“This is our war room,” said Dr. Katherine Persson, President of Lone Star College/Kingwood, without a hint of emotion in her voice. She speaks in clipped tones, not wasting a word or a second. That’s my first clue about the ordeal she and her management team have been through … and the miracle they managed to pull off after the West Fork of the San Jacinto River ran through two-thirds of the campus.
Dr. Katherine Persson, President of Lone Star College, Kingwood
During Hurricane Harvey, the college lost six of nine buildings to floodwater. The floodwater was contaminated with sewage forced up through floor drains when a nearby City of Houston wastewater treatment plant upstream also flooded. Decontamination took months. Restoration won’t finish until mid-January of 2019. Even before the floodwaters had fully receded, she and her team were busy developing a completely new business plan. They had to launch it in less than three weeks.
“Altogether,” Persson says, “Lone Star College District serves almost 90,000 students. We are the largest in the state and one of the largest in the country. The average size of a community college is 5,500.”
Persson oversees one sixth of the District. Her responsibilities extend from Humble to Tarkington (near Cleveland). She is responsible for:
13,000 students
150 full-time faculty
400 part-time faculty
400 full-time support staff
“We are a major economic engine in the community,” she says. “Despite the flood, we never closed down. We never laid anybody off. We made sure everybody got a paycheck.”
This is the story of how she and her team did it.
The Storm that Just Wouldn’t End
Persson’s story begins with a series of cascading delays. “On Friday, August 25th of 2017, we closed the college in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey. By Sunday, it became apparent that the storm was headed toward Houston, so we delayed the opening of school from the 28th to the 30th. But by Monday, the 28th, we determined that that wouldn’t work either, so we announced that classes would start on September 5th.
Harvey flooded 6 of 9 buildings at Lone Star College/Kingwood and cost an estimated total of $60 million.
“On Monday night, we were a shelter and a staging place for Centerpoint. We had 20 people already staying in the gym. I got a call from Dave Martin, our city councilmember. He asked if we could become a Red Cross Shelter because Kingwood High School was flooding. I said, ‘yes,’ of course. We were a shelter for all of three or four hours. At 10:30 Monday night, we had to close down.”
Persson continued, “At 2:30 the next morning, our facilities director called and said we had water in at least five of our buildings. That was Tuesday, the 29th. Unless you had a boat, nobody could get here until the 30th. Once the roads cleared out we could see that we had massive damage to six buildings because of the SJRA release.”
“I Tried Not to Get Emotional”
“Our deans started gathering that Wednesday, August 30, at homes that weren’t flooded, trying to figure out what we would do. We drafted a preliminary plan that had us coming back by converting 16-week classes to 12-week classes with extensive reliance on online courses. We did the first campus assessment at 4 pm that day. I wasn’t devastated emotionally at that point, I was just impressed with the power of water and what it can do.”
Classroom building at Lone Star College/Kingwood flooded during Harvey after the release of water from the Lake Conroe Dam by the San Jacinto River Authority.
“The depressing part was coming back Thursday and Friday. Everything kept smelling worse and worse. By Saturday, our facilities director got hold of a landscape crew that started cleaning the campus from one end to the other. When 250 Blackmon Mooring remediation workers started showing up, that became Good Day #1.”
“When I thanked the Lafayette volunteer group that was bringing 250 hot meals to campus for the workers, I think I freaked them out. They thought I was from the health department when I showed up in a white suit.”
“I work with miracle workers.”
By Tuesday, September 5th, classes started at all Lone Star colleges except Kingwood. Kingwood started on Monday, September 25th.
Rehak: “How did you manage that?”
Persson: “I work with miracle workers. All deans started working together in one upstairs room of the East Montgomery County Improvement District. The first thing we had to figure out was how to hold classes when we had just lost 113 classrooms. We postponed the opening again from September 5 to 25. Student services contacted everyone to tell them their schedules were going to change.”
“We told them, ‘You may have to move to a new location or go online, but just stick with us. We’ll try to make things work for you.’”
Most of the contents in six buildings had to be replaced at a cost of $19 million.
Enrollment Increases After Flood
“We actually gained students. But I think that’s because the devastation was so great in other parts of Houston. Many students couldn’t start school right away; they needed a couple extra weeks to get their lives in order. Our delay worked to their advantage and ours.”
Cataloging the Damage
“All of central receiving flooded, plus all of the trucks and everything we do to maintain the grounds. We temporarily redistributed janitorial and maintenance staff to our other colleges to keep them productive and avoid layoffs. We had no power on the campus for two weeks after Harvey; it wasn’t even safe to be in the buildings without personal protective equipment.”
“We lost six classroom buildings. The lower level of the health center was totally destroyed. So was the main central plant with our boilers, generators, and communication system. All those things that you need to fully function were flooded and contaminated. Our library was totaled and had to be gutted; water came up halfway on the monitors. You could even see the effects of current in the building.”
“Our field house was totally under water; we had tennis balls stuck in the rafters. And I’m not sure why the nature walk is still there. It had to be under 20 feet of water,” said Persson.
Tennis and soccer balls stuck in the rafters of the field house show just how high the flood got during Harvey.
First Steps on the Long Road Back
“Our first meeting was in the Presbyterian church. It was important for folks to come together to make sure that everybody was ok and to hear about our preliminary plan.”
“I told the deans to do anything they could to help the students as long as it wasn’t illegal, immoral or unethical. And they did.”
“Basically, to get classes going, we took every nook and cranny to accommodate whole departments. Our big conference center was carved up into six rooms. We made classrooms out of the women’s center. Where the students used to shoot pool, that became the geology lab.”
Makeshift classroom after Hurricane Harvey at Lone Star College/Kingwood
The Search for Classroom Space
“We also found alternative spaces throughout the community. Some classes moved to our Atascocita Center. Biology, Chemistry and Art moved to LSC/North Harris. Nursing moved to Red Oak. Occupational therapy moved to Kindred Rehab. English for speakers of other languages moved to First Presbyterian. Cosmetology moved to Farouk, Inc. And we even borrowed some space from Harris County Fire Academy.”
“The most expensive program we have is dental hygiene. It’s one of the few programs in the entire Gulf Coast area, therefore it was difficult to find alternative space for that. We wound up leasing space off of FM1314 and front-loaded all the lectures in the fall until we could build out the space for dental hygiene.”
“We still have five buildings that are not fully open. We have partial use of the Library upstairs, so we have three and a half buildings out of nine at the moment.”
“We have been delayed by interior brick walls. There was mold behind them. Everything had to be dried out and kept at over 90 degrees for 3 months after it was cleaned and disinfected.”
Massive Temporary Shift to Online Learning
Rehak: “Tell me about the shift to online education.”
Persson: “We were 23% online before Harvey. After Harvey, it jumped to 62% online. It almost tripled. Face-to-face went from 70% to 21%. And hybrid education went from 7% to 16%.”
Rehak: “Did you have to certify faculty to train online that never trained online before?”
Persson: “Yes. We had a mere three weeks to certify them. We developed an emergency certification course and doubled the number of teachers we had who were certified to teach online from 41% to 82%. Now it’s even higher – 95%.”
“None of the full-time faculty complained; they still had jobs. But we lost two or three part-time faculty; they didn’t want to learn how to teach online.”
“We also had to train some students to learn online with a mobile unit. We tutored upstairs in the conference center and at Atascocita. We really had to scramble.”
Success Rate Takes Slight Dip
“Our success rate went from 72% to 67%. That’s not bad considering the huge shift to online where the success rate is never as good.”
Rehak: “How do you define “success”?
Persson: “Success is making a grade of C or better in a class.”
Accommodating Veterans and International Students
Rehak: “Were there any other adaptations you had to make?”
Persson: “Oh yes! We didn’t know before all this that veterans could only take one online class per semester, so we had to get special permission, or they had to go elsewhere to get more face-to-face learning time.”
“Also, since 9/11, Homeland Security has to approve all sites for international students. Some of the alternatives, such as Atascocita, were not formally approved sites. So we lost some of our international and veteran students to other colleges.”
Still Under (Re)Construction
Rehak: “Where do you plan to take it from here?
Persson: “We will be fully functional and looking all new by January of 2019. On the plus side, we have had an opportunity to update things that haven’t been updated since 1984.
“Our new process technology building opened in January 2018 and our new health care teaching facility will open in fall of 2020.”
Lone Star College Kingwood is BACK!
“All of the deans are next door sharing a conference room. They could not have done what they did in such a short order if they weren’t all in the same room working together. They said that they didn’t want to go back into their silos. So in our build-back, we’re building a collaborative work center that 30 people will office out of,” said Persson.
Flood Cost $60 Million
Rehak: “How much did all of this cost?”
Persson: “We were the worst stage of contamination: Category 3 – or “black water” – meaning we had sewage in buildings. Clean-up was $11 million. Replacing contents will cost $19 million. And build-back will bring the total to an estimated $60 million.”
Rehak: “What is the most dramatic story to come out of this?”
Persson: “There was no loss of life. Not one student that we know of who planned to come here lost his or her life.”
“Harvey was a game changer; it reset expectations. There was none of the petty stuff you always get from students or employees. That totally disappeared. You have to keep a sense of humor through all this, even if it’s black humor.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on August 22, 2018
357 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-08-20 18:01:102018-09-01 10:25:25A River Ran Through It: Dr. Katherine Persson’s Harvey Experience
In June, I interviewed Milan Saunders, Chairman/CEO of Plains State Bank, and his daughter Lori Saunders, the bank’s COO. Both live in Kingwood Lakes with their respective families several blocks apart. I asked for this interview to learn how Harvey affected them personally and professionally, and to see whether the flood had a domino effect on other businesses beyond Houston. Spoiler alert: It did.
As we sit in a quiet corner of Amadeus, awaiting our meals, I ask Milan and Lori to start at the beginning. Both have photographic memories and brains that process information faster than computers. They begin with an almost hour-by-hour narrative of the storm’s approach. Clearly, almost a year later, the images remain vivid and painful.
It’s time to abandon ship. The Saunders household is swamped by Harvey.
Water and Plumbing Back Up
Milan: “Harvey approached the Houston area on Friday, August 25, and started dumping buckets of rain. Going into the weekend, we were tracking weather reports. On Saturday, things lightened up. Then the rains came back again. Sunday … a lot of rain. Monday … a lot of rain. By that afternoon, water was out of Lake Houston and it began to look pretty ominous. By Tuesday, water was also out of Lake Kingwood. We had only 18 inches between it and our threshold.”
Lori: “My plumbing was starting to back up on Sunday. That’s why I went over to Dad’s house.”
Milan: “Overnight, early Tuesday morning, water began to rise substantially. About 1 a.m., we wrapped the legs of our baby grand piano. In ‘94, we were spared, so I was thinking that, at worst, we would get a foot of water in the house.”
Reliving the Story While Retelling It
Milan continues the story in a series of rapid-fire images that seem to fade to black between each. “I went back to sleep. I was woken up at 6:30 in the morning. Came downstairs. At that point, I am standing in water up past my knees. I open the door and go outside. I am standing in water up to my belt. I see this rubber boat pulling in. First responders called out, ‘It’s a mandatory evacuation.’”
“I ask who they are. They say, ‘We’re firemen from Memphis, Tennessee.’ I say to myself, ‘Wait a minute!’ How did they know about it in time to get here from Memphis when I didn’t even know about it?”
Milan makes his great escape with wife and dog on a Wave Runner down Kingwood Drive
“Somehow, we managed to get our dog, a giant German Shepherd, balanced on my lap. They took us up the next street, and we got out there.”
As we delve deeper, Milan increasingly uses present tense, as though he is re-living Harvey in real time. His jaw clenches. The gets that 1000-yard stare. He is in another place and another time now.
“The next challenge is finding a place to shelter for me, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter and grandson…which we do that afternoon.”
“I’m also worrying about the bank. We had been closed for four days already. The law says banks can’t be closed for more than three days in a row. We had already contacted our regulators to let them know that we were experiencing some really harsh difficulties.”
Never in 50 Years of Banking
“All of our employees are basically stranded. 59 is shut down. The force of water running over the highway has moved the concrete barriers on it.”
“Plains State does business far beyond Houston. We are keeping in touch with our West Texas people to help our clients out there, but our headquarters is in Humble and no one can get to it.”
“If I had had any idea this was going to happen, we would have gotten hotel rooms on the other side of the river for our employees.”
Rising tide of discontent sweeps across Kingwood
One image intrudes on another as Milan talks of his experience. He jumps from subject to subject as we nosh on our linguine.
“I lost my telephone while rescuing my granddaughter’s cat,” he says. “I lost both cars.” He begins talking in a staccato shorthand almost like he’s running down a mental checklist, a pilot evaluating options for an emergency landing. “No cars. No phone. Can’t get across the river.”
“It really made it very difficult for us to run the bank. None of our offices experienced flooding; we just couldn’t get people to the offices to move electronic files. That’s where our connections to the Fed and our core processor are.”
Lori: “A few days later, as flood waters started to subside, some folks in law enforcement told us about a way to get across the river. It was a very long way without the 59 bridge, but it worked. Some of our managers were able to get into the bank and start taking care of customers.”
Milan: “We were down five days. I’ve never experienced that in 50 years of banking.”
Bob: “Were there any repercussions for being closed five days?”
Milan: “Overall, our clients down here were very understanding. The West Texas folks didn’t understand as well. One client is a school district. They had end of month payroll to make.”
“Luckily, the superintendent’s wife worked with first responders and knew what we were up against. We were able to explain those problems and I think we have that behind us now, but it was painful for everyone, including us. We built our reputation on service and reliability. Both were beyond our control at that point.”
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch House…
Milan: It was just an unbelievable experience getting into that house. Water up to mid chest. Probably a foolish thing to do. All kinds of things can happen. The water wasn’t moving that fast, but it was touching the breaker boxes. Water and electricity! Not a good combination!”
“We finally got the cat out of there, but my phone went in the drink, so I lost all communication.”
“The next day, my wife and Lori had to get to the house, so we borrowed a canoe. We saw our brother in law struggling in the water. When we tried to get him into the canoe, he flipped it over. Now Lori’s phone is under water, too.”
That’s all she played.
“The hardest part for my wife was the piano. We had bought it for our girls in 1977. It was a baby grand. The force of the water had flipped it over and ripped off two of the legs.”
Nightmare Followed by a Miracle
“We had 3.5 feet of nasty water and sewage in the house. It finally subsided on Thursday afternoon. Then another part in the story began. It was just as unbelievable how folks came out to help.”
“The outpouring of help from the people of Kingwood, led by the churches, was amazing. With the help from strangers, we got everything torn out and the dehumidifiers going.”
Secrets of Dealing with Contractors
“Then I had to find some contractors who could get the rest done. Luckily, we deal with contractors all the time; I knew some very good ones. I hired one who builds hotels and high-end townhomes. I cut a cost-plus deal with him.”
Starting over.
“I saw that a real shortage of qualified contractors was coming, so I did everything I could to sweeten the deal, but built in safeguards for us. I gave him two houses – mine and Lori’s. I guaranteed him payment every Friday night. We made up our minds about what we wanted and didn’t change anything. All he had to do was show every day and carry on the work continuously. As a result, we had two or three subs on the job site every day and avoided a lot of the problems that others have had getting contractors to show. If guys are working, you want to pay them every Friday so that they’re back on Monday.”
Kicked to the curb by Mother Nature.
“My wife is fluent in Spanish, so we could converse with subcontractors. That was another advantage.”
Repairs Completed in Record Time, But Now…
“We got the house all done by the first of December. Right now, I’m just wrestling with the insurance guys. They think I should have been able to get it done for half. But it’s unreasonable to look back and say that.”
“The IRS says you should be able to take $104 per square foot, no questions asked. Shopping for the best price in town is probably not the best idea at a time like this.”
Bob: “How long did it take the bank to get back to normal?”
Lori: “Other banks were having trouble getting personnel in. But after Labor Day, most of our staff was able to get into the bank. I remember coming to work Tuesday and seeing all the cars in the parking lot, and thinking, ‘Wow!’ We’d just been through a war zone…the craziest worst week of our lives. And there all of our people were!”
Milan: “We were also very fortunate that only three of our employees had flooded houses and two of those are sitting here with you.”
“The Craziest, Worst Week of Our Lives” Turns into a 3-Year Project
Bob: “How did you manage to cope with the business being down and your homes being destroyed at the same time?”
Lori: “You go into survival mode. You rely on others. I have really good managers. They just stepped up, personally and professionally. They knew what we were going through.”
“We lost everything. Now looking back…I wonder how we did get through it. It was just one day at a time.”
More net worth at the curb
“We knew good contractors and had great relationships with them. Not everyone had that luxury. When I drive down my street now, it breaks my heart. I still see dumpsters in the driveways and portacans…all of it. They’re still far away from getting their houses back together again.”
Bob: “What percentage of your street is finished remodeling?”
Lori: Maybe 20%. At least 80% are still not back in.”
Milan: “We have 42 houses in our part of Kingwood Lakes; only one escaped flooding. There aren’t ten that are completely finished restoring. You see lots of travel trailers. I’ve said all along that this is a three-year project and my opinion hasn’t changed.”
Fighting the Adjusters
Bob: “What’s the most common problem people have?”
Milan: “They’re all struggling with the insurance adjusters. Each adjuster sees things differently.”
“One friend’s adjuster told him that $70/sf was a starting point and that if you have cabinetry involved, you’re up to $100/sf. That matches up to what the IRS said. But some of these adjusting companies are trying to be too safe, in my opinion. They split everything up into a unit-pricing process that takes waaaay too long.”
Counter to counter, but not express
“When a cost-plus contractor shows up, he’s going to give you a quote for labor and all the receipts for materials. He’s not going to break out trim costs or caulking per square inch! Our first adjuster’s report was 40 PAGES!”
“By comparison, when our bank makes loans on a $700K house, the builder gives us pro formacosts on ONE sheet of paper. You can NOT analyze a house on a per-square-inch basis. These guys just don’t get it.”
“The other thing that has happened is that prices have all escalated by 30%.”
The Value of a Banker Who Knows Your Business
Bob: “Do you have any customers that were forced out of business by Harvey?”
Milan: “No. But many were affected.”
“We had a Holiday Inn Express in Rockport that was severely damaged. But the regulators were very proactive and encouraged banks to give people time, suspend payments, look for ways to assist them.”
“We had a dozen clients in different places that were badly affected, and we’ve worked with them.”
The Hardest Hit Clients Didn’t Have Flood Insurance
Lori: “The hardest hit were clients without flood insurance. They weren’t required to have it.
Not in a flood plain, you know!”
Milan: “We’re one of the top ten SBA lenders in this district. We’re up there with Chase and Wells. SBA requires flood insurance if you are in the 100-year flood plain. But the people that were the most affected were not in the 100-year flood plain and so consequently, they didn’t have any insurance.”
“I’ve had flood insurance for 50 years because my first house was in Bellaire. My second house was in Pearland. One time they had 35 inches in Alvin and there was no way out. We had to be rescued by helicopters down there, so when I moved to Kingwood, I insisted on flood insurance.”
Recommendations for Improving the System
Bob: “What would you change politically to help prevent another flood like Harvey?”
Milan: “Oversight needs to be regional. I think the SJRA worried too much about Lake Conroe and not enough about what would happen downstream. They need to communicate better, too. It’s incredible that guys in Memphis got the news before we did. Regional coordination and prompt notification. Those will be big parts of the answer.”
Heavy hearts and high piles: belongings on the curb, waiting for pickup
Nature Always Wins
Bob: “You work with a lot of developers. Do you have any observations about development near rivers?”
Milan: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins. We need to give Mother Nature her room.”
Posted By Bob Rehak on July 24, 2018
330 Days since Hurricane Harvey
00adminadmin2018-07-25 00:17:032018-07-25 00:30:01Milan and Lori Saunders’ Harvey Experience: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins.”
Amy Slaughter, her husband, two kids, a dog and a rabbit lived in a picturesque one-story house…until Hurricane Harvey. For the last eight months, she has lived with her husband and daughter in a trailer in their driveway while they struggle to rebuild their house. Their college-age son now lives with in-laws; it saves space in the trailer.
Home, Home on the Driveway! The Slaughter family has been living in a trailer for almost 9 months as they try to restore their home.
As I interview Amy in a local restaurant, she orders a root beer. She needs it, she says, to settle her stomach. She’s just come from court and is trying to squeeze me in before a conference call. As we talk, she constantly checks her phone for messages from contractors, architects and engineers. Such is the life of a professional mother in the Post-Harvey Reconstruction Era.
Matching shoes! Life is good!
As I listen to her tell me her story, I marvel at how energetic and positive she sounds. No doubt, this is a by-product of finally having found matching shoes and a working toaster oven.
“During the first days of the storm, we really weren’t worried,” says Slaughter. “Lake Conroe was beginning to release water, but there was no visible impact.”
“Ironically, relatives on Lake Conroe called us and said, ‘They’re releasing water from the dam up here and you have no idea how much!’ It was much more than the SJRA’s web site was showing. Evidently, the updates were way behind. But we still weren’t worried because we didn’t flood in 1994.”
“By noon, we began to think differently. We took three of our cars to Kingwood Park High School, just to be safe. My family talked me out of loading our computers into the cars because they thought someone would steal them. Big mistake. Everything I do is filed electronically with the courts. All the files on my laptop, memory cards, my home server … everything … was lost!”
“Our neighbors across the street are about a foot lower than we are. The creek behind them started to rise during the morning of the 28th. We went over to help them move their furniture upstairs. By 6 p.m., we had moved everything we could and water started to creep into their house.”
“On the news, they kept saying they were expecting the river to crest, but it didn’t; it kept rising. So we were caught off guard.”
“Then around midnight of the 28th, water began to creep into our house.” She looks whimsically inward at herself and giggles.
The Great Solo Cup Caper
“What?” I ask.
“We thought we might get only a couple inches, so we put solo cups under the legs of our wooden tables to protect them!” She smiles; You have to admire a woman who can laugh at disaster. Eventually, her home took on four feet of water.
The Slaughter’s gutted interior.
“We put chairs, computers, photo albums, and other junk up on tables and chests without realizing that everything we put up high would float and flip.”
The Pink Flamingo Flotilla
She laughs again as she flits from memory to random memory. “We evacuated as soon as the water started coming in the house. We brought our dog with us. But we left the rabbit in a cage up on the dining room table. When the water kept rising, I told my husband, ‘You have to get the rabbit.’”
“He and the dear friend who rescued us took an umbrella and waded back to the house through chest-deep water. Our rabbit was floating high above the table in her cage. They floated her cage right out. Other belongings were rescued on a giant pink flamingo. Most people used john boats; we used a pink flamingo from our pool.”
Amy Slaughter shows how high the water reached in her entry way.
Then her mood turns somber again. “Once we rescued the rabbit, we realized we had at least four feet of water in our house. We were pretty much in shock.”
“What did you lose?” I ask.
“Furniture-wise and computer-wise, we lost everything. Wedding pictures, family albums, even the digital stuff on thumb drives. It’s all gone. But everybody is safe, nobody got hurt.”
“We were able to save most of our clothing with Pine Sol and Clorox. We saved most of the dishes. Ironically goblets levitated out of my grandmother’s china cabinet and floated all over the house. We found them down the hall, in different rooms. Everywhere. Standing upright.”
“I’ll never leave this place.”
“Some friends suggested that we go to their home on Lake Livingston. It took three times longer than normal, but when we got there, we could get on the phone with our insurance company and FEMA. Watching all the news coverage from Livingston was terrifying. It was hard to see that and not be here.”
“When the river receded, we came back. We wanted to get into the house as quickly as we could. We lived with nearby relatives while we started gutting our house.”
“I didn’t cry for two weeks. I felt strongly that I couldn’t tell my children, ‘It’s just stuff,’ and not live by the motto myself.”
“When I got in there, I went from an attitude of looking at ‘what was lost’ to ‘what we could save.’ That really helped me get through the experience of gutting the house.”
“Everything in our home was sentimental. We had a lot of antiques we inherited. My grandmother grew up destitute. It killed me to put her sewing machine out at the curb, knowing how many dresses she had made for us growing up. To watch it rot there for three weeks was heart wrenching.”
“It was unbelievable, though, to be surrounded by people who came out of the woodwork to help. In Livingston, I was thinking, ‘Where can we live?’ But during the gutting of our house, people just came up and offered to help. Everyone pitched in. Strangers. Friends. Relatives. Customers. Clients. They brought food. They brought tools. And they didn’t ask for anything. After that, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never leave Kingwood.’”
A Court Appearance Reminiscent of “My Cousin Vinny”
“Then the exhaustion hit. My husband and I were both still trying to work. I had court dates. My clothing was all over Kingwood. At cleaners. With me. With my mother in law. It was pretty funny. The first time I went to court, I showed up in a denim skirt. I approached the bailiff and said, I apologize ahead of time to the court. We got flooded and I don’t know where any of my clothes are.” Luckily, Slaughter had a judge who was more understanding than the one in the movie.
“Home, Home on the Driveway”
“Currently, we live in a travel trailer. We had looked for homes, apartments and hotels to rent, but everything was booked up. Friends opened their homes to us, but we wanted to stay near the house to deal with repairs. The trailer is not big enough for all of us; my son has to live with my sister in law.”
“The trailer is not like living in a drum; it’s like living in a drum SET,” Slaughter jokes. “When it rains, you hear all kinds of sounds. The rain makes one sound. The pine needles brushing up against the trailer make another. And then there’s the occasional cymbal crash when a pine cone hits the roof.”
“We store our clothes in the garage. It’s the mother of all walk-in closets right now.”
The mother of all walk in closets…Amy Slaughter’s garage.
“How do you cook?” I ask.
“The trailer does have a microwave. We have a grill with a burner on it. And we have a hot plate and a toaster oven. But mostly we don’t cook.”
Shrinking an Inch a Day
I shake my head, thinking back to college. I could handle life in a trailer then. Now, I’m not so sure. Amy Slaughter seems only slightly troubled, though.
“It’s not bad if you’re on vacation, but after eight months, it’s kind of getting old. At first you’re so grateful to have it that you overlook the inconveniences. Then after about a month, your thoughts start to go in the opposite direction. It feels like it’s shrinking an inch a day.” I nod; I have a pair of jeans like that.
Camp Chairs and an Air Mattress for Watching TV
“Now that the house is dried out, I’m starting to use it as a workshop to restore my grandmother’s furniture,” says Amy Slaughter. “We have a back porch. We put a TV out there. We have camp chairs and an air mattress for watching the TV. That’s really our living room. But it’s getting hot now. So we may be spending more time in the trailer.”
Third-World Living
“The shower in the trailer is about the size of a bucket. It’s functional and would work. But it’s tiny, so we shower in the house. One of the bathrooms had a shower where we only tore out the glass and the backside of two walls. We put tarps along the wood studs to hold the water in and propped up the one wall with a wire shelving unit and bungee cords. It’s definitely Third-World living.”
The Slaughter shower. Makeshift, but still bigger than their trailer’s shower.
I think to myself, “This lady wins awards for creativity, but I doubt she will pass the plumbing inspection.”
“Purchasing the House We Almost Paid Off.”
I ask how Harvey affected Amy Slaughter’s family financially. Without missing a beat, she says, “We get the privilege of purchasing the house we had almost paid off.” I ask for an explanation. “Our options were: sell and move; put it right back together again; or build up. We didn’t want to move. And we didn’t want to flood … ever again. So we decided to build up. But contractors told us it would be less expensive to wipe the slab and start over than build on top of what we had.”
“How much longer will it take?” I ask.
“Finding a contractor to do the whole thing is difficult. Everybody is booked. We’re in a financial quandary. Flood insurance will only go so far. It will replace what we had, but not what we feel we need to build to be safe. Before this, we had a house that never flooded and we want to get back to that.”
“What are your biggest concerns at the moment?” I ask.
Concerns Looking Forward
“There’s a concern that we won’t be able to sell the house. How many people want a one-story house where you have to climb the stairs to get in?”
“I’m also afraid that Kingwood will be considered a lost cause at some point by politicians. You’ve seen it happen with Forest Cove. ‘Oh, that area floods now, so we should just buy out the owners and wipe it all out.’”
“Meanwhile, you have developers who are buying golf courses, like Forest Cove’s. I’ve heard it was bought and is about to be turned into homesites. That scares me. They’re going to build up higher and that’s just going to send water toward the rest of us. If the politicians don’t start limiting development like that, it will turn the rest of us into a financial sink hole.”
“If you could say one thing to the mayor, what would it be?”
Amy Slaughter pauses a long time, then…
“Come try to sleep through a rain storm in my travel trailer!”
“I worry whether I should put pontoons it,” she says doing her best Sarah Silverman imitation. Then seriously, “It won’t take a Harvey at this point to flood Kingwood again. I know they are committed to dredging the river, but the reality is they haven’t solidified any workable plan yet.”
And with that, Amy Slaughter excuses herself and sprints off to her conference call.
A River Ran Through It: Dr. Katherine Persson’s Harvey Experience
“This is our war room,” said Dr. Katherine Persson, President of Lone Star College/Kingwood, without a hint of emotion in her voice. She speaks in clipped tones, not wasting a word or a second. That’s my first clue about the ordeal she and her management team have been through … and the miracle they managed to pull off after the West Fork of the San Jacinto River ran through two-thirds of the campus.
Dr. Katherine Persson, President of Lone Star College, Kingwood
During Hurricane Harvey, the college lost six of nine buildings to floodwater. The floodwater was contaminated with sewage forced up through floor drains when a nearby City of Houston wastewater treatment plant upstream also flooded. Decontamination took months. Restoration won’t finish until mid-January of 2019. Even before the floodwaters had fully receded, she and her team were busy developing a completely new business plan. They had to launch it in less than three weeks.
“Altogether,” Persson says, “Lone Star College District serves almost 90,000 students. We are the largest in the state and one of the largest in the country. The average size of a community college is 5,500.”
Persson oversees one sixth of the District. Her responsibilities extend from Humble to Tarkington (near Cleveland). She is responsible for:
This is the story of how she and her team did it.
The Storm that Just Wouldn’t End
Persson’s story begins with a series of cascading delays. “On Friday, August 25th of 2017, we closed the college in anticipation of Hurricane Harvey. By Sunday, it became apparent that the storm was headed toward Houston, so we delayed the opening of school from the 28th to the 30th. But by Monday, the 28th, we determined that that wouldn’t work either, so we announced that classes would start on September 5th.
Harvey flooded 6 of 9 buildings at Lone Star College/Kingwood and cost an estimated total of $60 million.
“On Monday night, we were a shelter and a staging place for Centerpoint. We had 20 people already staying in the gym. I got a call from Dave Martin, our city councilmember. He asked if we could become a Red Cross Shelter because Kingwood High School was flooding. I said, ‘yes,’ of course. We were a shelter for all of three or four hours. At 10:30 Monday night, we had to close down.”
Persson continued, “At 2:30 the next morning, our facilities director called and said we had water in at least five of our buildings. That was Tuesday, the 29th. Unless you had a boat, nobody could get here until the 30th. Once the roads cleared out we could see that we had massive damage to six buildings because of the SJRA release.”
“I Tried Not to Get Emotional”
“Our deans started gathering that Wednesday, August 30, at homes that weren’t flooded, trying to figure out what we would do. We drafted a preliminary plan that had us coming back by converting 16-week classes to 12-week classes with extensive reliance on online courses. We did the first campus assessment at 4 pm that day. I wasn’t devastated emotionally at that point, I was just impressed with the power of water and what it can do.”
Classroom building at Lone Star College/Kingwood flooded during Harvey after the release of water from the Lake Conroe Dam by the San Jacinto River Authority.
“The depressing part was coming back Thursday and Friday. Everything kept smelling worse and worse. By Saturday, our facilities director got hold of a landscape crew that started cleaning the campus from one end to the other. When 250 Blackmon Mooring remediation workers started showing up, that became Good Day #1.”
“When I thanked the Lafayette volunteer group that was bringing 250 hot meals to campus for the workers, I think I freaked them out. They thought I was from the health department when I showed up in a white suit.”
“I work with miracle workers.”
By Tuesday, September 5th, classes started at all Lone Star colleges except Kingwood. Kingwood started on Monday, September 25th.
Rehak: “How did you manage that?”
Persson: “I work with miracle workers. All deans started working together in one upstairs room of the East Montgomery County Improvement District. The first thing we had to figure out was how to hold classes when we had just lost 113 classrooms. We postponed the opening again from September 5 to 25. Student services contacted everyone to tell them their schedules were going to change.”
“We told them, ‘You may have to move to a new location or go online, but just stick with us. We’ll try to make things work for you.’”
Most of the contents in six buildings had to be replaced at a cost of $19 million.
Enrollment Increases After Flood
“We actually gained students. But I think that’s because the devastation was so great in other parts of Houston. Many students couldn’t start school right away; they needed a couple extra weeks to get their lives in order. Our delay worked to their advantage and ours.”
Cataloging the Damage
“All of central receiving flooded, plus all of the trucks and everything we do to maintain the grounds. We temporarily redistributed janitorial and maintenance staff to our other colleges to keep them productive and avoid layoffs. We had no power on the campus for two weeks after Harvey; it wasn’t even safe to be in the buildings without personal protective equipment.”
“We lost six classroom buildings. The lower level of the health center was totally destroyed. So was the main central plant with our boilers, generators, and communication system. All those things that you need to fully function were flooded and contaminated. Our library was totaled and had to be gutted; water came up halfway on the monitors. You could even see the effects of current in the building.”
“Our field house was totally under water; we had tennis balls stuck in the rafters. And I’m not sure why the nature walk is still there. It had to be under 20 feet of water,” said Persson.
Tennis and soccer balls stuck in the rafters of the field house show just how high the flood got during Harvey.
First Steps on the Long Road Back
“Our first meeting was in the Presbyterian church. It was important for folks to come together to make sure that everybody was ok and to hear about our preliminary plan.”
“Basically, to get classes going, we took every nook and cranny to accommodate whole departments. Our big conference center was carved up into six rooms. We made classrooms out of the women’s center. Where the students used to shoot pool, that became the geology lab.”
Makeshift classroom after Hurricane Harvey at Lone Star College/Kingwood
The Search for Classroom Space
“We also found alternative spaces throughout the community. Some classes moved to our Atascocita Center. Biology, Chemistry and Art moved to LSC/North Harris. Nursing moved to Red Oak. Occupational therapy moved to Kindred Rehab. English for speakers of other languages moved to First Presbyterian. Cosmetology moved to Farouk, Inc. And we even borrowed some space from Harris County Fire Academy.”
“The most expensive program we have is dental hygiene. It’s one of the few programs in the entire Gulf Coast area, therefore it was difficult to find alternative space for that. We wound up leasing space off of FM1314 and front-loaded all the lectures in the fall until we could build out the space for dental hygiene.”
“We still have five buildings that are not fully open. We have partial use of the Library upstairs, so we have three and a half buildings out of nine at the moment.”
“We have been delayed by interior brick walls. There was mold behind them. Everything had to be dried out and kept at over 90 degrees for 3 months after it was cleaned and disinfected.”
Massive Temporary Shift to Online Learning
Rehak: “Tell me about the shift to online education.”
Rehak: “Did you have to certify faculty to train online that never trained online before?”
Persson: “Yes. We had a mere three weeks to certify them. We developed an emergency certification course and doubled the number of teachers we had who were certified to teach online from 41% to 82%. Now it’s even higher – 95%.”
“None of the full-time faculty complained; they still had jobs. But we lost two or three part-time faculty; they didn’t want to learn how to teach online.”
“We also had to train some students to learn online with a mobile unit. We tutored upstairs in the conference center and at Atascocita. We really had to scramble.”
Success Rate Takes Slight Dip
“Our success rate went from 72% to 67%. That’s not bad considering the huge shift to online where the success rate is never as good.”
Rehak: “How do you define “success”?
Persson: “Success is making a grade of C or better in a class.”
Accommodating Veterans and International Students
Rehak: “Were there any other adaptations you had to make?”
Persson: “Oh yes! We didn’t know before all this that veterans could only take one online class per semester, so we had to get special permission, or they had to go elsewhere to get more face-to-face learning time.”
“Also, since 9/11, Homeland Security has to approve all sites for international students. Some of the alternatives, such as Atascocita, were not formally approved sites. So we lost some of our international and veteran students to other colleges.”
Still Under (Re)Construction
Rehak: “Where do you plan to take it from here?
Persson: “We will be fully functional and looking all new by January of 2019. On the plus side, we have had an opportunity to update things that haven’t been updated since 1984.
“Our new process technology building opened in January 2018 and our new health care teaching facility will open in fall of 2020.”
Lone Star College Kingwood is BACK!
“All of the deans are next door sharing a conference room. They could not have done what they did in such a short order if they weren’t all in the same room working together. They said that they didn’t want to go back into their silos. So in our build-back, we’re building a collaborative work center that 30 people will office out of,” said Persson.
Flood Cost $60 Million
Rehak: “How much did all of this cost?”
Persson: “We were the worst stage of contamination: Category 3 – or “black water” – meaning we had sewage in buildings. Clean-up was $11 million. Replacing contents will cost $19 million. And build-back will bring the total to an estimated $60 million.”
Rehak: “What is the most dramatic story to come out of this?”
Persson: “There was no loss of life. Not one student that we know of who planned to come here lost his or her life.”
“Harvey was a game changer; it reset expectations. There was none of the petty stuff you always get from students or employees. That totally disappeared. You have to keep a sense of humor through all this, even if it’s black humor.”
Posted by Bob Rehak on August 22, 2018
357 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Milan and Lori Saunders’ Harvey Experience: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins.”
Interview by Bob Rehak
In June, I interviewed Milan Saunders, Chairman/CEO of Plains State Bank, and his daughter Lori Saunders, the bank’s COO. Both live in Kingwood Lakes with their respective families several blocks apart. I asked for this interview to learn how Harvey affected them personally and professionally, and to see whether the flood had a domino effect on other businesses beyond Houston. Spoiler alert: It did.
As we sit in a quiet corner of Amadeus, awaiting our meals, I ask Milan and Lori to start at the beginning. Both have photographic memories and brains that process information faster than computers. They begin with an almost hour-by-hour narrative of the storm’s approach. Clearly, almost a year later, the images remain vivid and painful.
It’s time to abandon ship. The Saunders household is swamped by Harvey.
Water and Plumbing Back Up
Milan: “Harvey approached the Houston area on Friday, August 25, and started dumping buckets of rain. Going into the weekend, we were tracking weather reports. On Saturday, things lightened up. Then the rains came back again. Sunday … a lot of rain. Monday … a lot of rain. By that afternoon, water was out of Lake Houston and it began to look pretty ominous. By Tuesday, water was also out of Lake Kingwood. We had only 18 inches between it and our threshold.”
Lori: “My plumbing was starting to back up on Sunday. That’s why I went over to Dad’s house.”
Milan: “Overnight, early Tuesday morning, water began to rise substantially. About 1 a.m., we wrapped the legs of our baby grand piano. In ‘94, we were spared, so I was thinking that, at worst, we would get a foot of water in the house.”
Reliving the Story While Retelling It
Milan continues the story in a series of rapid-fire images that seem to fade to black between each. “I went back to sleep. I was woken up at 6:30 in the morning. Came downstairs. At that point, I am standing in water up past my knees. I open the door and go outside. I am standing in water up to my belt. I see this rubber boat pulling in. First responders called out, ‘It’s a mandatory evacuation.’”
“I ask who they are. They say, ‘We’re firemen from Memphis, Tennessee.’ I say to myself, ‘Wait a minute!’ How did they know about it in time to get here from Memphis when I didn’t even know about it?”
Milan makes his great escape with wife and dog on a Wave Runner down Kingwood Drive
“Somehow, we managed to get our dog, a giant German Shepherd, balanced on my lap. They took us up the next street, and we got out there.”
As we delve deeper, Milan increasingly uses present tense, as though he is re-living Harvey in real time. His jaw clenches. The gets that 1000-yard stare. He is in another place and another time now.
“The next challenge is finding a place to shelter for me, my wife, my daughter, my granddaughter and grandson…which we do that afternoon.”
“I’m also worrying about the bank. We had been closed for four days already. The law says banks can’t be closed for more than three days in a row. We had already contacted our regulators to let them know that we were experiencing some really harsh difficulties.”
Never in 50 Years of Banking
“All of our employees are basically stranded. 59 is shut down. The force of water running over the highway has moved the concrete barriers on it.”
“Plains State does business far beyond Houston. We are keeping in touch with our West Texas people to help our clients out there, but our headquarters is in Humble and no one can get to it.”
“If I had had any idea this was going to happen, we would have gotten hotel rooms on the other side of the river for our employees.”
Rising tide of discontent sweeps across Kingwood
One image intrudes on another as Milan talks of his experience. He jumps from subject to subject as we nosh on our linguine.
“I lost my telephone while rescuing my granddaughter’s cat,” he says. “I lost both cars.” He begins talking in a staccato shorthand almost like he’s running down a mental checklist, a pilot evaluating options for an emergency landing. “No cars. No phone. Can’t get across the river.”
“It really made it very difficult for us to run the bank. None of our offices experienced flooding; we just couldn’t get people to the offices to move electronic files. That’s where our connections to the Fed and our core processor are.”
Lori: “A few days later, as flood waters started to subside, some folks in law enforcement told us about a way to get across the river. It was a very long way without the 59 bridge, but it worked. Some of our managers were able to get into the bank and start taking care of customers.”
Milan: “We were down five days. I’ve never experienced that in 50 years of banking.”
Bob: “Were there any repercussions for being closed five days?”
Milan: “Overall, our clients down here were very understanding. The West Texas folks didn’t understand as well. One client is a school district. They had end of month payroll to make.”
“Luckily, the superintendent’s wife worked with first responders and knew what we were up against. We were able to explain those problems and I think we have that behind us now, but it was painful for everyone, including us. We built our reputation on service and reliability. Both were beyond our control at that point.”
Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch House…
Milan: It was just an unbelievable experience getting into that house. Water up to mid chest. Probably a foolish thing to do. All kinds of things can happen. The water wasn’t moving that fast, but it was touching the breaker boxes. Water and electricity! Not a good combination!”
“We finally got the cat out of there, but my phone went in the drink, so I lost all communication.”
“The next day, my wife and Lori had to get to the house, so we borrowed a canoe. We saw our brother in law struggling in the water. When we tried to get him into the canoe, he flipped it over. Now Lori’s phone is under water, too.”
That’s all she played.
“The hardest part for my wife was the piano. We had bought it for our girls in 1977. It was a baby grand. The force of the water had flipped it over and ripped off two of the legs.”
Nightmare Followed by a Miracle
“We had 3.5 feet of nasty water and sewage in the house. It finally subsided on Thursday afternoon. Then another part in the story began. It was just as unbelievable how folks came out to help.”
“The outpouring of help from the people of Kingwood, led by the churches, was amazing. With the help from strangers, we got everything torn out and the dehumidifiers going.”
Secrets of Dealing with Contractors
“Then I had to find some contractors who could get the rest done. Luckily, we deal with contractors all the time; I knew some very good ones. I hired one who builds hotels and high-end townhomes. I cut a cost-plus deal with him.”
Starting over.
“I saw that a real shortage of qualified contractors was coming, so I did everything I could to sweeten the deal, but built in safeguards for us. I gave him two houses – mine and Lori’s. I guaranteed him payment every Friday night. We made up our minds about what we wanted and didn’t change anything. All he had to do was show every day and carry on the work continuously. As a result, we had two or three subs on the job site every day and avoided a lot of the problems that others have had getting contractors to show. If guys are working, you want to pay them every Friday so that they’re back on Monday.”
Kicked to the curb by Mother Nature.
“My wife is fluent in Spanish, so we could converse with subcontractors. That was another advantage.”
Repairs Completed in Record Time, But Now…
“We got the house all done by the first of December. Right now, I’m just wrestling with the insurance guys. They think I should have been able to get it done for half. But it’s unreasonable to look back and say that.”
“The IRS says you should be able to take $104 per square foot, no questions asked. Shopping for the best price in town is probably not the best idea at a time like this.”
Bob: “How long did it take the bank to get back to normal?”
Lori: “Other banks were having trouble getting personnel in. But after Labor Day, most of our staff was able to get into the bank. I remember coming to work Tuesday and seeing all the cars in the parking lot, and thinking, ‘Wow!’ We’d just been through a war zone…the craziest worst week of our lives. And there all of our people were!”
Milan: “We were also very fortunate that only three of our employees had flooded houses and two of those are sitting here with you.”
“The Craziest, Worst Week of Our Lives” Turns into a 3-Year Project
Bob: “How did you manage to cope with the business being down and your homes being destroyed at the same time?”
Lori: “You go into survival mode. You rely on others. I have really good managers. They just stepped up, personally and professionally. They knew what we were going through.”
“We lost everything. Now looking back…I wonder how we did get through it. It was just one day at a time.”
More net worth at the curb
“We knew good contractors and had great relationships with them. Not everyone had that luxury. When I drive down my street now, it breaks my heart. I still see dumpsters in the driveways and portacans…all of it. They’re still far away from getting their houses back together again.”
Bob: “What percentage of your street is finished remodeling?”
Lori: Maybe 20%. At least 80% are still not back in.”
Milan: “We have 42 houses in our part of Kingwood Lakes; only one escaped flooding. There aren’t ten that are completely finished restoring. You see lots of travel trailers. I’ve said all along that this is a three-year project and my opinion hasn’t changed.”
Fighting the Adjusters
Bob: “What’s the most common problem people have?”
Milan: “They’re all struggling with the insurance adjusters. Each adjuster sees things differently.”
“One friend’s adjuster told him that $70/sf was a starting point and that if you have cabinetry involved, you’re up to $100/sf. That matches up to what the IRS said. But some of these adjusting companies are trying to be too safe, in my opinion. They split everything up into a unit-pricing process that takes waaaay too long.”
Counter to counter, but not express
“When a cost-plus contractor shows up, he’s going to give you a quote for labor and all the receipts for materials. He’s not going to break out trim costs or caulking per square inch! Our first adjuster’s report was 40 PAGES!”
“By comparison, when our bank makes loans on a $700K house, the builder gives us pro formacosts on ONE sheet of paper. You can NOT analyze a house on a per-square-inch basis. These guys just don’t get it.”
“The other thing that has happened is that prices have all escalated by 30%.”
The Value of a Banker Who Knows Your Business
Bob: “Do you have any customers that were forced out of business by Harvey?”
Milan: “No. But many were affected.”
“We had a Holiday Inn Express in Rockport that was severely damaged. But the regulators were very proactive and encouraged banks to give people time, suspend payments, look for ways to assist them.”
“We had a dozen clients in different places that were badly affected, and we’ve worked with them.”
The Hardest Hit Clients Didn’t Have Flood Insurance
Lori: “The hardest hit were clients without flood insurance. They weren’t required to have it.
Not in a flood plain, you know!”
Milan: “We’re one of the top ten SBA lenders in this district. We’re up there with Chase and Wells. SBA requires flood insurance if you are in the 100-year flood plain. But the people that were the most affected were not in the 100-year flood plain and so consequently, they didn’t have any insurance.”
“I’ve had flood insurance for 50 years because my first house was in Bellaire. My second house was in Pearland. One time they had 35 inches in Alvin and there was no way out. We had to be rescued by helicopters down there, so when I moved to Kingwood, I insisted on flood insurance.”
Recommendations for Improving the System
Bob: “What would you change politically to help prevent another flood like Harvey?”
Milan: “Oversight needs to be regional. I think the SJRA worried too much about Lake Conroe and not enough about what would happen downstream. They need to communicate better, too. It’s incredible that guys in Memphis got the news before we did. Regional coordination and prompt notification. Those will be big parts of the answer.”
Heavy hearts and high piles: belongings on the curb, waiting for pickup
Nature Always Wins
Bob: “You work with a lot of developers. Do you have any observations about development near rivers?”
Milan: “You can’t outsmart nature. Nature always wins. We need to give Mother Nature her room.”
Posted By Bob Rehak on July 24, 2018
330 Days since Hurricane Harvey
Amy Slaughter’s Hurricane Harvey Experience
Amy Slaughter, her husband, two kids, a dog and a rabbit lived in a picturesque one-story house…until Hurricane Harvey. For the last eight months, she has lived with her husband and daughter in a trailer in their driveway while they struggle to rebuild their house. Their college-age son now lives with in-laws; it saves space in the trailer.
Home, Home on the Driveway! The Slaughter family has been living in a trailer for almost 9 months as they try to restore their home.
As I interview Amy in a local restaurant, she orders a root beer. She needs it, she says, to settle her stomach. She’s just come from court and is trying to squeeze me in before a conference call. As we talk, she constantly checks her phone for messages from contractors, architects and engineers. Such is the life of a professional mother in the Post-Harvey Reconstruction Era.
Matching shoes! Life is good!
As I listen to her tell me her story, I marvel at how energetic and positive she sounds. No doubt, this is a by-product of finally having found matching shoes and a working toaster oven.
“During the first days of the storm, we really weren’t worried,” says Slaughter. “Lake Conroe was beginning to release water, but there was no visible impact.”
“Ironically, relatives on Lake Conroe called us and said, ‘They’re releasing water from the dam up here and you have no idea how much!’ It was much more than the SJRA’s web site was showing. Evidently, the updates were way behind. But we still weren’t worried because we didn’t flood in 1994.”
“By noon, we began to think differently. We took three of our cars to Kingwood Park High School, just to be safe. My family talked me out of loading our computers into the cars because they thought someone would steal them. Big mistake. Everything I do is filed electronically with the courts. All the files on my laptop, memory cards, my home server … everything … was lost!”
“Our neighbors across the street are about a foot lower than we are. The creek behind them started to rise during the morning of the 28th. We went over to help them move their furniture upstairs. By 6 p.m., we had moved everything we could and water started to creep into their house.”
“On the news, they kept saying they were expecting the river to crest, but it didn’t; it kept rising. So we were caught off guard.”
“Then around midnight of the 28th, water began to creep into our house.” She looks whimsically inward at herself and giggles.
The Great Solo Cup Caper
“What?” I ask.
“We thought we might get only a couple inches, so we put solo cups under the legs of our wooden tables to protect them!” She smiles; You have to admire a woman who can laugh at disaster. Eventually, her home took on four feet of water.
The Slaughter’s gutted interior.
“We put chairs, computers, photo albums, and other junk up on tables and chests without realizing that everything we put up high would float and flip.”
The Pink Flamingo Flotilla
She laughs again as she flits from memory to random memory. “We evacuated as soon as the water started coming in the house. We brought our dog with us. But we left the rabbit in a cage up on the dining room table. When the water kept rising, I told my husband, ‘You have to get the rabbit.’”
“He and the dear friend who rescued us took an umbrella and waded back to the house through chest-deep water. Our rabbit was floating high above the table in her cage. They floated her cage right out. Other belongings were rescued on a giant pink flamingo. Most people used john boats; we used a pink flamingo from our pool.”
Amy Slaughter shows how high the water reached in her entry way.
Then her mood turns somber again. “Once we rescued the rabbit, we realized we had at least four feet of water in our house. We were pretty much in shock.”
“What did you lose?” I ask.
“Furniture-wise and computer-wise, we lost everything. Wedding pictures, family albums, even the digital stuff on thumb drives. It’s all gone. But everybody is safe, nobody got hurt.”
“We were able to save most of our clothing with Pine Sol and Clorox. We saved most of the dishes. Ironically goblets levitated out of my grandmother’s china cabinet and floated all over the house. We found them down the hall, in different rooms. Everywhere. Standing upright.”
“I’ll never leave this place.”
“Some friends suggested that we go to their home on Lake Livingston. It took three times longer than normal, but when we got there, we could get on the phone with our insurance company and FEMA. Watching all the news coverage from Livingston was terrifying. It was hard to see that and not be here.”
“When the river receded, we came back. We wanted to get into the house as quickly as we could. We lived with nearby relatives while we started gutting our house.”
“When I got in there, I went from an attitude of looking at ‘what was lost’ to ‘what we could save.’ That really helped me get through the experience of gutting the house.”
“Everything in our home was sentimental. We had a lot of antiques we inherited. My grandmother grew up destitute. It killed me to put her sewing machine out at the curb, knowing how many dresses she had made for us growing up. To watch it rot there for three weeks was heart wrenching.”
“It was unbelievable, though, to be surrounded by people who came out of the woodwork to help. In Livingston, I was thinking, ‘Where can we live?’ But during the gutting of our house, people just came up and offered to help. Everyone pitched in. Strangers. Friends. Relatives. Customers. Clients. They brought food. They brought tools. And they didn’t ask for anything. After that, I thought to myself, ‘I’ll never leave Kingwood.’”
A Court Appearance Reminiscent of “My Cousin Vinny”
“Then the exhaustion hit. My husband and I were both still trying to work. I had court dates. My clothing was all over Kingwood. At cleaners. With me. With my mother in law. It was pretty funny. The first time I went to court, I showed up in a denim skirt. I approached the bailiff and said, I apologize ahead of time to the court. We got flooded and I don’t know where any of my clothes are.” Luckily, Slaughter had a judge who was more understanding than the one in the movie.
“Home, Home on the Driveway”
“Currently, we live in a travel trailer. We had looked for homes, apartments and hotels to rent, but everything was booked up. Friends opened their homes to us, but we wanted to stay near the house to deal with repairs. The trailer is not big enough for all of us; my son has to live with my sister in law.”
“The trailer is not like living in a drum; it’s like living in a drum SET,” Slaughter jokes. “When it rains, you hear all kinds of sounds. The rain makes one sound. The pine needles brushing up against the trailer make another. And then there’s the occasional cymbal crash when a pine cone hits the roof.”
“We store our clothes in the garage. It’s the mother of all walk-in closets right now.”
The mother of all walk in closets…Amy Slaughter’s garage.
“How do you cook?” I ask.
“The trailer does have a microwave. We have a grill with a burner on it. And we have a hot plate and a toaster oven. But mostly we don’t cook.”
Shrinking an Inch a Day
I shake my head, thinking back to college. I could handle life in a trailer then. Now, I’m not so sure. Amy Slaughter seems only slightly troubled, though.
“It’s not bad if you’re on vacation, but after eight months, it’s kind of getting old. At first you’re so grateful to have it that you overlook the inconveniences. Then after about a month, your thoughts start to go in the opposite direction. It feels like it’s shrinking an inch a day.” I nod; I have a pair of jeans like that.
Camp Chairs and an Air Mattress for Watching TV
“Now that the house is dried out, I’m starting to use it as a workshop to restore my grandmother’s furniture,” says Amy Slaughter. “We have a back porch. We put a TV out there. We have camp chairs and an air mattress for watching the TV. That’s really our living room. But it’s getting hot now. So we may be spending more time in the trailer.”
Third-World Living
“The shower in the trailer is about the size of a bucket. It’s functional and would work. But it’s tiny, so we shower in the house. One of the bathrooms had a shower where we only tore out the glass and the backside of two walls. We put tarps along the wood studs to hold the water in and propped up the one wall with a wire shelving unit and bungee cords. It’s definitely Third-World living.”
The Slaughter shower. Makeshift, but still bigger than their trailer’s shower.
I think to myself, “This lady wins awards for creativity, but I doubt she will pass the plumbing inspection.”
“Purchasing the House We Almost Paid Off.”
I ask how Harvey affected Amy Slaughter’s family financially. Without missing a beat, she says, “We get the privilege of purchasing the house we had almost paid off.” I ask for an explanation. “Our options were: sell and move; put it right back together again; or build up. We didn’t want to move. And we didn’t want to flood … ever again. So we decided to build up. But contractors told us it would be less expensive to wipe the slab and start over than build on top of what we had.”
“How much longer will it take?” I ask.
“Finding a contractor to do the whole thing is difficult. Everybody is booked. We’re in a financial quandary. Flood insurance will only go so far. It will replace what we had, but not what we feel we need to build to be safe. Before this, we had a house that never flooded and we want to get back to that.”
“What are your biggest concerns at the moment?” I ask.
Concerns Looking Forward
“There’s a concern that we won’t be able to sell the house. How many people want a one-story house where you have to climb the stairs to get in?”
“I’m also afraid that Kingwood will be considered a lost cause at some point by politicians. You’ve seen it happen with Forest Cove. ‘Oh, that area floods now, so we should just buy out the owners and wipe it all out.’”
“Meanwhile, you have developers who are buying golf courses, like Forest Cove’s. I’ve heard it was bought and is about to be turned into homesites. That scares me. They’re going to build up higher and that’s just going to send water toward the rest of us. If the politicians don’t start limiting development like that, it will turn the rest of us into a financial sink hole.”
“I worry whether I should put pontoons it,” she says doing her best Sarah Silverman imitation. Then seriously, “It won’t take a Harvey at this point to flood Kingwood again. I know they are committed to dredging the river, but the reality is they haven’t solidified any workable plan yet.”
And with that, Amy Slaughter excuses herself and sprints off to her conference call.
Interview by Bob Rehak
Posted May 15, 2018
259 Days since Hurricane Harvey