Hurricane Harvey wreaked havoc on southeast Texas in late August, dropping 1 trillion gallons of water—about 30 inches of rain in Tomball and Magnolia—over four days in Harris County, according to the Harris County Flood Control District.
After flooding in April and May 2016, this is the second consecutive year the region has sustained major flooding. However, local officials said flooding is likely during a heavy rainfall, regardless of the amount of land left undeveloped.
“There’s a lot of misconception about all of this runoff in these creeks, gullies and rivers [and flooding] that we could avoid by not building so much. Anybody who builds nowadays has to have a drainage plan,” Montgomery County Precinct 2 Commissioner Charlie Riley said. “You can do all of that and clean out all the creeks, rivers and gullies, but when you get that amount of rain, [flooding will] happen.”
While homes, businesses and schools sustained flood damage throughout the Greater Houston area in August, the Tomball area sustained little damage comparatively, Tomball Fire Chief Randy Parr said.
“We had a spring rain compared to what Houston had. Houston floods at 10 inches of rain,” he said. “Between Tomball and Houston there truly is not a comparison.”
Still, local neighborhoods near Spring, Willow, Mill and Walnut creeks saw floodwaters rise into homes.
Areas within the 100-year flood plains were hit the hardest, said Kaci Woodrome, Harris County Precinct 4 communications manager.
“Every location with gauges indicated close to or above-record flooding events,” she said.
Although infrastructure and homes received damage, city officials said they believe rain patterns, which allowed floodwaters to recede relatively quickly, and early preparations allowed for limited flooding in Tomball and Magnolia.
“Three miles either direction and this probably would have been a different story,” Parr said. “We were very fortunate that the rain bands went either east or west of us.”
Weathering a storm
Parr and Gary Vincent, Magnolia Volunteer Fire Department chief, said their respective jurisdictions saw less flooding in August than during the 2016 floods, which they partially attribute to the early warning the hurricane brought.
Local officials were able to watch Harvey develop, Tomball Assistant City Manager Rob Hauck said.
“We knew we were going to get a big rain event; we just had no idea just how big it was going to be,” he said.
An early warning allowed the cities, counties and schools to prepare days in advance for a flood, which local officials credit for minimizing the number of rescue calls, evacuations and infrastructure damage.
Parr said first responders performed about 15 water rescues in Tomball. Neither city issued a mandatory evacuation.
“I think the early warning just helped everybody’s level of awareness to be so much better,” Hauck said. “It kept people off the roads. It allowed people the opportunity to [evacuate].”
City staff also worked ahead to inventory response resources, inspect drainage ditches, gather fuel for equipment and plan how an Emergency Operations Center—an interagency center tasked with emergency management—would operate, Hauck said.
“A key component to our success as a community was that this planning process really developed properly, and we had it all in place and [had] activated our EOC before we were in the middle of a storm event,” he said.
The MVFD also organized a command center in Magnolia for first responders and local officials to coordinate response efforts, Vincent said. Additionally, the MVFD staged rescue boats and first responders at locations that had previously flooded—Spring Creek and FM 2978, Walnut Creek and Nichols Sawmill Road, and Spring Creek and Hwy. 249.
“Well over 85 or 90 percent of the request for services were in those expected areas, which we were prepared for,” Vincent said. “We didn’t have a single loss of life within our jurisdiction.”
Although many residents heeded the early warning, Vincent said he estimates his team assisted more than 100 people threatened by high water.
In addition to more than 600 homes, Riley said about 12 roads in Precinct 2 sustained damage from Harvey.
“We were lucky we didn’t have a lot of road damage or [damage to] buildings in Precinct 2,” he said.
Beginning recovery
In addition to applying for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, city and county officials are working to address damage left by the floodwaters and help residents recover.
“We had several people who had just gotten their houses remodeled [from the 2016 floods], and it flooded again,” Riley said. “When do you draw the line and say, ‘You’re not going back in there; we’re going to make you sell that?’ That line is getting pretty close to getting drawn this time. Recovery is going to be a long time, and the cost is going to be astronomical.”
For homeowners, the HCFCD offers a home buyout program dependent on federal funding. Since Harvey, the HCFCD has received more than 3,000 new buyout inquiries from homeowners, HCFCD Director Russ Poppe said during a press conference Sept. 25.
Although the criteria for buyouts are still being determined, homes that have flood insurance and homes that are located within a 100-year floodplain and have experienced flood damage previously have a good chance of being purchased, Poppe said.
To provide assistance to displaced residents, short-term shelters opened for a few days at various school, college and church campuses as a joint effort between local entities during the storm.
As of press time, FEMA’s disaster recovery center is open at the West Montgomery County Community Center in Magnolia until further notice to help residents affected by Harvey.
As for infrastructure damage, city employees have already worked to relevel a sewer plant in Magnolia—a problem from the 2016 floods that Harvey exacerbated, City Administrator Paul Mendes said.
“Where we think we took our biggest hits was in city infrastructure instead of the homes,” he said.
The city continues working with FEMA to repair the dam at Unity Park and redesign the ditches along Nichols Sawmill Road, both of which sustained damage during the 2016 floods. Construction is expected to be finished in Unity Park in January, Mendes said. However, the cost and timeline of the projects are dependent on FEMA.
During Harvey, the city also sustained damage to its spillway at the detention pond behind the Magnolia Business Park as well as some sewer lines, Mendes said. He said crews will inspect the utility lines with a video camera once the ground dries.
“Drainage is something that you never get done with,” Mendes said. “It’s a continual project until the next storm comes, and then you fix what got broken and you keep trying to improve, which is just what we’re going to do.”
Continuing recovery
In the weeks following Harvey’s landfall, numerous local entities in Tomball and Magnolia, such as churches, schools, nonprofit organizations and elected officials, organized donation drives, cleanup teams and fundraisers for flood-affected areas.
MISD launched a partnership with Little Cypress-Mauriceville ISD, located in Orange, Texas, in mid-September to raise funds for LCMISD’s flood-damaged schools, MISD Communications Director Denise Meyers said.
As recovery efforts continue, Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said a reservoir in the Cypress Creek watershed could be added to mitigate future flooding. However, the Army Corps of Engineers would decide on the project, which could require federal funding.
“You can’t fix [flooding]; we live in a flood-prone Gulf Coast area,” he said. “So, the question is, ‘How do you mitigate floodwaters?’”
Riley said while a flood control district would be helpful for Montgomery County, the creation of a special district would not keep properties from flooding.
“You can’t plan for it. You can’t build for it,” he said. “We can have the same thing [Harris County] has, but when you have that much water that fast over two or three days, it’s got no place to go.”
Additional reporting by Zac Ezzone, Holly Gray and Vanessa Holt
