I'm glad to hear. My brother's family's house got finished a couple months ago and his in-laws will be able to move into their rebuilt home in a week or two. I've been taking care of my brother's dog for so long we've joked she's mine now (she'll be moving back in with him after all this time when the in-laws get set up).
Many people in my brother's neighborhood opted to just leave even with flood insurance. I'll never forget what my brother said to me, along the lines of "if I can't afford to destroy and rebuild this house completely then I'm going to move. I can't live in this same house after seeing my baby's toys floating around like that." I've never seen him so traumatized.
There's a few memories that stick with me. The first is driving into the neighborhood after the flood water receded. The morning the flood water went down -- which was my birthday, no less -- I drove into the neighborhood and it was like nothing i'd ever seen before. It looked like a landfill. All the yards, all the streets filled with ruined trash as thousands upon thousands of people were everywhere, in the sweltering September heat, ripping stuff out. You had to park at the entrance to the neighborhood and walk in, because the streets were so filled. I don't have pictures of that, unfortunately.
The other thing that sticks with me is when we were almost done emptying out the house and pulling out the sheet rock. My mom thought the family photo albums had been in the attic and safe, but one of the very last things we found in a closet was the photo albums on the floor, they had apparently been moved years ago and got completely ruined. An entire lifetime of memories destroyed, thousands of photos lost. Things like the last pictures of my grandma and grandpa, my dad now no longer has any photos of his dad.
We saved a handful, here's what we could salvage drying in the living room the day of the clean up:
It was pretty damn heartbreaking.
There were, surprisingly, good memories too, though. I've posted about it before, but the way the community came together and helped brought us all to tears. The day of the clean up, early in the morning, this guy came to the door and asked if he could help, and we asked him to help up pull down the sheetrock. Turns out he was from west virginia, he had watched the storm on TV and said he felt an obligation to come help. So he hopped in his pick up truck and drove non stop from WV to Houston, and just looked for a church which pointed him in the direction of our neighborhood. Later on, this marine was walking around the neighborhood asking to speak to the owners of the houses. When my mom approached him, he gave her a big hug, told her he was so sorry for what had happened, grabbed her hands, and put something in her fist then walked away. When my mom opened her hands, he had put a $500 bill there; he apparently out of his own pocket gave every person in the neighborhood $500. That $500 wound up being actually super important at the time, as it totally covered the deductible for my parent's auto insurance. There was this other guy on the second day of the clean up, he was an unassuming guy who brought a bunch of boyscouts to come help. They really, really helped by pulling down a lot of the ruined, soaked up sheet rock, all for free. After the guy left, we found out he was actually a fortune 500 company owner, an insanely rich guy from river oaks, who got down and dirty with us like normal people.
Lots and lots of stories of unbelievable kindness. I remember the second day of the flood, the ice cream man came into the neighborhood, and gave everybody, adult and children, free ice cream. When we'd try to pay, he'd turn our money away. There were the girl scouts, I have no idea the troop number, but every day for 2 weeks, they'd come and bring every family in the neighborhood home cooked meals. AMAZING home cooked meals. Meals that put the red cross to fucking shame. Like one day, they brought tur-duck-in dinner for everybody. Every house got a full tur-duck-in, with all the sides, mashed potatoes, yams, cranberries, stuffing, maccaroni, etc. It was like a full thanksgiving meal, one for every house. It was brought in like 10 vans, an
insane amount of food, and that was just one day. There were families who would drive around in trucks with Ice and water and toilet paper and all sorts of supplies if you needed them. There is a gas station at the corner of the neighborhood entrance, and the guy who owned it was a saint. Infamous, around houston, a lot of places were gouging their prices, like best buy selling a crate of water for $100. But the corner store owner was the exact opposite, he opened his doors and told everyone that if you were a neighborhood resident, everything was free. Gas, ice, food, toiletries, he said if you needed it, please take it. He lived in the neighborhood too, and said the store was there to serve. My dad had a gas generator, which we'd use to run fans, so the free gas was a godsend. It was also remarkable because everybody seemed to know the stakes -- you'd hear people say "Oh, I don't need that, please give it to someone else who does." A type of comradere amongst strangers I'd never seen before. I heard about how in other cities, disasters like this can bring out the worst in people, but at least in my little pocket of Houston, the hurricane brought out a ton of love and beauty. Just about the only thing I CAN complain about, is that the first day after the flood, a bunch of vulturous "we buy ugly homes" people descended upon the neighborhood and tried to buy the homes for pennies on the dollar, while people were reeling. That really upset everyone. There were so many people from all around Houston helping on their own time, that this company was paying people to go around and rip off others in a time of need. Really gross.
