So many fractured trees along the way, but once we got into Refugio, damn, multiple piles of lumber and who knows what here, there, everywhere. Billboards with no message, just the posts; gas stations destroyed; crops chewed up and flattened; a few automobiles still laying on their sides.
I made the mistake of not filling up with gas before leaving the Valley. When I got to around a quarter-tank remaining, we still were about 150 miles away from Houston and we had to find gas. If a gas station was open, all of their pumps might have been damaged or out of gas. In some cases, only one pump was open and there were lines of cars waiting. We finally scored some gas for a pretty high price of $2.799/gallon, versus the typical (lately) of $2.299 or cheaper.
The love bugs were out in force too. Strange, because you usually don't see swarms of love bugs except in the springtime. Everything seems out of whack. Crazy fucking storms, lots of sunspot activity in the solar minimum cycle, total solar eclipse, it's the end of the world!!
In Houston, the west side of Beltway 8 between highway 59 and I-10 had just reopened. It had about 18' of water in it over 10 days after Harvey left. They finally brought in pumps and pumped out all of the water. As soon as we hit Houston and tried to get on the Beltway northbound to get to our hotel on the NE side of town, we hit a mega traffic jam. It took at least a full hour to travel about 5 miles.
Traffic has been bad in Houston for a long time, but after Harvey, with Highway 6 on the west side STILL closed, traffic has been a real nightmare. In total it took us over two hours to get from the SW to the NE side of town.
Once we got to our Best Western hotel, we discovered that the hotel had been flooded during Harvey. It smelled like heavy mold and mildew. The elevator was out and they wanted to put us on the 3rd floor. No. Fucking. Way. Fortunately, they let us cancel our reservation with no penalty and we landed in an America's Best Value hotel a block away. "Best Value" is code for bare bones. No shampoos. One trashcan. Hard beds. Musty smell. A/C hardly worked. No coffee in the room. No chairs in the room. Suffice to say, we will NEVER book again at one of these hotels, but at least they had a room open.
We were very lucky to move out of Houston in January of 2017 to get down to south Texas. We missed this storm. If we had still been in Houston, we would have lost BOTH of our cars to the flood, as the apartment complex where we had been living had the parking garage totally flooded.
This time, a lot of rich folks got flooded out on the west side. Typically, only the poorer areas flood, and they have no "pull" in government. But now that the rich folks flooded, I expect to see some big changes in Houston as to how they deal with floods. Houston needs to spend BILLIONS on infrastructure and flood control, but I kinda doubt they will have the political will. Still, with the rich folks demanding home buyouts, the chances of change are much greater.
I understand that there are still hundreds of people living in shelters in Houston. The need is still great. Give what you can, but don't send it to the Red Cross or Salvation Army. Those two groups have too much overhead and much of the money doesn't even reach the people that really need help. The best choice is really the local food bank, or pick a charity that you really trust. When there is a tragedy, the scammers come out in force, so be careful.
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