Harvey…

Who knew one name could cause so much damage. Harvey made landfall three separate times in six days but the biggest issue was when it made landfall it rapidly weakened and slowed down to a crawl. The weather channels had been watching the storm and had projected the weakening and the slow creeping across the state but no one could have prepared for the amount of rain that this storm dropped on Houston and the surrounding areas. The city received at least 30 inches of water and some places got up to 60 inches and a majority of this water came on August 26^th and 27^th. The city shut down for a week and there are people still trying to piece their lives back together.

Clayton went into work the morning the storm hit, he wasn’t able to make it all the way to his station but he was able to make it to a station. He worked it and he saw it and I am grateful that he made it back home to me in one piece. He at one point one driving the wrong way down 59, pulling people out of the flood waters and housing them in his ambulance until their transport arrived and then he led the way to the GRB which was the shelter for everyone that no longer had a place to call home. He is truly my hero.

While Clayton was hanging out at the station figuring out his assignment they looked outside and saw this dumpster traveling down the street. The current was so strong that it was able to carry a full dumpster along. They eventually pulled it into a parking lot with the pumper.

The city decided to switch up the shift schedule and Clayton had to go back into work early. They called in 2 shifts at a time and were asking that they work 48 hour shifts. They soon realized that they had too many people working and let Clayton’s shift go home only to turn around and come back for his normal shift 24 hours later. He got off work and was able to rest when everyone else started going back to work. Since the city had called 2 shifts in at a time there was a rare opportunity to have a picture with all four shifts at the station, this probably wont happen again.

We had some visitors at our house, one of my oldest friends had been evacuated an her husband needed to go back to work so they needed to come back to town came and stayed with us for a couple of days. We needed to get out of the house one day and really couldn’t go that many places so we feed the ducks and we headed to chuckecheese. The girls had a fun sleep over and it was a good break from the news!

We weathered the storm, we managed not to get flooded. We were flooded into our neighborhood for a while but that’s about it. Tess’s school was delayed for 2 weeks so she had the longest summer ever. It was a long and rough week for Houston, but as the saying goes we are Houston Strong.