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I just cannot imagine the feeling of restarting your life and caring for your family when your home is uninhabitable and you've lost everything but the clothes on your back. Will your employer issue you a paycheck next friday? Do you just live off of your credit limit and hope for the best? It has to be overwhelming.

Quote:

Originally Posted by motion (Post 9723623)

This happens all the time. Somebody's house explodes or a wildfire burns it to the ground or whatever calamity befalls him. It's the extent of it in and around Houston is what is singular.

500,000 vehicles that were operational last week are now flooded out and stranded right where they sat.

100,000 homes: gone.

And that's just in Texas.

I read that, for those without flood insurance, the best they can get is a low interest federal loan. For those with flood insurance, I read typical limits are 25% of house replacement cost. I have not found data on average homeowner's equity in Houston.

You see where this is going. What % of those homeowners who were flooded will ultimately abandon their homes and default on the mortgages? Some won't be able to make them habitable again, others will lose them when they can't service the increased debt.

And of those who manage to hang on, what % will be at substantial probability of defaulting after the next flood - remember that Houston has been having major floods (though nothing like Harvey) every few years now.

I'm thinking a whole bunch of Houston-originated mortgages are now worth much less than a few weeks ago. Four days ago the early estimate was 400,000 homes with agency backed mortgages were likely damaged, but no-one really knew the full scope. And there will be some non-agency backed mortgages too.

Today they are now calling it a 40,000 year flood

This is my neighborhood on Aug 30th, at the maximum flood.

The very light brown is dry concrete

Darker brown is concrete with a few inches of water

The Wide very dark area is Turkey Creek. It is about 5-6 feet deep.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504322712.jpg

See the bridge in the middle, it is dry. Wet on both ends. To the left, the water is about 1 foot deep. Note the color. The darker the color, the wetter the area.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504322932.jpg

Bridge to left, look right and see how the water becomes much deeper. The eight houses in the circle on the right side, the water is at least 4 feet deep between them. There are two "lakes" in a C and reverse C shape. The recreation center is in the bottom right, with the pool looking a lovely shade of algae.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504323150.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by jyl (Post 9723833)

The limit on Flood insurance is $250,000 and that will cost your around $450 per year.

I spent yesterday (Friday) afternoon and evening in Friendswood which is town about 30ish minutes north of Galveston helping my cousin who had 8 feet of standing water in his once lovely house. A team of us gutted most of his house (first floor) and we're heading back this morning to continue working and then tackle the garage.

The houses and cars had water in them for over 5 days as the police did not allow residents back to their houses until yesterday (due to high water), so the smell after opening up was horrific and a terrible stench, there were people throwing as it was that pungent. Lots of mold too...and I mean lots.

Driving around the town and looking at the devastation that people and families are enduring is gut wrenching, sickening and saddening...and I'm a tough cat.

Some pictures I snapped to share with you.

His completely submerged ML500:
https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...af&oe=5A15D2C5

https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...4a&oe=5A1921A0

Hi Garage - which we will clean up today:
https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...0c&oe=5A241726

Neighbor's G35:
https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...16&oe=5A1FA912

https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...a1&oe=5A52AB16

https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...ac&oe=5A568EC7

https://scontent.fhou1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...06&oe=5A248A2A

Yasin

Slow progress in our neighborhood. This is a later satellite photo.

https://loenhoa.nabrnetwork.com/imag...to3_126227.jpg

Quote:

Originally Posted by red-beard (Post 9723889)

The limit on Flood insurance is $250,000 and that will cost your around $450 per year.

James, that $450 / year is if you are in an area with a very low risk of flooding. In a high risk area I believe insurance can get up to the $2500 / year range. Also, that $450 includes $100K on contents. Per USAA who underwrites my flood, the $250K on structures is for replacement cost, the $100K on contents is ACV.

If you are below 9 feet above MSWL (Mean sea water level) - I know folks that are paying over $5K in flood insurance per year.

Mine is closer to $2500 - and I have supplemental flood too...

Interesting. I'd seen previous articles talking about how and where Houston is built being the culprit behind the flooding. This article says otherwise.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8/30/houston

Excerpt (most of the article except a few quotes from other articles)

Quote:

It's no unique observation to note that we live in divisive ideological times. Every event, regardless of how tragic and random, is immediately politicized on cable news and social media. We're all guilty, to a degree, of starting with a point of view and then selecting facts to create a narrative to support it. That's human nature, and in a time when we wall ourselves off — physically in our neighborhoods and culturally in what we read and listen to — we encounter few credible counter-opinions from people we respect.

The Strong Towns narrative reflexively applied to Houston is pretty simple: Houston is too spread out, its infrastructure too expansive for its unproductive tax base to properly maintain, and thus it was woefully unprepared for Hurricane Harvey. It they hadn't built all those parking lots, filled in all those wetlands and insisted on driving everywhere, this wouldn't have been nearly as devastating.

That narrative is simple. It's also wrong.

I'm going to remind our readers that I am a licensed engineer and a certified land use planner. I don't generally find it important to note that but the coverage of Harvey is inundated with expert opinions and I'm going to explain why many of them are wrong or are being misinterpreted to fit a media narrative. I've done hydrology and drainage work as an engineer and, as a planner, administered the regulatory process of impervious coverage and managing wetlands.

I would like to summarize the narrative in two parts:

Part 1: Houston was so intent on growth at any and all costs that they turned their city over to developers who filled wetlands and perpetuated sprawling development patterns. (Note: This part is true.)

Part 2: Filling of wetlands and sprawling development patterns are the reason Harvey was so devastating to Houston. (Note: This part is false.)

Many of the articles quoted above, and a lot of the expert claims, come from research by Texas A&M. I'll excerpt from this article that summarizes it most succinctly:

Largely unobstructed either by rules or by natural features such as mountains, the Houston area sprawled. Between 1992 and 2010 alone nearly 25,000 acres (about 10,000 hectares) of natural wetland infrastructure was wiped out, the Texas A&M research shows. Most of the losses were in Harris County, where almost 30% of wetlands disappeared.

Altogether, the region lost the ability to handle nearly four billion gallons (15 billion liters) of storm water. That’s equivalent to $600 million worth of flood water detention capacity, according to the university researchers’ calculations.

Let me affirm: in normal times, this would be cause for serious concern. Wetlands provide natural area for stormwater to collect and percolate. When we fill them, especially when we fail to mitigate that in some way, that water will go someplace else. When someplace else is a parking lot or other compacted or impermeable surface unable to store or percolate the water, flooding will occur. There is a cumulative effect to this so that areas that were never prone to flooding suddenly flood, often in modest rain events that were easily managed previously. Stormwater management is really expensive and often fruitless as, without up front management and planning, you don't really know what is going to happen until the rains comes.

That is how things work in normal times. Houston has experienced some recent flooding events that were certainly made worse by poor land use practices. We can argue over whether or not Houston's regulatory approach is adequate — I'd note that Houston has most of the regulations other major cities have, only they are administered differently (not as zoning, per se) and I'll add that the land use pattern of downtown Houston is good and improving while that of suburban Houston is indistinguishable from what is found in most progressive American cities — but what I've experienced there suggests that it is not much different, in terms of outcomes, to what we see in most of the rest of the country.

Harvey is not normal times. We can't look at this event the way we look at other flooding events. The devastation in Houston from Hurricane Harvey is not the result of the accumulation of many bad decisions. It was simply a huge storm.

The Texas A&M research I highlighted above suggests reckless wetland filling robbed Houston of 4 billion gallons of stormwater storage capacity. For context, the Washington Post is reporting now that Harvey dumped 19 trillion gallons on Texas—a large portion of that hitting the Houston area. That means that, had those wetlands never been filled, they could have accommodated at most .02-.1% of the water that fell in Harvey.

Anyone suggesting that more wetlands or more pervious surfaces would have done anything to mitigate what has just happened is lacking a proper sense of scale.

And that's being kind. To say that Houston is "paying the price for ignorance" and is "drowning from its own freedom from regulations" is the kind of snarky, reactionary rhetoric that's sadly become all too familiar. Wrapping that kind of ideological cheap shot in the veneer of science discredits the meaning of science. The idea that Houston, a city whose residents voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 by the way, should — as one commenter on our Facebook feed suggested — be made an example for others is really cruel. Please stop it.

This is a terrible tragedy. Let's resist filling the narrative with our ideological dogma and instead show Houston the level of generosity and — quite frankly — lack of judgment during a time of need that Houston showed New Orleans a dozen years ago. They'll be plenty of time during the rebuilding to re-examine Houston's development practices. Progress then will benefit from empathy now.

The power of water is amazing.

<iframe width="853" height="480" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SZ58UxBB88w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Quote:

Originally Posted by jyl (Post 9723833)

I read that, for those without flood insurance, the best they can get is a low interest federal loan. For those with flood insurance, I read typical limits are 25% of house replacement cost.

I think if you are in a fed disaster area, you can write off your losses on your taxes too

Some Houston people make chicken salad out of chicken ****.

https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media...l3mggoqmex.gif

Hey Yasin - props for the help you're providing!

I'm curious, this may be a dumb question, but if the water only rises say 3-4 feet, what happens to the upper floors? Will they become habitable before the first floors are repaired?

There were many folks here that lived upstairs while they were rebuilding downstairs.

Life along the Brazos
Historically the Brazos River has flooded many times. Back in the 1800s and early 1900s it would combine with Oyster Creek and the San Bernard River to become one vast flood plain. This 1900 era photo shows the old Imperial Sugar Mill in Sugar Land in the background as the flood water pours over the Southern Pacific railroad tracks of the Sunset Route.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504890134.jpg
As Houston grew, the suburbs expanded to the southwest and the old farmland along the Brazos was developed. The developers created Levee Improvement Districts (LIDs) to protect the properties. The LIDs were each responsible for maintaining their own levees, flood gates, storm water pumps and a system of storm water canals or ditches to receive the runoff from the storm sewer system. Over the years a mosaic of LIDs have sprung up across the flood plain.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504890134.png
The canals all feed into a large ditch that flows through the flood gates into the Brazos. When the Brazos is at flood stage, and the storm water can no longer flow by gravity, the gates are close and the pumps take over. The pump capacity is nowhere near that required to drain the canals during an epic rainfall event but were considered sufficient to keep the water out of homes and businesses. The storage capacity of the canals, lakes, greenbelts, golf courses and eventually streets, was deemed enough. However the canals and storm water sewer system worked in reverse in many cases. The water from all over the LID flowed to the lowest spot or sump in the area, flooding entire neighborhoods. It was not common knowledge before Harvey as to where these sumps were, but we all know now. Fortunately my home was not in one. Here is the main canal that flows to the flood gates and pumps in my LID. It is down to normal level now.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504890134.jpg
Here is how high it was on August 29 as seen from a friends back door.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1504890134.jpg

Very interesting info, Jolly. Thanks for posting.