Hurricane Harvey: One Year Later

HOUSTON —The effects of Hurricane Harvey, one of the worst storm to impact the U.S. coast in modern history, are still being felt in the Houston area a full year later.

There are residents who’ve not stepped back in their homes since being forced to evacuate, while entire communities are still working to remove debris. The clean-up effort has become something of the new normal for many in Houston and surrounding communities hit hard by Hurricane Harvey’s wrath. .

On Friday, Aug. 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall as a category 4 storm in the coastal town of Rockport near Corpus Christi. Powerful resulting winds tore through the small town, leveling buildings and destroying homes and businesses. Hours later, Harvey moved northeast along the gulf coast into the Houston area.

For four days, Houston and the surrounding communities of Humble, Pasadena, Dickinson, Sugar Land, Meyerland, Katy and many others were relentlessly pounded by waves of rain that dumped more than 50 inches of water throughout the region.

As the rain fell on the nation’s third largest city, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and Harris County Judge Ed Emmett stood shoulder to shoulder in rallying residents’ spirits while assuring help was on the way. Concurrently, Turner found himself defending his decision not to call for a mandatory citywide evacuation ahead of the powerful storm.

Hurricane Harvey: Decision Not To Evacuate Houston 'Smart,' Mayor Says

Hours before Harvey made landfall, Turner and Emmett staged a joint press conference to call for calm amid what was by then categorized as a major rain event.

"At this time...there will be no massive evacuations," Turner said the Friday before landfall. "There are a few municipalities that have called for voluntary evacuations, because of the small storm surge that is coming in. We are dealing with a major rain event, and we have dealt with those in the past."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott supported the idea of mandatory evacuations for Houston and Corpus Christi ahead of the storm, but also urged critics to focus instead on rescues and recovery as the storm raged rather than get mired in controversy.

"We've moved beyond whether or not there should have been an evacuation or not," Abbott said. "We're at a stage where we just need to respond to the emergencies the people of Houston are facing."

But the storm would prove to be beyond anything Houstonians — already accustomed to potent tropical storms and hurricanes — had ever experienced.

The floodwaters quickly inundated freeways and neighborhood streets,including areas of Houston’s central business district. Police Chief Art Acevedo urged residents to stay in their homes rather than trying to brave flood waters. At the same time, police frantically searched for one of their officers missing in action and a public works employee who’d vanished at the height of the storm.

The dual search wouldn’t have a happy outcome. Rescuers would later find the bodies of 34-year HPD veteran Sgt. Steve Perez and city worker Joseph Dowell several days after the storm. Both men died while on their way to work at the peak of the raging storm.

Hurricane Harvey: Houston Floods, Torrential Rains 'Beyond Anything Experienced'

Through it all, rescues plucked people stranded on rooftops and the tops of waterlogged vehicles. Dramatic rescues played out to a national and global television viewing audience as Houstonians and fellow Texans who could help did so with uncommon bravery.

As the rain continued to fall, creeks and river levels rose exponentially — eventually overtaking their banks to feed into tributaries downstream. Residents in Sugar Land, Missouri City, Katy, Richmond, and Rosenberg were forced to leave their homes when the Brazos River crested its banks.

Harvey also impacted communities north of the Houston area, with areas of Montgomery County also experiencing torrential rainfall totals. Residents in River Plantation and other nearby communities in Conroe were forced to evacuate when Lake Conroe began to crest, forcing authorities to release water from the dam. The torrents of water flowed downstream to an already swollen Lake Houston, San Jacinto River, and Cypress Creek.

Residents in Porter, Humble, Kingwood and Atascocita saw homes and business flooding as well. Houston City Councilman Dave Martin, who represents a swath of residents between Kingwood and Clear Lake, battled with Red Cross officials to open shelters in those areas to aid stranded residents.

Officials each did their part in offering aid in a string of spontaneous altruism born of disaster. Liz Fagen, superintendent of Humble schools, helped organize evacuations with school buses to the Humble Civic Center. Humble City Councilman Norman Funderburk helped with evacuation efforts and got people into the Humble Civic Center, while Kingwood residents Jerry and Catherine Gobbi took in some fleeing the storm, while shelters in Humble and Kingwood took in hundreds more looking for respite.

School buildings flooded in Pasadena, and Clear Lake. Kingwood High School bore the brunt of the storm’s aftermath, prompting officials to pump out at least five feet of sludge, sewage and water that had flowed from the San Jacinto River into the academic building.

By Labor Day, the remnants of Harvey had moved on to the far east Texas communities of Beaumont, Port Arthur and into Louisiana.

With the rain moving away, officials with the Harris County Flood Control District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made the decision to release water from the Barker and Addicks Reservoirs near Bear Creek. The move had the inadvertent effect of flooding of homes that had initially escaped the wrath of Hurricane Harvey.

While many Houstonians recovered, many more remain displaced. A year after Harvey, clean-up efforts are part of the daily routine here as many still try to rebuild or continue to wait for the county to make them whole with federal recovery funds.

In June, Emmett proposed a $2.5 billion flood control bond referendum that proposed buyouts of homes that remain in flood prone areas. The election is scheduled on Saturday, one year to the day since Hurricane Harvey descended on the area, leaving a path of death and destruction in its wake.

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Image: AUGUST 25: In this NOAA handout image, the NOAA/NASA Suomi NPP satellite captures this infrared image of Hurricane Harvey just prior to making landfall at 18:55 UTC on August 25, 2017 along the Texas coast. NOAA's National Hurricane Center has clocked Harvey's maximum sustained winds at 110 miles per hour with higher gusts. Infrared images like this one can help meteorologists identify the areas of the greatest intensity within large storm systems, such as the areas with the most intense convection, known as overshooting cloud tops (dark orange), surrounding the eye and along the outer bands. (Photo by NOAA via Getty Images)

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