i never said that. you have poor reading comprehension. and apparently your answer is to tear down pre-existing neighborhoods so you can build new ones in their place. here is what you said..."Im not apposed to building these neighborhoods higher and then eventually buying out the ones that are flood prone and turn those into retention ponds." so you want to build new neighborhoods higher, thus exasperating the flooding issues for the older neighborhood and then forcing them to move so you can make a retention pond for the new neighborhood out of the old one. thats pretty sh*tty dude. never said it wasnt. you on the other hand said "they should stop building and turn many of these places into retention ponds...The city needs to stop approving these subdivisions, insurers need to stop insuring and people need to stop buying." you realize you are accusing me of saying the very thing that you said, right? also it is incredibly naive and foolish to think that you can stop development or stop people from buying houses. are you serious with that? my moms house never flooded till harvey, when it took 5 feet. before that the worst it ever got was in 1993 when it got up to to the porch. should someones house be condemned if it floods one time? should an entire neighborhood of 300 homes be demolished if they flood one time? and if im rebuilding the house i have been in for 40 years im not going to be happy to see a new housing subdivision being developed right next to my neighborhood. especially one where they truck in a bunch of dirt and build up the entire neighborhood out of the floodplain, thus displacing more water into my neighborhood. do you seriously not get that?
Thanks for sharing your stories and I’m really sorry to hear that some of y’all aren’t back in your houses. There are a lot of issues that Harvey exposed and one of those is how Houston’s development might have exerbared the flooding. Even before Harvey though Houston has had a few 100 year floods in the last few years. Not being in Houston I obviously didn’t get hit by it but was happy to help out my hometown by raising funds and bringing donated goods. I’m try to remind people that there still are a lot of people who haven’t recovered and just because it’s not leading the news cycle means that everything is ok now.
Nothing earth-shattering here, but a good read nonetheless. A year after Hurricane Harvey brought Houston to its knees, the city is still wrestling with how to prepare for the next disaster. There’s no shortage of good ideas, but in Houston, that’s never been the problem. https://www.texasmonthly.com/news/harvey-anniversary-houston-preparing-next-big-storm/
I'm certainly not suggesting that we don't need smarter growth....but there's not a city in America or the world that would be able to shake off 51 inches of rain over a 4 day period. That's as much or more rain than most cities get in an entire year.
But arguably there's no city that will need to shake it off in the future as much as Houston. :-( Totally agree w your basic point though.
I was stuck with my relatives in Austin for about a week... I WOULD HAVE RATHER DIED IN THE HURRICANE.
That's funny. Watching Frank Billingsley as Harvey was still a tropical storm about to cross from Yucatan area to Texas, I turned to my wife and said, "Maybe we should go stay with (my sister)'s family in Austin." I had this weird feeling that what the Category 1 predictions would be off; and they did know the thing would stall out and start dumping rain. "No, [my name]," said my wife who is from Brazil where there are no hurricanes, tornadoes, or earthquakes, and who arrived here post-Ike, "they didn't call for an evacuation." "Uh, honey, they won't do that." I'm not sure how it would have gone over in Austin. Better than staying in a hotel for a week when we left our apartment in the Harvey Rectangle (I-10, Highway 6, Gessner, Briar Forest). Our formerly-beautiful neighborhood off Briar Forest is not at all the same. Houses torn down along the bayou. Others still standing, dilapidated and sad.
I live in Kingwood but my street didn’t even so much as puddle up. It was mostly the houses closer to Lake Houston that got hammered. I know several people who are still living upstairs in their homes. It was surreal seeing coast guard helicopters hovering over neighborhoods just a few miles from ours. We were VERY lucky though. I had a leak in my roof but it was over the garage so there was no sense of urgency to do anything about it. The water was ponding in my attic but I don’t keep anything in my garage attic. After a while, I just pulled down the ceiling so it wouldn’t pond anymore. Still need to get it fixed, but I’m in no hurry. My office complex was under 9 feet of water, so we got to work from home every day for the next 2 ½ months. And because we didn’t miss a beat, we all now have flex schedules where we can work from home twice a week. The 1st floor of all the buildings in my complex are still not open. Kingwood is still not back to normal, but it's slowly but surely getting there. Really, my only hardship was my garage celling and getting locked out of our house for 4 hours when the power went out after the storm had already passed (we took the dog for a walk and I took the garage door opener instead of my keys…..). VERY lucky.
I live near Washington Avenue, but I camped out at my parents' house near Jersey Village for a week. The neighborhood didn't get much rain. I never lost power, and we had plenty of food. I even got to see the Mayweather-McGregor fight (although the EAS system interrupted like twice every round). The building where I work was spared as well, so I was very lucky. A good family friend's house in Port Arthur got five feet of water.
my street got flooded pretty badly, but that was about it...if it had rained heavy for another day then I really would’ve been in trouble
I went to my brother-in-law's house to watch the Mayweather and McCregor fight, only to get stuck there for 3 days. His house didn't get any water but a few roads down the houses there were 4 to 5 feet underwater. The crazy part, my wife's cousin lives 2 miles away and no one could get in contact with him. He is an amputee and has an older prosthetic leg that can't get wet or else it's pretty much done. He also lives alone with his dog so naturally we were worried. My brother-in-law and I inflated an air mattress, cut an old piece of wood to make a paddle, and walked 2 miles in 4 feet of water to get him. We found him in front of a Family Dollar and carried him on the air mattress back. In the end everyone was ok, FEMA got him a new prosthetic and his house was fixed.
Not gonna lie, clicked on the thread just to see some photos of Harvey Weinstein from prison. My bad.
I have not. Honestly, this didn't feel like a hurricane event. The eye hit so far south, that we never had even tropical storm force winds in Houston. It felt just like a flood event, though on a much bigger scale. When I think hurricanes, I think Ike and Alicia, which both made landfall far closer to Houston...and you prepare for the windstorm effects on those more than as a massive flood event, typically. Those storms typically hit and keep moving right through....as opposed to sitting on you for days on end like Harvey did.
