One Year Ago ....

[plinsenmayer]

Hi --

One Year Ago today .... I was about to be evacuating my flooding house
in the costliest tropical storm in US history (Tropical Storm
Allison).  Allison dumped 80% of our average annual rainfall on us
over a 5 day period (but mostly on the night of June 8/9), which was
32 trillion gallons of water according to the paper.  When it was
over, 22 Houstonians lost their lives, 73,000 residences were damaged,
100,000 autos were damaged, countless businesses damaged ... a total
pricetag of $5 billion.  

Apparently at one point that night 28 inches of rain fell in parts of
northeast Houston, and the flood levels approached 15 feet.  They
pumped astronomical amounts of water out of the downtown parking
garages & tunnel system.  The Texas Medical Center (largest collection
of medical facilities in the world) was hit hard ... sustaining 40% of
the $5 billion in damages.  It is a ongoing nightmare since years of
research projects were lost entirely.  One of the lasting images from
Allison for me is hearing about how 2 hospitals lost power entirely &
they were manually running the machines for the critically ill
patients & evacuating them down flights of dark stairs with no a/c.  I
know they landed Blackhawk military helicopters in Hermann Park to
airlift many patients to San Antonio.  :::shudders::::

Of course, the other indelible image engraved in my mind is my husband
zipping up our 6 week old daughter into his jacket to evacuate to our
next-door neighbors' house (2 story).  It turns out we only got 3
inches ... but we didn't want to end up on the roof awaiting the Coast
Guard with a small baby.  <g>  

The other thing I can remember vividly is watching the weather reports
... the meterologists were just ashen faced (apparently Allison was
dumping rain at a rate of 100% of what any given cloud could
deliver...).  I remember thinking, rather stupidly, as I looked at the
map of Houston with the entire inner city area covered in "bright red"
radar & wondering if they could simultaneously evacuate 1 million
people by helicopter or if we would get preference due to the baby. 
:--)  Silly things occur to you in a crisis I suppose. 

Anyway, one year later, I'm glad to be sitting back in my repaired
house & it's *NOT RAINING*!  :--)

Penny