National media with every other natural disaster: "We have reporters covering every angle of the story to get you the information you need when you need it!" National media with Harvey: "ah it's just Texas, they'll be fine."
Front page news on both of the newspapers I still receive in California. First 15 minutes on the local news tonight.
Holy shit are you serious??? Maybe it's just the local media then downplaying it. Literally my phone has been blowing up for days now with either people in disaster mode and can I help, or asking if I'm ok and wanting to make sure I'm accounted for. And then I turn on the tv and it's like "light showers in the afternoon, partly cloudy, don't fly to Houston by the way..."
And of course, as I was typing that post, I have my newborn son in my lap... I forget how many days he is old now, all the days kinda blend together at this point.... and I'm trying to make a playlist of songs I can play on the acoustic and sing to him to rock him to sleep. And the song that was playing on itunes was: As another tornado just hit a few miles from us. I deleted an earlier post (sorry to do a toddamus) about a tornado, when it lifted before I posted so the point was moot then. My family is within a quick reach of me and mattresses are at the ready in the hallways to throw over them. I've survived tornadoes four times before, and hell if I'm going out without a fight now. Fire away nature, fire away you motherfucker.
I think I've mentioned it a few times, I basically grew up on a sail boat. In the Corpus Christi and Port Aransas area. The Lydia Ann channel was like an RV park for me. I spent my 7th birthday on a boat in that channel eating burnt cinnamon rolls, clinging to a compressed air powered life raft, on a sailboat that was actively on fire, waiting for the Coast Guard to rescue us. That was the day I learned that fiberglass burns like a motherfucker. Damn busted ass motor, shot a spark where it shouldn't have gone with the engine room door open, and that was all she wrote. We made it back somehow, and that was the first of two times I made front page news. Sadly, that whole marina is now gone, as is the channel. But yeah, don't fuck with mother nature. I have enough bad luck as it is (as I type this with a dislocated finger).
I couldn't sleep and grabbed my computer to check for updates online about Hurricane Harvey. I actually stopped at this site first because I regard everyone here as being able to comment intelligently and bypass the bullshit and minutia that normally clogs up most message boards. All the images of rooftop rescues, abandoned vehicles, and places that never should have standing water that are now one large, continuous lake (several feet deep) are all too familiar to everyone affected by the floods that hit south-central Louisiana last year. That was 33+ inches of rain (in some areas) over the course of 3 days. Now you multiply that by 1.5 over a city with 7 million people and it's actually beyond anything I can imagine, even after experiencing something similar myself. Spoiler: Spoiler for a personal note My own home that flooded last year is still not completely put back together. We had been working on the walls, soon to be painted and then on to installing floors but that was halted after the 4th time water came in through out front door after a hard rain. I can only imagine what has caused this - probably a clog/backup much further down in the systems of sewers and ditches that link together to disperse the rain water. This never happened in the 46 previous years this house has been standing until now. My yard slopes down from the street a good bit to the backyard. We are currently installing a massive french drain to funnel all that water from the front yard to the backyard and empty field behind the house. It’s almost complete, but that’s another @ $2500 i wasn’t planning on spending on “renovation/rebuild” Also, even though I have been in constant contact with his mother, I am extremely worried about my son who lives with my ex-wife and stepdad in The Woodlands, a little north of Houston. So far, so good, they are getting enough breaks between heavy downpours for the water to drain out. My concern is the back-flow, back-flooding (whatever it’s called) once the place all this water drains to fills up. That’s what caused most of the damage here - no more places for the water to go except back where it came from or over the banks of the lakes and levees that took the initial flow of water. The Cajun Navy is on it’s way with boats and volunteers to assist with the rescue efforts. I hope and pray they can get to everyone in time.
Yeah, this is not just a Texas event. Louisiana is getting fucked, hard. And if I didn't have a *just checked* 4 day old infant I'd be there to help out too. My wife actually wants me to go. But with all the tornadoes in the area, I don't feel comfortable leaving. The shit I'm getting personally on text, as I'm sure you are too, just doesn't even closely compare to what's out there on The Weather Channel and the like. Bodies floating by in the water.... I hope you do well. Remember, if you're going into your attic, take an axe. Personally, I got a parang-style machete by my side right now. I'm outta the storm we think, but mother nature is a bitch, and I don't trust her.
The silver lining (if you can call it that) is between the insurance money already collected (we're going after more) and the huge paychecks my wife started making (commission from furniture sales - EVERYBODY needed new furniture) we were able to pay off the flooded house and move. We bought another about 30 minutes away from the one that flooded that was something like 15 feet above the highest recorded flood level in that city last year. If i even think I hear the word "flood" my boat will be ready this time. Fuck getting trapped in an attic (which happened to one of my aunts during Katrina... they had to chop their way out to the attic with a claw hammer while holding a dog and a 2 year old.) I absolutely would have joined the Cajun Navy guys headed there except I've been in and out of work with 3 doctors appointments and 4 prescriptions for a bad back. I still can't pick up anything over 10 lbs. without pain. The projections for Harvey headed back to the gulf to restrengthen are what has me worried the most. The western part of the state has been getting steady rain, but where I am (Zachary, 70791) hasn't had much in the past few days. Looks like that will change in the next 24-48 hours.
Get out. Now. I can't stress this enough. I'm a bit of a weather nerd in the sense I just wanna protect my family, not the storm chaser mentality kinda thing. And I'm telling my family members in Houston and the surrounding area, to get the fuck outta dodge immediately. Fuck your tvs, fuck your gallons of water, just leave. And soon. Harvey just re-entered the gulf and it's going to strengthen to a 1 or 2 before it hits Galveston. I can't stress this enough: if you remotely think you are in the way, then you are in the way. Get your family out. Now. It won't get better, and you will not recover. If you think you're gonna "ride out the storm," expect that you will die.
Oh shit. I was confident my sis and her family, who are stuck in their house due to floodwaters, would be fine. They have a kayak and a ton of food. That was before I heard the storm was going to hang out over the gulf and strengthen. My cousin and his family, who actually live 2 doors down from my sister, went with my brother in a fucking kayak and rescued my elderly aunt and uncle (my cousin's parents) who live in a gated golfcourse community down the road about a half mile in a 1 story house. There was a tiny lull in the rain bands that I think made the flood waters go down a little yesterday. My cousin did a test run to the interstate in the car, was able to make it, so they grabbed everybody and fucking left and went to their lakehouse in the country. If I were my sister, that would have made me nervous as hell. Cousin is a handy sort of guy, and her husband isn't, really.
My aunt and uncle live in Sugar Land, TX. They are getting flooding, but so far it hasnt been completely terrible from what she said.
There is flooding, and then there is seventeen fucking feet deep over a highway flooding. That's biblical shit going on down there. Unreal.
It really just depends on how much rain everybody gets. This is the message from the city of Sugar Land: "The Brazos River is expected to approach 55 feet early this week. In anticipation of the river reaching flood stage, levee operators in Sugar Land will have to close their flood gates as the river rises. When the gates are closed, levee operators will begin using pumps to remove rainfall that falls within the levees. The National Weather Service is forecasting rain amounts that may exceed the capacity of the pumps. Should this occur, the drainage channels and storage areas will fill up, storm drains will back up, and streets will flood, essentially holding water as they're designed to do during extreme conditions. The duration and intensity of rainfall will determine the impact for communities within these areas. We continue to monitor and will keep everyone posted throughout the event."
Not sure what it says about the state of tv media, but this place literally one of the first I've been checking. Thought I'd throw that out there. We survived the night of tornados. I'm not a praying dude, but if I was, I'd pray for Houston right now. Harvey is back in the gulf and growing. And headed for that city like a fucking heat seeking missile.
My heart goes out to you folks down there. I recently threw in a random application as a FEMA reservist, and it looks like that just became significant. It's frustrating to see all this damage and essentially be helpless about it.
Yeah I'm researching what I can do to join the Coast Guard Reserve. Not so much that I want to see "action" or whatever it is that gets people signed up, but rather, in a disaster like this, I realized that I have a rather specific and potentially highly useful set of skills, specifically water survival, which I think can be put to use to serve others.