Hurricane Harvey - 1 year later in Houston (Katy, Montgomery: transporting, houses)

[TheMoreYouKnow]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Harvey

Today marks 1 year since Hurricane Harvey hit the Houston area. I've seen that the city is doing some sort of day of memory tomorrow. Anyone have any Hurricane Harvey stories they want to share?

[TheMoreYouKnow]

I was just doing some maintenance on the lower unit on my boat's outboard motor with a buddy of mine and we were talking about what a jacked up situation Harvey was. All told, we spend 4 days transporting people from flooded homes to high ground. We were threatened with arrest and asked to help by the same people within an 8 hour time span. We were thanked with hugs, dry towels, given food by strangers and made more friends than I can count. We carried about 160 people from houses/rooftops/rafts to drop off spots over the course of the 4 days, the second evening/night was the worst. We must have been up for 24 hours straight, we moved almost 90 people on the second day alone. We burned about 45 gallons of mix fuel, we bent 3 props to the point where we had to stop and swap or repair them. We lost a phone, truck keys, a few pairs of boots, 1 pair of glasses, my buddy's wedding band and a small Yeti cooler in the mad shuffle. We ended up going home with a puppy and someone left an unopened handle of Jack Daniels in my boat at some point on day 2. We slept in the bed of my truck for a couple hours on day 3 only to be woken up by a Montgomery County officer asking if we could take them to a house of a family member he wanted to check up on. We pulled up to a 2 story brick home and only a couple feet of the brick chimney could be seen above the water.

I never saw any of the looting or shooting that people were talking about but I don't doubt that it happened.

[Sollaces]

I have a humorous story. Our Chinese neighbors belong to a Christian church and they take in people that visit our area. They also host bible study every Friday night. So after the storm I wasn't surprised to see stacks of building supplies on their driveway. I thought they were stepping up again to help some family in their church.

While they did take in and help a church family that lost their home in Grand Lakes subdivision (Katy) . . . The pile of plywood and supplies was for their roof. They had it measured and contracted before the storm and the job didn't start up until way after Harvey.

My son up in Hockley said when he was on 290 driving around he saw many many trucks hauling boats down to help. The community effort was heartwarming.