Houston has endured numerous “moments” since Harvey. Some were repeats from earlier storms – like the Tax Day and Memorial Day storms – and some are quite new. The old ones mostly had to do with fortitude and community, and responding to dire challenges. With the old storms – just months ago, really – the first “moment” was surprise: waking up after a night of rain to see that the water hadn’t drained from the streets, or the bayou – or even from the back yard. Then there was the moment of realizing that things wouldn’t quickly be back to normal; it might instead be a week, or more. Other moments fell into a logical sequence: how were the relatives, the neighbors, and the cars? How were we fixed for water and food? Would the power remain out, or not? And, always, the moment of “Just how big is this storm?”
THE HARVEY RE-SET
Harvey brought back all those moments, and more – and of course it’s the “more” that makes it so different. With the Tax Day and Memorial Day rains, the scope of destruction seemed localized. The rains were everywhere, yes, but most of us felt that the high water would keep its distance. In those moments, the storms seemed always to threaten others, to be “over there.” But Harvey forcefully introduced us - all of us - to the frightening world of Big Weather. Suddenly, by surprise, we were right at the cutting edge of climate change. This was a storm big enough to expose the inadequacies of our flood control simply by blowing out the whole system. At great cost, we came point blank to face our (hydrologic) sins. Positively, this moment brought out the very best of our people, as neighbor rescued neighbor, often taking huge personal risks. This was our moment of heroism.
FAILING INSTITUTIONS FAIL TO FACE THE FLOODS
But bravery isn’t enough: facing Big Weather at the scale of a metropolis requires Big Support. Houston needs City Hall, FEMA, the Corps of Engineers, the Flood Districts and others to work together, and transparently, to put together new, large scale defenses. This is not happening and, unsurprisingly, there are glaring failures – even injustices. Just a few examples illustrating the system’s dysfunction:
1. Insurance: According to CBS News (May 1, 2018) FEMA and its private industry administrators - in some areas - have adopted a posture of outright resistance to legitimate claims. FEMA seems poised to become the “path of most resistance,” rather than a guarantor of recovery. Anecdotes from hard hit neighborhoods indicate that some homeowners are turning to legal action in hopes of balancing the scales.
2. Flood Control: Houston’s metropolitan scale requires a globally effective solution that addresses every aspect of urban infrastructure and urban design, ambitiously and with vision. To date, there is no such thing, or anything like it. Deepening/ straightening bayous and building new reservoirs is, essentially, to "fight the last war," not the next one.
3. The City of Houston City Council, just seven months after the storm, approved redevelopment of a disused golf course - which might better have served as a new detention basin - proving: a) old habits die hard and, b) we're back to business as usual. Already.
4. Local Resilience: There are no practical proposals for retrieving flood prone areas from their repeated peril. The strategy most often voiced has been that of “buy-outs” where - at great cost - oft-flooded homes are demolished in a trade for flood detention. This is the urban renewal option, a way to gut inconvenient communities in order to save insurance costs, with no calculable measure of whether flooding would be reduced, and no plan for where the residents would go.
The bottom line on these issues – and on this “moment” – is that Houston homeowners can less and less look to institutions for help - whether FEMA, the City, the insurance companies, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Commissioners Court, any of the Municipal Utility Districts, or anybody else. It seems, unfortunately, that much of the City is now facing the situation of “every man for himself.”
PREPARING FOR THE NEXT STORM... AND THE ONE AFTER THAT
This situation is only one of the reasons for our launching the Category-5 Storm Defense House: if Houston homeowners have to go it alone, they should be able to do it with the best of modern materials and technology. Instead of waiting upon the arbitrary mercies of FEMA, the City and other bureaucracies, Houstonians do have a choice: they can simply build themselves out of the storm. With little construction difficulty and for a cost at the median for local home construction, the Category-5 offers a house that is “higher than the water, stronger than the wind,” and well prepared for the challenges of our new Big Weather.