about two weeks later

We are home. We are trying to reclaim some sort of normalcy but nothing about this is normal.  We have been at our second home, my sister's house, for about two weeks. During that time the lower house was torn apart, the upper house became a store room of sorts, and the cat was confined to the indoors. Minnie had a yard she could go out in but cats jump the fence.

It smells musty. At first, it smelled like rancid river water mixed with all the cow patties and overwhelmed septic systems. Not pleasant. Then after liberal sprayings with vinegar it pretty much didn't smell. We're still using the blower under the house. Right now it's blowing under the bathroom and the closets in Marc's office. I guess I'll move it tomorrow.

I want to use the hose to wash down the floors one more time in the part of the house that flooded. Our son ordered some product for us that eliminates odor and I plan on using it back there and in the kitchen on the sub-floor. Tomorrow I plan to scrub down all the interlocking rubber mats and make a new floor in the kitchen. I don't much like walking barefoot on the sub-floor.

Still waiting on the call from the FEMA inspector to schedule an inspection.

I'm feeling the need to clean every square inch of this house. Whether or not that gets done is another story.

I spent the day scraping out the old caulking around the tub and re-caulking it. It's not pretty but I hope it's effective. The knobs for the tub/shower leak which has caused decay behind the laminate on the walls. One more thing to be addressed in the remaking of our house. It's pretty ugly but hopefully it is sealed and won't cause any more decay until we can re-do it.

I'm tired. Tomorrow is another day. 

blessings in disguise...

beginning with that little 3 month old puppy someone dumped in our neighborhood two years ago and who made her way into our yard and hearts. It's not that she has brought a lot of joy and laughter into our lives, which she has, but that without her I would never have met the neighbors on the street who I now stop and visit with while walking her in the evenings and most especially Rocky and Melissa. I would not even have known that Rocky was a contractor/carpenter and without Rocky, I would have been at a total loss as to how to find a good contractor or one that would jump on the work immediately and not take advantage of me. I trust Rocky to be fair and do good work and he did not hesitate one minute when I finally walked down to his house last Sunday and asked him to come assess the rotten wood I had uncovered.

And while it would appear that half the house flooding would be a disaster and the aftermath would entail long hours of hard work, which it has, it too is a blessing in disguise for several reasons. The first of which is that we would never have discovered the damage to the structure of the house if it had not flooded and we hadn't had to tear out the sheet rock in the back bedroom and little bathroom and two layers of siding on the outside of the upper house. The damage there was not caused by the flood but the flood caused it to be revealed.

The second reason is that, while we did lose the bed and a chair and the futon and bookcases and my art and design books and everything else that was within reach of nearly 18” of water, we really didn't lose anything that would have devastated us.

And third, while we talked a good talk about remodeling those two rooms, in truth, we probably never would have done it. Now we get to.

And last, ditto for the shop and the four built-in rooms in the big metal building. They were awful but in the going on four years we have had the shop we have done nothing. That part was unusable for many reasons and for the last two days, Rocky's crew have been engaged in not just tearing out the part of the walls that got wet, but demolishing that entire part of the shop. I'm thrilled! Once he has completed the work of rebuilding people's homes damaged in the flood, he will start on rebuilding the interior rooms of the shop and I will have work space over there that I can heat and air condition and be able to work in over the summer.

And finally, while we have been inconvenienced for a few weeks and now have a great story to tell about the great flood and suffered some loss, so many more lost everything. For all this I can be grateful.

work begins

Saturday, the water had receded to the point that we could get to the house in my sister's car and we drove over there in the morning to get the rest of the dry goods groceries and stuff and to pick up our car which you might remember I had parked over at the shop the day the flood happened as it was the highest ground I could get to. Fortunately the water there only rose about 6” and the car was undamaged. 

the butterfly garden

the water lily pond is under there somewhere

the front flower bed

Drove back to Pam's and picked up Marc and we headed back to the house to start emptying the two rooms and getting ready for demolition removing the paneling in my in-house studio and the sheetrock and wet insulation from the walls in the back bedroom and small bathroom about four feet up, vinyl flooring hauled out and floor tiles scraped up. Over the course of the three day Labor Day holiday our son, daughter and son-in-law and grandson, and friends Gene and Brian came out to help us. We still had about an inch of water in the house so we started sweeping it out and moving out the stuff that was up high and savable and dragging out all the stuff that was damaged. Oh, and the smell was just horrible.

all my art books..muerta

my design research books..same same

It's been 10 days of continuous hard physical labor though about halfway through I did take a day off. We're living at my sister's house, generally get to our house about 10 AM and work til 6 PM and drag our sorry tired butts home to a great dinner ready for us to do it again the next day.

After the holiday, Gene and Brian and their friend Lee came out on Tuesday and hauled stuff over to the shop and worked in the shop all day dragging out the wet carpet there and in general doing as much clean up as they could as the shop got about 6” of water in it and I was finally able to hose out the floors in the house and wiped all the exposed wood down with vinegar. Wednesday another friend came and helped get the garage washed out and the stuff that was savable off the driveway.

Then I spent the next two days emptying the brick planters of stinky river soaked dirt, gravel, and brick pieces that whoever built the house thought was a great idea to build INSIDE the house. The dirt got spread out in the low spot beside the house, the dirty gravel got spread out on the driveway which was in need of it, and the brick pieces got chucked as far into the Wild Space at the back of the property as I could chuck them.

Then some of the floor tiles in the kitchen popped up and we discovered the sub-floor was wet (which is why the wood floors in the upper house are now a bit wavy) so those had to be all scraped up. Friend Wesley loaned us a high powered blower which we are using to help dry the sub-floor from underneath the house. 

Then I noticed the siding shingles were bulging on a corner of the upper house and pulled off a few of those to find some serious damage to the structure of the house and removing the sink and toilet in the little bathroom and the wallboard there also showed some major damage. 

That was last Sunday and this was more than we could deal with. Time to get a professional on board so I walked down to Rocky's house, our neighborhood carpenter/contractor, for an assessment. The siding on the house needed to come off all the way around and the shower had to be taken out before he could know exactly what the damage was and what needed to be repaired. So yesterday and today he and his crew worked on that and discovered another large area on the front of the house where there was a lot of rotten wood and squashed floor joists which is probably why the front door frame is out of square.

that pile of rubble used to be the shower

Marc and our grandson, who drives out nearly every day after he gets off work from his job in Houston, had cleared the yard of all the debris and hauled it over to the burn pile and mowed several days previous. The mosquitoes have been big, black, and fierce. Starting yesterday, I was finally able to address what is left of the flower beds. I'm slowly working my way around the yard raking debris into small piles as I go, discovering what survived and what didn't.

We've about got as far as we can get on the house now until FEMA comes out and inspects the damage and we see what they will offer us . We had no insurance or home owner's insurance. They do provide money grants which is what we are hoping for but probably all we will get is a low interest loan which we will decline. Not interested in borrowing money. Once we can turn our attention to the upper house and get it cleared out of all the stuff that has been moved in there, we can move back in and do the remodel at our leisure. Rocky will go ahead and repair the structural damage before the inspector comes but I will take plenty of pictures for proof, as if the obvious new repair isn't proof enough, and then he will do the minimal demolition over at the shop until such time he gets a breather and can demolish the entire built in part of the shop. He was headed to the lumber yard with a materials list when he left today and I'm waiting to hear from him to find out how much this is going to set us back.

Our street, like so many in the county and town, is a canyon of ruined possessions and construction materials piled high on either side. Many of the homes on my street were built entirely on a slab and they lost everything.

As bad as things are for us it could have been so much worse.

last: blessings in disguise

water walk and first look

Friday, Sept. 1^st, Wesley brought us back to my sister's house after we spent the night at their place, The Dragonfly venue. Early afternoon I got a text from Carolyn that Wesley was going to try to check out the Wharton Historical Museum to see if they took on water and since the museum is just down the road from our neighborhood, did I want to go with and see if we could get to the house. Yes!

So Wesley picked up Marc and I in his high water truck and we headed out to try. Richmond Road, also business 59, was blocked off by the police and even though I showed my ID proving that we had a reason to get down the road and the truck we were in was obviously capable of getting there, the officer would not let us pass. “You will need a police escort”, she told us, so we pulled into a parking lot while Marc called the Wharton police who told us, “You're in the county, call the county”. Right about then the officer who denied us passage walked over and told us that we might be able to get there through some of the smaller roads that didn't have roadblocks set up but 'you didn't hear it from me'.

Unfortunately there were only three roads that went through to where my neighborhood is in the county...the one we were on, the next main road one block over that was also blockaded, and the third on the far end which was blocked off because the bridge had washed out. Then I remembered a county road that sort of circled around through another neighborhood and came out on the other side of the road with the washed out bridge so that's where we went. The road was dry for the most part but then we reached a point where even it was under water but not so deep that Wesley wasn't willing to keep going as long as he could see the edges of the road.

This road makes a little squiggle before it makes the left turn that takes it back to the main road from which we could access my neighborhood and as we approached the squiggle the water continued to get deep and because it was muddy, the edges of the road were not visible. Wesley was still willing to continue but he was concerned about going off the edge and if we did that we would surely be fucked so I put on his rubber boots since I don't own any who lives in the country for nearly 8 years without owning rubber boots! and yes they were too big and climbed down out of the truck and walked in front of it finding the edges of the road. The water was about calf deep...five steps forward, then side stepping to the right counting my steps til I felt the grass, then side stepping to the left til I felt the grass, then back to center and five steps forward etc. and we continued that way as the water got deeper and deeper until it was almost up to my lady parts before it began to get shallower again. In this manner we navigated through the squiggle and the left turn until Wesley could see the edges of the road again and we continued unimpeded to the house.

The street was mostly dry but the yard was still flooded with about 6” still in the garage and the lower part of the house. Waded through to the door into the upper house to find it was dry with no evidence of water having been in! The wood floors were slightly raised at the edges, just a bit wavy from the sub-floor getting wet but not so bad it can't be lived with. We grabbed some clothes and my computer and headed back to my sister's house. We didn't have to repeat the path in as the blockade was just preventing people from going out of town, not coming in and by the time we got to it, it had been removed anyway.

I took no pictures this day.

next: work begins

another rescue of sorts

There was no sleeping at the shelter which was all wood floors with a stage and long tables and chairs but that aside, they kept the lights on because they were still bringing people in and the young children were so hyped up they were all running around screeching and babies were crying. I got up on the stage with the dog and laid down in a back corner using my extra shorts and shirt as a 'pillow' trying to get some rest at least while Marc stayed on the main floor talking with friends Judy and Leonard, the neighbors who were rescued with us. I could only lay on my back as my bony hips did not like that wood floor. I kept telling myself 'you can do this, you do this all the time at yoga, it's just a very long shavasana'. The kids finally all dropped from exhaustion sometime around 3 AM when they finally had stopped bringing people in and turned off the lights.

Around 5 AM Thursday morning I texted my friend Caroline who lives on the Square in the upstairs apartment of the buildings she and husband Wesley own because I knew she would probably be up by then to see how they were fairing, if the river had crested, if they had water in the street since the Square is only two blocks from the Colorado River but it is also the highest ground in town. I was concerned about my sister who had called us in a panic for the number to call for a water rescue just as we were being rescued...her power had gone out, she was surrounded by water and it was about a foot from coming in her house. The last time I talked to her was once we were on the pavement waiting to be ferried to the shelter, she had got the number and called for rescue. The next time I tried to call her, her phone went straight to voicemail and I had no idea where she was or if she was OK.

Caroline was still on dry ground and volunteered Wesley, when he got up, to go to her house and check on her in his F 600 Ford work truck which you practically need a step ladder to get in to. That proved to be unnecessary as my sister called shortly. She had tired of waiting to be rescued (and in fact rescues had been suspended til daylight), turned off her phone to preserve the battery, and gone to bed as the water had quit rising. About 9 AM, Wesley showed up at the shelter to take us to Pam's as while her front yard and street was covered with deep water, 

standing on my sister's small front porch looking across the street

looking left

looking right, she got about 18” in her garage

her backyard slopes up to high ground and we only had to wade through about knee deep water to her back door. Eventually the power came back on and we were quite happy to be there when two guardsmenboys came to the door asking if we wanted to be evacuated as they were opening a dam and they expected the river to rise overnight. We declined at first (I'm already losing some of the details) but I talked to Caroline again and she volunteered Wesley to come get us and we could stay downstairs in one of the party rooms (their buildings on the square are event venues) that had leather banquettes and power and I was all for it. I had to do a little arm twisting on Pam because she didn't want to leave her house, told us to go ahead on to which I replied that we were not going to be separated, it was only for one night, and “I was not going through another night like last night” being rescued with the water lapping at the door so we gathered up pillows, sheets, clothes, and animals and Wesley came and got us. As it turned out, they did not open a dam and the water actually receded about 6” overnight. The next morning, Friday, Wesley ferried us back to my sister's house.

next: water walk and first look

crying won't help you, praying won't do you no good

fair warning...this is long.

timeline:

Thursday Aug. 24^th – prepare for the hurricane

Friday Aug. 25^th – rain off and on with wind and gusts

Saturday Aug. 26^th - light rain off and on during the day

Sunday Aug. 27^th – light rain off and on during the day

Monday Aug.28^th – heavy rain and high wind all day and into the night

Tuesday Aug. 29^th – clear sky by sunset

Wednesday Aug. 30^th

The Colorado River crested at about 5 AM at an historic 50 1/2' but the day dawned with a clear blue sky. Our grandson who had been staying with us while he worked on his truck getting it street legal asked if he could take our truck to Houston to help with rescue and clean up efforts and so he did and my sister and I went to look at the river about 10 AM.

Riverside Park completely underwater as well as Elm St. that runs along the park, and the next block towards town.

Around noon our neighborhood lost power and word on the street was that it was a shut off by the power company rather than damage to lines somewhere but it came back on around 3 PM. By that time we were watching as our neighborhood started taking on water.

There are 6 streets in our neighborhood and our house is on the most southern street. About the time we lost power one of the neighbors told us the most northern street, Engbrock, was flooded and the water was coming our way. By the time it was halfway to us and people were packing up and leaving, the neighborhood was already surrounded by water we didn't think we would be able to get out in the car and didn't know where we could go even if we could have. My sister's house in town was surrounded by water though with about 12” before it flooded her. I moved the car over the shop which is on higher ground than our house and hoped for the best. At some point after the water started coming into the neighborhood we learned that Peach Creek and Boughman's Slough, into which the Colorado River drains into during flood stage, banks failed or were just overpowered by 50.5' of water and a wall of water engulfed the Peach Creek neighborhood flooding houses up to the roof line and then moved on into Peach Acres, our neighborhood.

I'm standing on the corner of our street and the road on the east end looking north. Our shop is on the northeast corner and our house is across the street from the shop.

The west end of our street (that's Richmond Rd. at the end where we were dropped off a little further up later) was underwater while we were still dry but the ditch completely full.

By about 4 PM, the water had circled around from the west and the field behind us was filling fast coming at us from the south and from the north. 

Water was just starting to come in the house. If I had had any sense AT ALL, I would have closed the garage door.

By 4:30 PM we had 5” in the part of the house on a slab. I waded through the knee/thigh deep water in the yard and street to check on the car which was sitting in about 3” of water. Tripped on debris I couldn't see on my way back and lost my prescription glasses that I had tucked in my shirt front because sometimes I can see better without them. Luckily I still had a pair of readers from before I got my glasses.

I made sandbags with wet towels in plastic bags and put them against the door into the lower part of the house and also against the front door but we knew we had to get out as the water was still rising and was now even deeper in the lower part of house. I went back out to get the canoe and paddles when the water was about 3” from coming in the upper house but Marc was afraid the strong current would sweep us away so about 6 PM he called the sheriff's department for a water rescue as we could hear the airboats somewhere in the neighborhood. “OK”, they said, “we'll put you on the list” so we packed up some clothes, dog and cat food, the cat in her carrier and the dog on her leash and waited.

About an hour later the sun set and it was almost full dark when we heard an airboat with a light shining our direction and Marc shined our flashlight back through the dining room window (we had lost power again around 5:30) and the airboat came right up to our front door where the water was about an inch from coming in under the door. These two men, an ex-Marine and his helper, got us into the boat and then went back to the other end of the street to pick up our neighbors and their two young granddaughters and dropped us off on a high spot surrounded by water on the road at the end of our street that takes you into town where there were already a bunch of people, telling us that there were other rescuers in high water trucks ferrying people from this spot to the shelter and in fact, a loaded truck was just then leaving for the shelter, while he went out to rescue more people in our neighborhood.

While all this was happening we learned that the official rescue operation stopped at dark and this man and other private citizens were out in their own boats rescuing the people the official authorities had abandoned til the next morning. I wish I had gotten this man's name. He was so angry that the official operations quit at dark and that the game warden even tried to prevent him from going out. He was having none of it.

Anyway, eventually he was satisfied that he had found as many as he could and loaded up his boat and headed into town. So 23 of us including old people and very young children were stranded on this spot of dry ground surrounded by water that we didn't know if it had stopped rising or not. Us and mosquitoes and about a million fire ants. Someone had parked their SUV and left it on this high spot so I put the cat carrier on the hood and climbed up with the dog and one of my friend's grandgirls but everyone else was standing in the road.

And we waited and we waited and we waited and no one came back for us. We had been there about an hour and a half when we finally saw lights approaching from the north and from town in the south and they basically arrived at the same time. The lights from the north was a National Guard troop carrier that is stationed in Katy (about 60 miles away). They had received a call that they were needed to rescue some people, took them about two minutes to get on the road but an hour to get to us. The lights from the south, from town, was our same rescuer, even more pissed. He had learned that they were not coming back for us and so he returned to cram us all in his truck and boat to get us to a shelter. “This ex-Marine is not leaving anyone behind”, he told us.

So the National Guards helped all 23 of us along with our dogs, of which there were many, and a few cats and all our baggage into the troop carrier and drove us through water to dry land on one of the main roads in town, the road to Boling. It was an eerie drive as there was water in every direction as far as we could see. When we got to dry land, they stopped and conferred with someone about where to take us. The one and only shelter, the Catholic Church, was already full and they were refusing to take animals anyway. The city had tried to open the junior high school and the civic center but both had taken on water. Fortunately, a new shelter, the American Legion Hall, had just opened and were accepting animals and they took us there. 

We were dropped off and they went out to continue to bring people in and that is where we spent Wednesday night.  Wish I had thought to grab a couple of pillows and a blanket.  It was a long sleepless night.

The way this shelter opened was totally a citizen effort. The husband and wife, who own the building that the American Legion rents, had flooding in their house and they got out with their two young grandchildren and their disabled son and their dogs and went to the official shelter at the Catholic Church who turned them away because they weren't accepting animals and this couple refused to abandon their dogs. They knew the American Legion Hall was dry and so since they own the building they went there and opened it up to people and their pets and then throughout the night continued to accept people and animals and got with the city and the Red Cross to become an official shelter. During the night, they called everyone they knew that was dry and could get there to bring whatever food they could and they cooked it there to feed the 70 some odd people that were eventually brought in until the Red Cross could get there the next morning and take over, which they did just about the time we were leaving.

Next: another rescue of sorts

update

We thought we had escaped unscathed. And then a levee on Peach Creek and something Slough broke on Wednesday around noon and a wall of water engulfed our neighborhood. The lower house on slab flooded and the water was lapping at the door jambs of the part of the house on pier and beam when the airboat came and evacuated us just at dark and eventually we were taken to a shelter by the National Guard. It's a long story full of panic and frantic which I will tell but right now we are so busy. Finally got to the house on Friday briefly thanks to a friend with a high water truck which was hairy enough on it's own. Still had about 6 inches in the lower house. By Saturday we could get there in a car. Yard still had standing water but not in the garage or the concrete pad and only an inch or so still in the house so started dragging out all the ruined stuff, starting to move the stuff up high out to empty the rooms. Daughter, SIL, son, and grandson showed up to help. Today daughter, SIL, son, and friends Gene and Brian came out to help. Demolition has begun on the flooded parts of the house. 17 1/2” of river water mixed with septic sewer system water. Really stinks. Dead earthworms everywhere. Demolition began today. I keep thinking that at the end of each day I will have time and energy to tell the story but not yet. Just want to let everyone know we are safe and minimal damage compared to just about everyone else in the neighborhood and town who suffered more and those who lost everything. The Colorado River crested at a historical high of 50.5'. Bear with me. I will tell the story but right now we are busy getting the house to the point where all the damaged stuff is out and the not damaged stuff isn't piled on any horizontal surface in the house proper and the damaged sheetrock is torn out. Shop across the street only got 6”. I had moved the car over there so it was fine.

So now, after another long day, I am going to bed.