Hurricane Rita in September 2005 marked the launching point for this blog, which served as a release valve for the emotional pressure that comes in the aftermath of a disaster such as this.
The blog was named after the large-scale palace of debris that Rita and her 125 mph winds left in her wake.
Terrible Hurricane Harvey could not have come at a worse time.
My home - which Hurricane Ike caused $40,000 to in 2008 - has been on and off the market off ever since, with a series of tenants living there. 2008 marked a unfortunate time to try to sell a house after the move to Tyler. Only recently did the economy there shift to a buyer's market.
The home is located in Pinewood, an unincorporated community of about 400 homes located just west of Beaumont. The tenants (lucky for them) moved in May. A contract on the house was signed recently, with a closing date of Sept. 14.
But then Harvey brought a 1,000-year flood, swamping the home - and every other one in that community - with 58 inches of water.
When Harvey, making landfall at Rockport down south, staggered east and parked over Southeast Texas, the days-long guessing game began about whether the Pinewood house flooded, which it didn't during Tropical Storm Allison's epic dumping of 2 feet of rain in 12 hours in 2001
But Allison was no Harvey, which, thanks to unique meteorological forces, parked over the area for days and dumped almost 5 feet of rain.
http://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-harvey-2017-rainfall-map-2017-8
I spent days sweating through photo albums posted on the Pinewood community Facebook page. Then I saw it, a heartbreaking photo of water over at least half of the downstairs of the two-story house (the one on the left).
I had already gotten ahead of the game by lining up a FEMA inspector and a contractor a day or so earlier after seeing drone footage of the flooding. There was little doubt the house had flooded.
The war on mold began the very day homeowners were allowed access to their properties. With a generator in tow, I raced down there to remove about 2,000 square feet of soaked laminate flooring and dry the place as best as I could with fans. All floors were as dry as an empty wine bottle by the time I returned to Tyler. My on-the-ball contractor has since taken care of the walls.
Sometimes life events have smells associated with them. After Rita, I spent three weeks living in a closet of the Beaumont Enterprise, for which I coordinated news coverage. The smell of hand sanitizer stockpiled in the building was prominant. The smell of hand sanitizer still brings me back.
With Harvey, I'll never forget the unique smell of soaked laminate flooring.
Preparing for and weathering this type of event comes with plenty of fear and anxiety. But the hardest part emotionally comes in the aftermath, navigating the minefield of red tape and surprise obstacles, the grinding, mind-numbing journey through bureaucracy.
We are the lucky ones. We did not live there. We did not have to drag out a lifetime's worth of belongings and set them by the street for the debris teams to remove. We won't have to live in a hotel, with loved ones or in a FEMA trailer for months.
Soon, my house will be made whole. It will sell. A young family will move in. And we will move on.
Let's hope we never the see the likes of Harvey again for generations.
