During Alicia, I lived in Baytown in the Lakewood subdivision, we were right next to a subdivision called Brownwood which was right on the bay and had some houses that were sinking. Alicia's storm surge came in and too every house off it's slab in Brownwood and pulled them into the bay. We rode our bikes in there afterwards, and it was AMAZING.....nothing much was left....just slabs.....and an occasional washer or car etc..... It was a strange feeling. This was less than 3 miles from my house.....never underestimate Mother Nature. DD
you probably know this from my posts here about it...but we had a twister hit our home in west houston...took part of the roof off causing a ton of water damage, and we lived in a hotel for 2 months while they repaired our home.
During Alicia, I lived in Baytown in the Whispering Pines subdivision, we were right next to a subdivision called Kings Bend. Power was out for a week. There were some flooded houses in a new section of the subdivision, and a small tree fell in our backyard, but it wasn't that big of a deal. Honestly, that experience, combined with the fact that I live much further inland now, is why hurricanes don't frighten me. To the people who live in Westchase, or Katy, or The Woodlands, or Kingwood, and panic or evacuate? You scare way too easily.
During ALICIA, I was here on vacation from Mexico, and we had the EYE go right over my grandparents' house. That was TOTAL FREAKIN' SILENCE. FREAKISH silence you don't want to EVER hear agin. And then, "BLAM!" stuff started blowing off... roofs, trees, branches, SAS! ¡Todo! We had to wait about 4 hours for the entire hurricane to go over... and it was STILL raining. My grandfather did not even let us get NEAR the windows for NOTHING.
Video about Brownwood 03:13 AM CDT on Saturday, August 16, 2008 By Camille Scott / 11 News Remembering Hurricane Alicia: Baytown's Brownwood rises from the ruins August 15, 2008 View larger E-mail Clip More Video The Baytown Nature Center is a place of serenity and natural beauty, but the facility wasn’t always a sanctuary for rare birds, other wildlife and fishing. Officials say that before the wildlife moved in, Mother nature moved out about 375 families. They used to live in the Brownwood subdivision. That is an upscale neighborhood that was nicknamed “The River Oaks of Baytown.” That subdivision was once home to doctors, lawyers, engineers and oil executives, but Hurricane Alicia put an end to that. The storm left the area uninhabitable. Frank Antonio lived in Brownwood for 22 years before Alicia’s flood waters chased him out for good. Video Slideshows Blogs It was then that Antonio, a former Navy seaman, vowed to never live near water again. “It was my life. I don’t want it no more. I’m finished,” he said. But not everyone was willing to give up their homes. In fact, a handful of residents fought for years for the right to rebuild in Brownwood. All of those residents lost their fight and moved out. In 1991, the Baytown City Council voted to turn the land into a nature center. Some of personal items recovered from the ruins of Brownwood greet visitors who come into the Baytown Nature Center today. “You look at some of this stuff and you look at it and you think, this is somebody’s, it was in their kitchen, they played with this football. It’s kind of a strange feeling,” said Walter Brown. He’s the gate keeper at the center. This is the Baytown Nature Center. What once was a scene of massive destruction and a dumping ground is now an outdoor classroom. “It was a horrible thing, but we’ve taken what was really a bad issue and turned it into lemonade. Lemons to lemonade and that’s what we are today,” said Scott Johnson. DD
Do you think Alicia is as strong as it gets? I'm with you...I wouldn't evacuate for an Alicia event. But I don't pretend that's the same as something like a significant Cat. 4 making landfall around Galveston.
I expected some rain out of this system! I didn't water my yard this past weekend because I was expecting rain all week. Yeah, I'm glad it wasn't that bad for New Orleans. Let's hope the next systems will be a minimal hurricane.
Subject and verb disagreement. Either "next system" or "will be minimal hurricanes", not both. Anyway, Gustav is DONE. Close this thread... we're not even talking Gustav no more... I even talked about Alicia, when it had NOTHING to do with Gustav... don't let it go on or it's going to get D&D'ish just like the Olympics thread did...
