Once again Houston is underwater.  The bayous are swollen, streets are closed. Houses are flooded.  Horses are being rescued from fast moving water.  It hasn’t even been a year since the Memorial Day catastrophe in 2015, which saw homes in the Meyerland area flooded from Brays Bayou.  Some families had just returned to their houses, only to be out again.

Houston is built on a swamp, and when we get these “training” rain events the water just comes to fast for the shallow drainage systems to keep up.  On Monday, April 18th the city woke to massive flooding, stranded cars, and areas not considered flood plains in waste deep water.

Boat rescues in the Greenspoint area began in the afternoon, and by Tuesday, that seen was being repeated in the Northwest side of Harris County, as creeks began to swell out of their banks.  Local government jumped into action as Mayor Sylvestor Turner and Judge Ed Emmett went on the air and repeatedly asked Houstonians to stay put and hunker down.  “For heaven’s sake, stay put!”, Judge Emmett pleaded.

In the midst of this huge weather event, Houston local news went wall to wall with information to keep the city safe.  Ironically KPRC Click2Houston went dark, when their electrical system was flooded out.  Off the air for roughly an hour, they came back on, using iPhone technology and limited access, with anchors setting up laptops and sharing one handheld microphone.  Anchor Rachel McNeil tweeted out “It wasn’t pretty, but we made it work”.

In the aftermath, it was discovered that 8 people lost their lives, as their cars were swept up in quickly rising flood waters.  The financial damage will be in the millions.  And the emotional damage will surely be felt I every neighborhood.  If, you didn’t get water in your house, you felt lucky, because the scenes playing out all over town showed that in Houston, it doesn’t take much for your neighborhood to go under.