morning, hot chocolate for breakfast in winter. I can remember where I was sitting when I made my decision to go to TAMS at 11:36 on a Friday night in March. When we still had that old TV. Being bored. Reading Breaking Dawn next to my window in my room. Late nights trolling through tumblr. Breakups over Facebook chat on the computer downstairs. Dance practices with my friends. The moments of quiet after hosting dinner parties and prayer meetings.
Moments wash over me in waves of sadness, holding me captive. I’m paralyzed in thought. I must have done this probably a dozen times at this point, but the loss never feels any lighter. I sit in silence for a while longer, trying to enjoy the feeling of being home in an empty house.
Harvey V
According to statistics, there was a 0.002% chance that our house would flood. As such, we lived in what the Army Corps of Engineers called a “Five Hundred Year Flood Plain,” where the likelihood of our neighborhood flooding was so low, it would flood maybe once every five hundred years. No one thought that 2017 would be that year. Except that information would turn out to be irresponsibly inaccurate.
A 0.002% chance of flooding means that there’s a 0.002% chance of flooding every year - it doesn’t mean that there would only be a flood every five hundred years. Breaking down a year into days makes statistics clear that a flood was more inevitable than we had thought.
How did we flood? What happened?
Hurricane Harvey brought with it the most rain the greater Houston area has seen in such a short period of time ever. Fed by moist warm air coming from the gulf, and held back by cool dry air from the north, what was anticipated to be an easy passing by turned into an unwelcome lingering. Rainfall reached record peaks, out pouring entire years worth of rainfall in a matter of days. If there ever were such a thing as a “Five Hundred Year Storm,” this was it.
The soil that the greater Houston area rests on is mainly non-absorbent clay. As such, flooding is an inevitability in some areas. To combat this, in the 1930s, the federal government built reservoirs, using tall levees stretching for miles as physical barriers to hold water in the event of heavy rain. A vast majority of this land is uninhabited and is owned by the federal government to prevent development from taking place.Water flowing out of the reservoirs is regulated by dams operated by the Army Corps of Engineers. Once out of the dams, water flows through a network of bayous through the city and eventually ends up in the Gulf of Mexico.
Next to our neighborhood runs Buffalo Bayou, a bayou that snakes all the way from Katy to the gulf. Before reaching city limits, Buffalo Bayou passes through the Barker Reservoir, carrying water into the reservoir and eventually carrying water out of it. Buffalo Bayou is the main bayou of Houston, passing through many historic districts and developed areas before reaching the gulf.
During the hurricane, more water was coming into the reservoirs than could be let out. The Army Corps of Engineers was faced with an unforeseen problem: with so much water in the reservoir, the dams could not handle the building pressure. The implications of this had grave consequences - should the Army Corps not deal with the problem, the dams risked breaking, causing a breach of floodwaters that would result in catastrophe for Houstonians downstream. Should the Army Corps release more water through the dams, backflow would cause flooding in the communities upstream. Eventually, the Army Corps made the decision to release water from the dams, flooding our neighborhood in the process.
Couldn’t we evacuate?
Evacuation was an option up to a week in advance, but was discouraged in order to properly evacuate people who lived along the coast, many of whom were coming into the city seeking shelter. With the city already experiencing an influx of vehicles, mandating evacuation would create massive traffic jams that may have been lethal for many people. Over a decade prior, more than one hundred people died during evacuation efforts for Hurricane Rita after spending days on the road without supplies, stuck in traffic.
There were more reasons why people should have stayed off the road. A lot of Houston’s roadways are designed to flood in times of extreme flooding, acting as temporary bayous to keep floodwaters from entering areas of development. If people were stuck on the roads trying to evacuate, they would have drowned. In fact, a majority of deaths that occurred during the hurricane would come from those who drowned on the roads.
Shouldn’t we have known? Why would we buy a house here if the risk of flooding was that serious?
In the state of Texas, once land is private, local government has no say in what the land is used for, even to warn the general public. Prior to development, the area of land where we lived was known to be a part of a flood plain. In fact, the land we lived on was immediately next to the levee that marked the border of the Barker Reservoir. On the wrong side of the levee, as it turns out.
In the 1980′s, the land, which hadn’t been bought by the federal government, despite its operation of the Barker Dam, was sold to private developers by Fort Bend County. Houston was expanding rapidly, and neighborhoods sprung up in a matter of months to accommodate for the city’s growing population. People new to Houston started filling in the suburbs, including those that lay in flood plains. Fort Bend County knew the risks of building neighborhoods within the reservoir, but could do nothing to inform new homeowners. All that the county could provide was a small notice on the deed. Whether it would be noticed depended on how closely the reader would pay attention. Unfortunately, a lot of eager homeowners would gloss over the warning without understanding the risk, my family included.
Harvey IV
On top of all this shit, I’m heartbroken.
The pain doesn’t stop. One day, I’m digging through the soggy remains of memories and leaving them out for trucks to haul away, another, I’m bent over, gripping my chest like there’s something worth keeping. A love and a lifetime, lost.
It feels like I’m drowning underwater, desperately swimming to the surface to breathe, only to find that on top of the water lies another ocean of oil to swim through.
Words spill out whenever I even come close to someone who is willing to listen, but no one seems to hear the pain. Words cannot serve me any justice. It is the silent cross I bear.
Harvey III
From my seat at the dinner table, I can hear the dogs whining and barking. I excuse myself from my place and walk across the living room to the garage door. I close the door behind me and sit with my dogs, petting them, still damp from the bath we gave them when we arrived.
We’re in our friends’ house. Trisha’s godmother, my parents’ longtime friends. I have no personal connection with them, but they’ve always been supportive of me for the past fifteen years or so. They picked us up yesterday, and for the foreseeable future, we live with them.
It’s still raining outside. I can hear it through the garage door. The dogs are finally calm; Aiko is curled up against my leg, and I’m petting Lulu as she sits next to me. I decide to open up YouTube.
I don’t know what I’m looking for at this point. A distraction? But there’s still so much going on around me, I can’t afford to be distracted. News? Not really. I flick past videos of the devastation around me. Nothing I haven’t seen with my own eyes. Comments below argue about what we should have done, how poorly this hurricane was planned, safe and dry behind keyboards that will forget their arguments in a couple days.
I tap on the trending tab, and the first video that pops up is a video of Coldplay from their performance in Miami: “Coldplay - Houston #1″. I click and watch.
“ … But, I hope it’s okay with you that we send some of the beautiful atmosphere in here tonight over to Texas and over to Houston, because, um, they need it, you know?”
The crowd in the video cheers. I can feel chills creeping up my arms and my spine all the way up into my throat, where they’re stopped and fighting to be released. The images on my phone warp as a pair of tears escape my eyes and onto my glasses. Chris Martin strums his guitar and begins singing:
I am dreaming of when I get back to Houston
I’m dreaming of that very special place
I am dreaming of when Houston has no problems
In that city where they send you into space
I am dreaming of when I get back to Texas
Corpus Christi, Harris County, Galveston
There’s a harmony that comes down there in Houston
Oh Houston, you got to keep on keeping on
From Miami, we’re sending love to Houston
We’re praying that you make it through the rain
I know nothing’s gonna break the will of Houston
Oh and we can’t wait to go down there again
I am dreaming of when I get back to Texas
Corpus Christi, Harris County, Galveston
There’s a harmony that comes down there in Houston
Oh Houston, you got to keep on keeping on
Oh, Houston got to keep on keeping on
Yeah, Houston got to keep on keeping on
I replay the video a couple times as I quietly sob alone in a cold garage, in someone else’s house, in someone else’s clothes. For the first time in what seems like forever, someone is telling me that I’ll be alright.
The rain outside sounds a lot quieter now.
Harvey II
I didn’t sleep that night. I keep telling people that I slept for maybe up to two hours, but I didn’t. How could I? Whenever it was time to go to bed I just lied down on the floor of my sister’s room, listening to 45 inches of rain slowly drowning the earth.
Floodwaters had reached inside the house by 7pm the day prior - at first, I thought Aiko had peed on the floor but when I went to wipe it up, the water was cold. I pressed down on the floorboards, and water slowly appeared around the edges, forming little pools around the corners. I can’t remember if I panicked or if I was shocked at all - the situation just felt so foreign. For the first time ever, our house was flooding. My family spent the rest of the day carrying valuables upstairs, and by the end of the night, we had 3 inches of water in the house.
I get out of bed the moment I hear someone else wake up. My dad was first, walking downstairs to make himself some coffee and assess what had happened overnight. The good news: we hadn’t lost electricity or water. The bad news: water had risen to about 6 inches in the house, and the rain wasn’t over yet. Looking over at the first floor, things were already looking a mess. Floorboards and other random items were floating throughout the house, the water underneath dark and murky with silt.
My dad made his way to the garage to shut down power on the first floor and to make sure nothing was left in the cars. The water outside was a lot higher than it was in the house. Looking over at my car in the driveway, water had already raised high enough to submerge the wheels entirely. The rain showed no signs of stopping, and by the time my dad came back from the garage, the water was already about 10 or 12 inches inside the house. The time had come for us to leave.
I had mentioned to my dad that we should have evacuated on Saturday, while the roads were still passable. My dad declined, insisting that there was no need to, since local government hadn’t mandated evacuation. Sunday and Monday came and went without any government mandate, but now that water was rising in our house, the thought occurred that we should leave. I was angry. Just because evacuation was only voluntary didn’t mean that we couldn’t decide for ourselves. If we had made plans to leave earlier, damage could have been mitigated. But there was no time for arguing. While everyone was getting ready to leave, there was a knock on our door.
“Good morning everyone, I’m a first responder. We’re evacuating everyone on your street. How many of you are there?”
“We are six (we were housing our neighbor and her boyfriend).”
“Any animals?”
“Two.”
“Okay, we have a helicopter coming for you guys. You have five minutes to grab what you need.”
Before leaving, the first responder tagged our door with information in orange spray paint. She left for the next house, and I could see that she was wading in water that was well above her waist. The weight of the situation finally began to sink in: we are now victims of a natural disaster. This is a catastrophe.
A low rumble from the sky started getting louder and louder until it hovered over our street and it was all I could hear. I pulled back the curtain in my room and saw a helicopter only about 30 feet above the roof of a house down the street. I was only about halfway packed, and my thoughts now were getting frantic. Shit. I’m not finished packing yet. How long will it be before we return? A week? If I only pack three shirts, I’ll have enough- shit, I’ll just pack four, maybe fi- FUCK. Holy shit, my degree. Do you think looters will- no, i bet not. But this is Katy, if I could, I wou- fine. It’s going in the closet. Whatever. Shit, if I walk out in a pair of shoes, I’ll need extra when these get wet. Cool. Done. Socks. Underwear. Shorts. Done. Laptop - what the fuck am I going to with my laptop? Can it fit? Ye- wait, is my backpack waterproof? SHIT. I need something to wrap it in. Here, let me see that garbage bag. Fuck, now it won’t fit. FUCK. Trish, let me see your iPad. I can fit that in if I wrap it. Okay, I guess that’s it. Laptop in the closet. Holy shit. Wait- where’s the helicopter going?
Another knock on the door. This time we were greeted by a Coast Guard in SCUBA gear.
“Hi, I’m with the Coast Guard. The helicopter left, but we’re sending in boats. We can’t get the boats to come to your door because we don’t want to raise the water levels in your house. We’ll need you guys to walk over there.”
The Coast Guard pointed to the intersection of our street and another. The stop sign stood barely a foot or two above the water level. Again, the image felt so surreal. The first responder returned to our house to talk to the Coast Guard, and was waiting to help us get to the boat.
By this point, the dogs had been under stress for a long time. Aiko was howling, Lulu whimpering. The elephant in the room was how we were going to bring the two of them with us. Lulu was really aggressive and had a history of attacking people, especially in the context of defending the family. Being on a boat together with other people posed a difficult scenario. I was also worried about her wounds on her legs and having them touch the water, so I decided on carrying her. Every time I would try to pick her up, she would wince and whine. I couldn’t do it. I broke down a little bit.
My mom and I were the last people to walk downstairs. I had Lulu on her leash, and she had her muzzle on in case someone she didn’t know got too close. My sister and my dad had already left for the boat with our neighbors. The bottom of our staircase was already hidden underneath the water. Waiting at the door was the first responder, prompting us to hurry.
The water was so cold. I could feel my blood vessels constrict to keep me warm. Lulu hesitated at the edge of the water, but after a couple seconds she followed me down. The water came up to her shoulder, which is about up to my knees. We walked out the front door for the first time in three days.
There are exactly 15 paces on the path between our front door and the street. I’d walked that path for 17 years without thinking anything of it, but it was all I could think of at the time. I couldn’t see any of the path underneath the water, but I walked it with a cold familiarity. I could remember where every crack in the pavement was, the familiar uneven-ness between the curb and the sidewalk. I could remember the times I had roller-bladed down the path with neighborhood kids that had since moved, the early morning walks to the bus stop, walking down to my car. Nothing had changed about the walk down to the street, except this time, when I reached the street, I was up to my chest in water. Lulu swam beside me, and I could see the boat floating at the intersection, maybe 15 yards away.
The Coast Guard was standing halfway between the house and the boat, making sure we were walking in the right direction and communicating with the first responder, who stayed behind at the house. My mom couldn’t make the walk to the boat, so eventually the volunteers made their way over to her to make sure she was safe. Everyone else was on the boat, waiting for me to wade over.
By the time I reach the boat the water is almost up to my neck. They bring Lulu on the boat first, and I climb the ladder after her. As soon as she gets in the boat, Lulu pisses and shits herself. We couldn’t take the dogs out to handle their business since the waters started rising, and so they let it out on the boat. Not that it made that much more of a mess on the boat anyway. We just shoveled the waste over the side. The boat was small enough for the Coast Guard to tug it over to my mom, who was waiting by a tree in our front yard. She made it up the ladder, and we were all accounted for.
The boat was being operated by her owners - volunteers from Corpus Christi. The man looked to be in his early thirties, his partner the same. He had a black pistol attached to his belt. He and his family had heard about what was going on in Houston, and they had brought their boat up to lend a hand. Corpus Christi was hit with more wind and flood damage than Houston. They were victims, too.
Driving a boat through our neighborhood was something that stuck with me for a long time.Streets were transformed into rivers, backyards into holding pools, driveways into canals. Everyone’s house was submerged: the only evidence that we were in someone’s front yard were the trees. Occasionally we’d float past the roof of an SUV. We could hear cries for help from blocks away. Some people had painted distress signs on bed sheets and were flying them as flags outside their windows. At every intersection was a Coast Guard in SCUBA gear, directing the flow of rescue boats, since a lot of street signs were underwater. Overhead, rescue helicopters flew by with dangling baskets to aid those who were trapped on their roofs. Driving out of the neighborhood, we passed by a stranded ambulance. Other than that, we could see nothing but water, trees, and houses. The bridge that passes over the bayou next to our neighborhood was nowhere to be seen. Beyond that, you could see our elementary school, also flooded. Looking out to the other direction, we could see our destination: the levee for the Barker Dam.
On our way to the levee, we could see evidence of other people’s attempts at evacuating. There was another flooded SUV, three or four air mattresses, a couple of stuffed animals. At the peak of the levee were police vehicles and crowds of people waiting on loved ones. Once I got off the boat and over to the other side of the levee, I could see the extent of emergency efforts. Every type of emergency vehicle was parked on the street. Dump trucks were being used to transport loads of evacuees to the nearest shelter. Volunteers with boats were lined up for almost half a mile, and if they didn’t have a boat, they brought a truck. At least three helicopters were rotating in and out over the neighborhood - every three minutes, a helicopter would drop off an evacuee then fly off again. It was one of the most humbling things I have ever witnessed, and it was barely 10AM.
Harvey
It’s 7:17AM when I wake up to the sound of my mom crying downstairs. I’m on a slowly deflating air mattress in the loft space of the apartment my family’s rented since our house flooded. I walk downstairs and approach my mom to see what’s wrong. She sobs as she wipes down cutting boards from a box that we had salvaged from the house, recalling long lost memories of a time when things were mundane yet peaceful. Things were intact.
My dad walks in stoic. He doesn’t ask anything of my mom’s emotions, simply asking about the next thing to be taken care of before they both leave for mass. Some may call it insensitivity, but in our family, silence is strength. My dad never really talked about much to begin with.
I look around the apartment from my seat at the breakfast table. Boxes seeking refuge lie all around our living space, heavy with sentiment. My life this past year has been in a seemingly endless phase of transition. Packed up in little boxes, gassed up and ready to go, losing things along the way. And in this past year, I’ve lost a lot.
It’s hard not to feel like a professional loser these days.
Not really in the same way as kid’s cartoons made it out to be. I don’t feel lame, I’ve just been losing: my car, my childhood home, my grandma. Years of my life and love. Confidence. The list goes on, somewhere. All I have left is evidence of sentiment: Lego sets, love notes, shopping bags, receipts. Everything contained in my room, untouched by floodwaters.
I get ready to walk the dog while my parents leave, dressed in someone else’s Sunday best. My dog whines after them, begging to take her with them. I prepare her leash as I scoop up some chomporado for breakfast, thinking about what I’ll write when I get back. Thinking about when this transition will end, and whether or not there’s anything missing in my box that can’t be replaced.
just another text post to let y’all know i basically did nothing on this website
My truest friend is a bitter mistress
With the coldest teeth that bite me deep
One visit more, she bids me welcome
And sends my sorrow back to sleep
