Randy Reagan is tough. He grew up in the Conroe oil fields and riding bulls. But nothing prepared him for flooding five times in four years and the series of events that followed.
Reagan raised his family on a 5-acre lot in Bennett Estates. That’s a neighborhood between the San Jacinto West Fork and FM1314, just south of SH242. He made a modest living for himself as an oil-field technician by repairing turbines, first for a local company and then for GE. He harvested all the meat his family ate from his own property and the surrounding forests. Life was good.
Built Home Above 1994 High Water Mark
Bennett Estates rises up from the banks of the San Jacinto West Fork through the 100- and 500-year flood plains to even higher ground. Reagan’s slab is a foot above the high-water mark from the 1994 flood, which at the time involved a massive release from the Lake Conroe dam. So he figured he was safe for anything the future brought. Wrong!
Reagan lives between the sand mines east of the river, just above the mine at the bottom, in the aqua-colored 100-year flood plain. Source: FEMA.
A Happy Life, Until…
While Reagan was never destined for riches, he led a happy life. Until the sand mines came. Then everything changed.
Reagan now lives in a neighborhood five blocks deep – sandwiched between three sand mines comprising almost 1500 acres.
Despite being in the 100-year flood plain, his property has only flooded twice from the San Jacinto – in 1994 and 2017 during Harvey. However, in the last four years, he says, it has also flooded four times from sand mines – twice in 2016, once in 2018 and once in 2019 during Imelda.
As the sand mines have grown, they’ve removed forests and wetlands that used to slow water down during rainfalls.
Now the water rushes through sand pits largely unimpeded. While the mines like to tout how they offer detention capacity in storms, aerial photos show that they offer little. That’s because they are often filled to the brim…even before storms. So, it doesn’t take much to make them overflow in heavy rains.
Water flows down into the mines from higher ground and quickly fills the pits. The pits can then spill over into the river and surrounding neighborhoods.
LMI Pit to the North Sends Water South into Neighborhood
That’s what Reagan contends happened with the LMI pit to the north of him.
During Harvey, a satellite photo in Google Earth shows the water blew out the mine’s perimeter road, sending water gushing into Reagan’s neighborhood.
During other recent events, Reagan has ground-level photos that show silty, sandy-brown water coming from the direction of the mine, not the river.
LMI breach into Reagan neighborhood on 8/30/2017 during Harvey.Five HVL pipelines are now trying to repair damage caused when this mine mined too close to them.The LMI mine to the north of Reagan on Feb. 13, 2020. In heavy rains, there’s little to keep water from the mine from escaping into Reagan’s neighborhood out of frame at the bottom of the photo.Photo taken in moderate drought conditions.
Hanson Pit to South Backs Water Up into Neighborhood
The mine to the south of Reagan affects him in a different way. Twice, says Reagan, the mine has built walls that blocked the flow of ephemeral streams that used to run through his neighborhood.
The mine dug a ditch to the river in 2011 to let the water drain to the river. That worked for about five years. Then the ditch became overgrown and the volume of water coming from the northern mine became too much. Reagan flooded on Tax Day and Memorial Day in 2016, 2018, and Imelda in 2019. Not to mention the 93 inches he got during Harvey in 2017.
Dirt wall erected by Hanson Aggregates between their pond and Reagan’s property. The drainage ditch in the foreground that they dug in 2011 is no longer any match for water flowing south from the LMI mine behind the camera position.
Problems Grow as Sand Mines Grow
“The sand mines have destroyed our lives,” said Reagan. “We’ve lived here all our lives. This all used to be woods for acres and acres and acres. The first problem I had was back in the 90’s when the sand pits were getting bigger.”
“As they started developing more ponds, they started interrupting the natural runoff.”
Randy Reagan
“When we moved here in the late ’90’s, we had our homesite raised four feet. That’s where FEMA drew the line for insurance at the time. We figured if we built higher than the high water mark from 1994, we would never have to worry. Because in 1994, we had Lake Conroe releasing all that water on us.”
“There was another flood in 1998, but it never affected us. We were high and dry here. LMI still had not built the mine to the north of us at that point,” said Reagan.
“Now we’ve got water coming at us up from the river, downhill from one mine and backing up from another mine. Sand from the mines even blocks the street drains that lead to the river,” said Reagan.
“All this used to be woods back here with natural creeks and natural drainage. It’s just all gone now. These sand pits done tore it out,” said Reagan. “They’re like giant lakes with no water control.”
Memorial Day Flood in 2016 invades Reagan’s shop.Memorial Day Flood in 2016 nearly invades Reagan’s home. Note color of water.93″ of floodwater took this home in Harveyone year later.
“In 2016, we got a lot of rain, but the river never got out of its banks much,” he continued. “The people that live next to LMI (on the north) tell me that the LMI walls keep breaking. The water rushes through their property, coming from the sand pit. In 2016, we had milky brown, silty water sweeping through here. It was so swift that it almost took my truck off the road. I got about 20 inches in my garage during Tax Day and Memorial Day storms. But it never got in my home at that point.”
“The Tax Day Flood in 2016 was our wedding anniversary. We tried to celebrate our anniversary while our garage got flooded. That was LMI. And then we got flooded again on Memorial Day. That was LMI,” said Reagan. “In 2016, the river here was NOT out of its banks. We got flooded from the sand pits.”
“Then came Harvey. We might have been fine if all we got was the rainwater. It came close. But then they opened the gates at Lake Conroe. And the sand mine upstream of us broke loose again.
Floods Cause Cascading Series of Problems
“Not only did we lose our house, I lost my job and I lost my health. We really hit bottom.”
“I’ve got breathing problems,” says Reagan. “Everybody in our family has breathing problems.”
“I was still trying to recover from Harvey, the day I lost my job in 2018. I was admitted into the emergency room because of my breathing that same day.”
“In the meantime, we were living in a used camper. And it caught on fire. We didn’t have insurance on it,” said Reagan. “My mother had just died. So we were going through that grieving process. Then the camper burns!”
Never-Ending Noise and Vacant Homes
“It used to be quiet here,” he says. “The sand trucks used to run during the days, but never on weekends and never at night. Now they run 24/7 it seems.”
The sand mines and floods took more than Reagan’s health and home. When long-time residents fled to higher ground, they left behind vacant houses. He worries about a criminal element coming in now.
During Harvey, Reagan says water reached 93 inches in his shop. That’s above the door frame.
Reagan yard during Imelda. Note color of water…again.
“We’re living in my shop now. Everything we have left is in there.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/3/2020
917 Days since Hurricane Harvey and 166 since Imelda
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
Three generations of the Giles family live together under the same roof in Elm Grove. Jerry Happ, Catrina Giles father, and Evonne Happ, plus Catrina’s children CJ, Dallas and Maverick. They had never flooded, not even in Harvey, until Perry Homes clear-cut 268 acres a block north of them without installing promised detention ponds. Then on May 7th and September 19th of 2019, they flooded twice. This is the story of how those floods affected a family and tore a neighborhood apart. As I drive up to their home on Shady Garden Drive for the interview, the first thing I noticed is that the foundation of their home is raised well above street level. In fact, it appears to be level with the top of my Chevy Tahoe. This is not an isolated case of a low-lying home.
Water Flows Down Street from Direction of Woodridge Village
Rehak: You said you wanted to make sure that Perry Homes knew about the damage that they inflicted on your community. Tell me what happened on May 7. Let’s start there. Where was the water coming from?
View from Giles front porch during Imelda
CJ (Catrina’s Oldest Son): It started off in the garage and my grandparents’ bedroom, which are on the north side of the house. Then it came in the back door and under the kitchen cabinets. And then it was just everywhere.
Rehak: It came in from the north? (The direction of Perry Homes’ development)
CJ: Yes.
Rehak: How high did it eventually get?
C. Giles: (Pointing to an electrical plug) Just under the outlets.
Gasoline, Paint, Paint Thinner Mixed with Floodwaters
Rehak: Tell me about the damage it caused.
CJ: We had a lot of personal items in boxes in the garage. It completely destroyed everything under two feet. All our tools got really messed up. There were a lot of things floating around in the garage. Paint. Gasoline. Paint thinner was mixed in with the water. So, it was a pretty big mess.
J. Happ: It came in, like CJ said, from the north. We had a bedroom set downstairs here…
E. Happ: My sister gave it to us before she passed away. Now it’s gone.
Current Felt Inside the House
J. Happ: The water was so powerful! The pressure of the water was so intense that it caused boxes underneath the bed to move around.
E. Happ: It broke my grandmother’s dishes that we stored under there!
CJ: We had an entire tote filled with family pictures. The lid popped off from hitting the sides so hard. The pictures are all gone now.
Family Heirlooms Destroyed
Rehak: You talked about your grandmother’s china. How old would that have been?
E. Happ: I’m 62. (pausing to calculate then giving up) It was old. They don’t make that kind of crystal anymore.
J. Happ: It was very old. Maybe late 1800’s.
E. Happ: And my bedroom furniture. I mean, no amount of money could ever replace that.
J. Happ: So, it was very devastating. A lot of personal items were in that room, and in the garage being stored at the time. They’re all gone now.
Rehak: I’m curious. You say the water pressure moved things around. It almost sounds like there was a current.
J. Happ: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
C. Giles: Everything in the lower cabinets was all destroyed.
It wasn’t, you know, water just coming in and oozing up. There was a current. Stuff was moving, even inside the cabinets.
Catrina Giles
Swing Set Picked Up by Flood and Moved
E. Happ: See that swing set back there by the big tree? The current picked it up and moved it against the shed.
Force of flood moved swing set and slide against shed (right)
J. Happ: When that water started coming in, we did the best we could. But we couldn’t move things fast enough. All of the furniture and appliances downstairs got damaged and had to be thrown out.
May flood took entire kitchen including appliances, plus washer/drier in utility room.
Refuse to Evacuate to Save Seven Animals
C. Giles: They asked us if we wanted to evacuate. Thank God we had the upstairs. Because they would only allow us to take one animal. And at the time we had seven.
We all have post traumatic stress now.
Evonne Happ
C. Giles: Yeah, It even affected our animals. They all lost weight. And two of them have died. One died shortly after the first flood from a snake bite. And the other just died from the stress. She had undergone her annual checkup, but her body just gave up at Christmas. We had to put her to sleep.
E. Happ: My dog’s scared to go out when it’s raining, even on the front porch. He used to sit on the front porch all the time with me. He won’t do it now if it’s raining, even if it’s just drizzling. He hides under the table. He’s scared of the rain because he KNOWS we’ll flood again. We. Could. Not. Control. Anything. And we got double the water the second time.
Second Flood Twice as Worse as First
J. Happ: Twenty-seven inches in the garage.
Rehak: You got about a foot of water in the May flood and double that in the second?
CJ: Twenty-two inches IN the house.
Rehak: Tell me about life BETWEEN the two floods.
C. Giles: It was very stressful because my husband was working in Pittsburgh for the first flood and Finland for the second. We are just trying to manage. Although we did have insurance for the house, we didn’t have it for the contents.
CJ: And we’re one of the few here with flood insurance to begin with.
“Just Not Comfortable Living Here Anymore”
C. Giles: Eventually we are going to hopefully try to sell. We’re just not comfortable living here anymore.
Rehak: And you had to pull out tile, cabinets?
J. Happ: Yes. We had to get two new sets of the cabinets, appliances, furniture, everythng. We were still paying on the first ones that were in the trash. When “Oh my God.” Yeah. “The second ones are apparently flooding.”
Effects on Family
Rehak: How did the rebuild affect you as a family?
J. Happ: We all lived upstairs in cramped quarters for the better part of a year. All our appliances were gone. We had no way to cook. So, we either had to eat out or bring it in.
We struggled as a family. It was a real hardship.
Jerry Happ, Catrina Giles father
All day long you have to listen to them hammer and saw. We had to go through all kinds of inspections for mildew. And before we could even get that, we had to get the driers, dehumidifiers and fans in here. We had that loud noise for, well, a month, before we could finally shut them down. There were a lot of different things going on at the time that caused a lot of real hardship.
C. Giles: That said, we basically have a brand-new home. We even have a new roof.
Rehak: How did the roof get involved?
C. Giles: In May, we had hail damage.
Rehak: Was Imelda just a repeat in September? Were you all still living upstairs and going through all the noise, construction and havoc?
Group: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Finished First Rebuild Two Weeks Before Second Flood
C. Giles: We had just finished our rebuild two weeks before Imelda.
Floodwater in Giles living room during Imelda. When family saw water coming up during second flood, they immediately started moving furniture upstairs.
Rehak: And you’re done now with the second rebuild?
C. Giles: We have the windows and doors that need to be replaced. The front door and the sliding glass doors must be taken out. And these windows, because the muddy water came through them.
When water receded, a thick layer of mud covered everything. So much sediment could only have come from one place: Woodridge Village.
Rehak: You’re considering selling the house?
Impact of Floods on Neighborhood
C. Giles: We know it’s NOT going to be a fast turnaround. Realtors said that we have to have several big storms and NOT flood for people to have confidence that this is going to be a safe neighborhood again. Meanwhile, the majority of our neighbors have already left.
Rehak: How many people on the block?
C. Giles: On our corner, we’ve lost all four families. It’s like a ghost town here. In the cul de sac, they’re all gone, too.
Picture of neighbors house. Water still had not receded well after dark
E. Happ: At least 20 families here are gone. I sit on the porch all day because I smoke, so I see things and keep count.
Rehak: How far down the block did homes flood?
C. Giles: On our street, only two or three houses didn’t get affected by the first flood, but everybody got affected in the second. It was more…devastating.
Home Values Under Water
J. Happ: The house across the street, around the corner, they finished remodeling the whole inside just before the May flood. And they were getting ready to sell it. The day before the flood, their realtor was going to put up a sign, but he decided to hold off. Then we had the flood. Well, they had the house up for $220,000. They only sold it for $115,000. They lost $100,000.
E. Happ: People in here had to just walk away from their homes.
Rehak: Really?
Group: Yeah. Yes.
E. Happ: Houses are still sitting there.
CJ: There’s a house…they never gutted it from the first flood. They just up and left.
Rehak: How is that affecting you? Are there squatters or animals moving in?
Crime Up
C. Giles: Well, crime has picked up. We have all kinds of homes being broken into now. I mean, people are still living in campers and stuff and their houses are getting broken into. It’s just sad.
E. Happ: Contractors have left their vehicles in the neighborhood overnight. They’ve got broken into and all their equipment stolen. Luckily, that has not happened to our contractors.
C. Giles: The thieves don’t realize or care that people still live here. They think we’re all gone.
Rehak: Where do you go from here?
Post Traumatic Stress and Spinning in Circles
C. Giles: We are just taking it one day at a time and finally finding some normalcy. But then, the other night when it rained, I just sat there, you know, praying, “Please watch over my house.” Even my little autistic one, Maverick, who drew the picture of the house crying, could not go to sleep till like midnight.
Picture of house crying, by seven-year-old autistic Maverick Giles. The black part is tears, says Maverick. He says it represents him missing his home.
CJ: None of us sleep.
E. Happ: Maverick was so nervous. All he could do when he came in the house was spin in circles.
That’s how Maverick dealt with the house being all topsy-turvy. He’d just spin in circles.
Evonne Happ
C. Giles: It would be hard to move now. People are losing money on their houses and we’re just not in a place where we can afford that. So, we’re just trying to hang in there.
From Left to Right: Jerry Happ, Evonne Happ, CJ and Catrina Giles in front of their home on Shady Gardens in Elm Grove, now almost restored a second time.
E. Happ: We’ve been living here for the past five years. We’re gonna be leaving in the summertime, probably by August. I’ll go back to South Carolina. I can deal with those damn hurricanes; you can get out of their way. This! It just happened so fast. Each time.
Long-Distance Help
Rehak (to Catrina): What does your husband do?
C. Giles: He’s a quality manager working on a large project in Finland now.
Rehak: So, you’re restoring all this by yourself without your husband’s help?
C. Giles: He helped coordinate the insurance, inspections and contractors, but for the rip-out and rebuilding of our home…he hasn’t been able to be a part of that because of his work.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
Rehak: What do you feel about Perry Homes at this point?
C. Giles: Well…there’s anger. They just really need to be held accountable for what happened.
J. Happ: These houses were built more than 35 years ago. They’ve gone through hurricanes. You know, large rainstorms, whatever. NEVER been flooded. All of this happened since they started building that development.
C. Giles: Right. Our street flooded during Harvey. But the water never came up in the yard even. Perry just needs to know that they not only affected adults. They affected animals. They affected children.
Some children have a Ziploc bag of their clothes right beside their bed. That’s so if they flood again, they have a change of clothes.
Catrina Giles
Rehak: If you had Kathy Perry Britton sitting right here across the table from you, what would you say to her?
C. Giles: Well. (long pause) I’d be nice. Two wrongs don’t make a right. So, we would pray for her and hope that she made the right decision and fixed that (pointing to development). Because too many people have been affected by this. Our community has been tarnished.
https://i0.wp.com/reduceflooding.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Catrina-Giles6.jpeg?fit=960%2C720&ssl=1720960adminadmin2020-02-08 12:50:452020-02-08 12:56:56Giles Family Struggles to Overcome Two Floods; Prays for Perry Homes to Do Right Thing
At its Feb. 20 board meeting, the San Jacinto River Authority will decide whether to continue lowering Lake Conroe temporarily until other flood mitigation measures can be put in place. Before then, Donna Dewhirst, a resident of Walden on Lake Houston, wanted to share some reminders of the damage that Harvey and the 80,000 CFS Lake Conroe release inflicted on the Lake Houston area.
A Horror Story in Pictures
Dewhirst’s outdoor kitchen took on knee-deep water. In the background, that’s the second story of her boat dock.As water started to subside, Dewhirst found trees and other debris lodged in her dock. The flood destroyed her boat.A 70-foot surprise became visible when floodwaters receded. The flood also destroyed Dewhirst’s boat.The railroad bridge just down from her caught another boat swept away in the flood.
“The water reached my back porch at the foundation of my home, but amazingly my house and garage got no water in them,” said Dewhirst.
Dewhirst feels lucky.Her neighbors less so.As water receded, the extent of flooding became more apparent.
“It was horrific,” said Dewhirst. “But we were lucky compared to others. I planned returning to a flooded home, but God of Heaven spared me. My son in law had put Flex Seal on the back doors and taped it with duct tape a few feet up. I’m sure that helped. But honestly from the water line on the house, it truly was a sheer miracle we didn’t flood.”
Can It Be Averted In the Future?
Aerial view of Aquatic Drive on Walden on Lake Houston after the Conroe release. Dewhirst believes this photo came from Greg Toole. If not, please let me know. I will correct the credit or remove the image if the author wishes.
If lowering Lake Conroe temporarily until other flood mitigation measures can be put in place, such as additional flood gates on the Lake Houston dam, I’m all for it.
For more information about that program and how to make your voice heard, visit the Lake Lowering page on this web site.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/5/2020
890 Days after Hurricane Harveyand 15 days before the SJRA decision
“Sand Mines Destroyed Our Lives”
Randy Reagan is tough. He grew up in the Conroe oil fields and riding bulls. But nothing prepared him for flooding five times in four years and the series of events that followed.
Reagan raised his family on a 5-acre lot in Bennett Estates. That’s a neighborhood between the San Jacinto West Fork and FM1314, just south of SH242. He made a modest living for himself as an oil-field technician by repairing turbines, first for a local company and then for GE. He harvested all the meat his family ate from his own property and the surrounding forests. Life was good.
Built Home Above 1994 High Water Mark
Bennett Estates rises up from the banks of the San Jacinto West Fork through the 100- and 500-year flood plains to even higher ground. Reagan’s slab is a foot above the high-water mark from the 1994 flood, which at the time involved a massive release from the Lake Conroe dam. So he figured he was safe for anything the future brought. Wrong!
A Happy Life, Until…
While Reagan was never destined for riches, he led a happy life. Until the sand mines came. Then everything changed.
Reagan now lives in a neighborhood five blocks deep – sandwiched between three sand mines comprising almost 1500 acres.
As the sand mines have grown, they’ve removed forests and wetlands that used to slow water down during rainfalls.
Now the water rushes through sand pits largely unimpeded. While the mines like to tout how they offer detention capacity in storms, aerial photos show that they offer little. That’s because they are often filled to the brim…even before storms. So, it doesn’t take much to make them overflow in heavy rains.
Water flows down into the mines from higher ground and quickly fills the pits. The pits can then spill over into the river and surrounding neighborhoods.
LMI Pit to the North Sends Water South into Neighborhood
That’s what Reagan contends happened with the LMI pit to the north of him.
Hanson Pit to South Backs Water Up into Neighborhood
The mine to the south of Reagan affects him in a different way. Twice, says Reagan, the mine has built walls that blocked the flow of ephemeral streams that used to run through his neighborhood.
The mine dug a ditch to the river in 2011 to let the water drain to the river. That worked for about five years. Then the ditch became overgrown and the volume of water coming from the northern mine became too much. Reagan flooded on Tax Day and Memorial Day in 2016, 2018, and Imelda in 2019. Not to mention the 93 inches he got during Harvey in 2017.
Problems Grow as Sand Mines Grow
“The sand mines have destroyed our lives,” said Reagan. “We’ve lived here all our lives. This all used to be woods for acres and acres and acres. The first problem I had was back in the 90’s when the sand pits were getting bigger.”
“When we moved here in the late ’90’s, we had our homesite raised four feet. That’s where FEMA drew the line for insurance at the time. We figured if we built higher than the high water mark from 1994, we would never have to worry. Because in 1994, we had Lake Conroe releasing all that water on us.”
“There was another flood in 1998, but it never affected us. We were high and dry here. LMI still had not built the mine to the north of us at that point,” said Reagan.
“Now we’ve got water coming at us up from the river, downhill from one mine and backing up from another mine. Sand from the mines even blocks the street drains that lead to the river,” said Reagan.
“All this used to be woods back here with natural creeks and natural drainage. It’s just all gone now. These sand pits done tore it out,” said Reagan. “They’re like giant lakes with no water control.”
“In 2016, we got a lot of rain, but the river never got out of its banks much,” he continued. “The people that live next to LMI (on the north) tell me that the LMI walls keep breaking. The water rushes through their property, coming from the sand pit. In 2016, we had milky brown, silty water sweeping through here. It was so swift that it almost took my truck off the road. I got about 20 inches in my garage during Tax Day and Memorial Day storms. But it never got in my home at that point.”
“The Tax Day Flood in 2016 was our wedding anniversary. We tried to celebrate our anniversary while our garage got flooded. That was LMI. And then we got flooded again on Memorial Day. That was LMI,” said Reagan. “In 2016, the river here was NOT out of its banks. We got flooded from the sand pits.”
“Then came Harvey. We might have been fine if all we got was the rainwater. It came close. But then they opened the gates at Lake Conroe. And the sand mine upstream of us broke loose again.
Floods Cause Cascading Series of Problems
“Not only did we lose our house, I lost my job and I lost my health. We really hit bottom.”
“I’ve got breathing problems,” says Reagan. “Everybody in our family has breathing problems.”
“I was still trying to recover from Harvey, the day I lost my job in 2018. I was admitted into the emergency room because of my breathing that same day.”
“In the meantime, we were living in a used camper. And it caught on fire. We didn’t have insurance on it,” said Reagan. “My mother had just died. So we were going through that grieving process. Then the camper burns!”
Never-Ending Noise and Vacant Homes
“It used to be quiet here,” he says. “The sand trucks used to run during the days, but never on weekends and never at night. Now they run 24/7 it seems.”
The sand mines and floods took more than Reagan’s health and home. When long-time residents fled to higher ground, they left behind vacant houses. He worries about a criminal element coming in now.
“We’re living in my shop now. Everything we have left is in there.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on 3/3/2020
917 Days since Hurricane Harvey and 166 since Imelda
The thoughts expressed in this post represent opinions on matters of public concern and safety. They are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution and the Anti-SLAPP Statute of the Great State of Texas.
Giles Family Struggles to Overcome Two Floods; Prays for Perry Homes to Do Right Thing
Three generations of the Giles family live together under the same roof in Elm Grove. Jerry Happ, Catrina Giles father, and Evonne Happ, plus Catrina’s children CJ, Dallas and Maverick. They had never flooded, not even in Harvey, until Perry Homes clear-cut 268 acres a block north of them without installing promised detention ponds. Then on May 7th and September 19th of 2019, they flooded twice. This is the story of how those floods affected a family and tore a neighborhood apart. As I drive up to their home on Shady Garden Drive for the interview, the first thing I noticed is that the foundation of their home is raised well above street level. In fact, it appears to be level with the top of my Chevy Tahoe. This is not an isolated case of a low-lying home.
Water Flows Down Street from Direction of Woodridge Village
Rehak: You said you wanted to make sure that Perry Homes knew about the damage that they inflicted on your community. Tell me what happened on May 7. Let’s start there. Where was the water coming from?
CJ (Catrina’s Oldest Son): It started off in the garage and my grandparents’ bedroom, which are on the north side of the house. Then it came in the back door and under the kitchen cabinets. And then it was just everywhere.
Rehak: It came in from the north? (The direction of Perry Homes’ development)
CJ: Yes.
Rehak: How high did it eventually get?
C. Giles: (Pointing to an electrical plug) Just under the outlets.
Gasoline, Paint, Paint Thinner Mixed with Floodwaters
Rehak: Tell me about the damage it caused.
CJ: We had a lot of personal items in boxes in the garage. It completely destroyed everything under two feet. All our tools got really messed up. There were a lot of things floating around in the garage. Paint. Gasoline. Paint thinner was mixed in with the water. So, it was a pretty big mess.
J. Happ: It came in, like CJ said, from the north. We had a bedroom set downstairs here…
E. Happ: My sister gave it to us before she passed away. Now it’s gone.
Current Felt Inside the House
J. Happ: The water was so powerful! The pressure of the water was so intense that it caused boxes underneath the bed to move around.
E. Happ: It broke my grandmother’s dishes that we stored under there!
CJ: We had an entire tote filled with family pictures. The lid popped off from hitting the sides so hard. The pictures are all gone now.
Family Heirlooms Destroyed
Rehak: You talked about your grandmother’s china. How old would that have been?
E. Happ: I’m 62. (pausing to calculate then giving up) It was old. They don’t make that kind of crystal anymore.
J. Happ: It was very old. Maybe late 1800’s.
E. Happ: And my bedroom furniture. I mean, no amount of money could ever replace that.
J. Happ: So, it was very devastating. A lot of personal items were in that room, and in the garage being stored at the time. They’re all gone now.
Rehak: I’m curious. You say the water pressure moved things around. It almost sounds like there was a current.
J. Happ: Oh, absolutely. Yes.
C. Giles: Everything in the lower cabinets was all destroyed.
Swing Set Picked Up by Flood and Moved
E. Happ: See that swing set back there by the big tree? The current picked it up and moved it against the shed.
J. Happ: When that water started coming in, we did the best we could. But we couldn’t move things fast enough. All of the furniture and appliances downstairs got damaged and had to be thrown out.
Refuse to Evacuate to Save Seven Animals
C. Giles: They asked us if we wanted to evacuate. Thank God we had the upstairs. Because they would only allow us to take one animal. And at the time we had seven.
C. Giles: Yeah, It even affected our animals. They all lost weight. And two of them have died. One died shortly after the first flood from a snake bite. And the other just died from the stress. She had undergone her annual checkup, but her body just gave up at Christmas. We had to put her to sleep.
E. Happ: My dog’s scared to go out when it’s raining, even on the front porch. He used to sit on the front porch all the time with me. He won’t do it now if it’s raining, even if it’s just drizzling. He hides under the table. He’s scared of the rain because he KNOWS we’ll flood again. We. Could. Not. Control. Anything. And we got double the water the second time.
Second Flood Twice as Worse as First
J. Happ: Twenty-seven inches in the garage.
Rehak: You got about a foot of water in the May flood and double that in the second?
CJ: Twenty-two inches IN the house.
Rehak: Tell me about life BETWEEN the two floods.
C. Giles: It was very stressful because my husband was working in Pittsburgh for the first flood and Finland for the second. We are just trying to manage. Although we did have insurance for the house, we didn’t have it for the contents.
CJ: And we’re one of the few here with flood insurance to begin with.
“Just Not Comfortable Living Here Anymore”
C. Giles: Eventually we are going to hopefully try to sell. We’re just not comfortable living here anymore.
Rehak: And you had to pull out tile, cabinets?
J. Happ: Yes. We had to get two new sets of the cabinets, appliances, furniture, everythng. We were still paying on the first ones that were in the trash. When “Oh my God.” Yeah. “The second ones are apparently flooding.”
Effects on Family
Rehak: How did the rebuild affect you as a family?
J. Happ: We all lived upstairs in cramped quarters for the better part of a year. All our appliances were gone. We had no way to cook. So, we either had to eat out or bring it in.
All day long you have to listen to them hammer and saw. We had to go through all kinds of inspections for mildew. And before we could even get that, we had to get the driers, dehumidifiers and fans in here. We had that loud noise for, well, a month, before we could finally shut them down. There were a lot of different things going on at the time that caused a lot of real hardship.
C. Giles: That said, we basically have a brand-new home. We even have a new roof.
Rehak: How did the roof get involved?
C. Giles: In May, we had hail damage.
Rehak: Was Imelda just a repeat in September? Were you all still living upstairs and going through all the noise, construction and havoc?
Group: Yeah. Uh-huh.
Finished First Rebuild Two Weeks Before Second Flood
C. Giles: We had just finished our rebuild two weeks before Imelda.
Rehak: And you’re done now with the second rebuild?
C. Giles: We have the windows and doors that need to be replaced. The front door and the sliding glass doors must be taken out. And these windows, because the muddy water came through them.
Rehak: You’re considering selling the house?
Impact of Floods on Neighborhood
C. Giles: We know it’s NOT going to be a fast turnaround. Realtors said that we have to have several big storms and NOT flood for people to have confidence that this is going to be a safe neighborhood again. Meanwhile, the majority of our neighbors have already left.
Rehak: How many people on the block?
C. Giles: On our corner, we’ve lost all four families. It’s like a ghost town here. In the cul de sac, they’re all gone, too.
E. Happ: At least 20 families here are gone. I sit on the porch all day because I smoke, so I see things and keep count.
Rehak: How far down the block did homes flood?
C. Giles: On our street, only two or three houses didn’t get affected by the first flood, but everybody got affected in the second. It was more…devastating.
Home Values Under Water
J. Happ: The house across the street, around the corner, they finished remodeling the whole inside just before the May flood. And they were getting ready to sell it. The day before the flood, their realtor was going to put up a sign, but he decided to hold off. Then we had the flood. Well, they had the house up for $220,000. They only sold it for $115,000. They lost $100,000.
E. Happ: People in here had to just walk away from their homes.
Rehak: Really?
Group: Yeah. Yes.
E. Happ: Houses are still sitting there.
CJ: There’s a house…they never gutted it from the first flood. They just up and left.
Rehak: How is that affecting you? Are there squatters or animals moving in?
Crime Up
C. Giles: Well, crime has picked up. We have all kinds of homes being broken into now. I mean, people are still living in campers and stuff and their houses are getting broken into. It’s just sad.
E. Happ: Contractors have left their vehicles in the neighborhood overnight. They’ve got broken into and all their equipment stolen. Luckily, that has not happened to our contractors.
C. Giles: The thieves don’t realize or care that people still live here. They think we’re all gone.
Rehak: Where do you go from here?
Post Traumatic Stress and Spinning in Circles
C. Giles: We are just taking it one day at a time and finally finding some normalcy. But then, the other night when it rained, I just sat there, you know, praying, “Please watch over my house.” Even my little autistic one, Maverick, who drew the picture of the house crying, could not go to sleep till like midnight.
CJ: None of us sleep.
E. Happ: Maverick was so nervous. All he could do when he came in the house was spin in circles.
C. Giles: It would be hard to move now. People are losing money on their houses and we’re just not in a place where we can afford that. So, we’re just trying to hang in there.
E. Happ: We’ve been living here for the past five years. We’re gonna be leaving in the summertime, probably by August. I’ll go back to South Carolina. I can deal with those damn hurricanes; you can get out of their way. This! It just happened so fast. Each time.
Long-Distance Help
Rehak (to Catrina): What does your husband do?
C. Giles: He’s a quality manager working on a large project in Finland now.
Rehak: So, you’re restoring all this by yourself without your husband’s help?
C. Giles: He helped coordinate the insurance, inspections and contractors, but for the rip-out and rebuilding of our home…he hasn’t been able to be a part of that because of his work.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right
Rehak: What do you feel about Perry Homes at this point?
C. Giles: Well…there’s anger. They just really need to be held accountable for what happened.
J. Happ: These houses were built more than 35 years ago. They’ve gone through hurricanes. You know, large rainstorms, whatever. NEVER been flooded. All of this happened since they started building that development.
C. Giles: Right. Our street flooded during Harvey. But the water never came up in the yard even. Perry just needs to know that they not only affected adults. They affected animals. They affected children.
Rehak: If you had Kathy Perry Britton sitting right here across the table from you, what would you say to her?
C. Giles: Well. (long pause) I’d be nice. Two wrongs don’t make a right. So, we would pray for her and hope that she made the right decision and fixed that (pointing to development). Because too many people have been affected by this. Our community has been tarnished.
Donna Dewhirst’s Harvey Experience
At its Feb. 20 board meeting, the San Jacinto River Authority will decide whether to continue lowering Lake Conroe temporarily until other flood mitigation measures can be put in place. Before then, Donna Dewhirst, a resident of Walden on Lake Houston, wanted to share some reminders of the damage that Harvey and the 80,000 CFS Lake Conroe release inflicted on the Lake Houston area.
A Horror Story in Pictures
“The water reached my back porch at the foundation of my home, but amazingly my house and garage got no water in them,” said Dewhirst.
“It was horrific,” said Dewhirst. “But we were lucky compared to others. I planned returning to a flooded home, but God of Heaven spared me. My son in law had put Flex Seal on the back doors and taped it with duct tape a few feet up. I’m sure that helped. But honestly from the water line on the house, it truly was a sheer miracle we didn’t flood.”
Can It Be Averted In the Future?
If lowering Lake Conroe temporarily until other flood mitigation measures can be put in place, such as additional flood gates on the Lake Houston dam, I’m all for it.
For more information about that program and how to make your voice heard, visit the Lake Lowering page on this web site.
Posted by Bob Rehak on 2/5/2020
890 Days after Hurricane Harvey and 15 days before the SJRA decision