Hurricane Harvey escort! :D

Hey guys! How's everyone doing? I wanted to share some crazy stuff happening down here. Some background: Houston overall is pretty flooded. We had a lot of rainfall in a short amount of time and that's really why everything is as bad as it is. I'll go into some detail as to why some people didn't evacuate and whatnot but first part of the story is about getting some of my cousins! The water isn't crazy here but a little further down the road there were a ton of stalled vehicles. Basically if you didn't have a truck you weren't getting by.

This is actually a good way to see how much water was here. We're actually going southbound on the *north* side of the freeway. The south side is what's on the other side of the concrete barrier and it was completely full of water up to that concrete barrier. You can actually see the water bleeding onto this side of the freeway. We had to switch sides 3 times to make it back because one side was too high and the other wasn't. Fun note: traffic laws were just totally thrown out the window lol we had people using whichever side to get wherever they were going. Everyone was pretty much just sticking as close to the concrete barrier as possible since that was the shallowest part.

This is a bit better picture of an 18 wheeler that got flooded going south (you can see the water coming through by that traffic cone)

So this was about as far as we could get without flooding the truck. After this it was too deep and we couldn't back to this side of the freeway (the truck's on the actual southbound side now because we switched). Basically up ahead is an overpass that's actually more of an island at this point. It was super high all around and there were a ton of people stuck there because they couldn't get out (including my cousins). I went to get them and bring them back while my stepdad stayed in the truck.

Fuck walking through all that water lol I just hopped up onto those concrete barriers and walked to the overpass. I wanted to take more pictures of this part but I didn't wanna drop my phone in the water. I walked about a quarter mile (close to .5km if you're not America which most of the world isn't) to get to the overpass. I didn't take pictures but there was a lot of people in canoes and flatbottom boats getting to the people on the overpass.

It was super wet but we got them back! We got baby girl, my aunt, my 3 cousins and my cousin's wife plus 3 pits with us. Had to put the dogs in the back. We were lucky and had a lifted truck take my tia, the baby and my cousin's wife most of the way so they didn't have to wade through water. There was a coast guard with boats ferrying people off the overpass to the less flooded side of the freeway but they didn't stop. I'm sure there was a waiting list and stuff to get across *shrug* but was still kind of annoyed they couldn't take the baby for us at least. Eh, it is what it is we made it back.

Not sure if I mentioned this but this is Dickinson, Tx. The same city as that retirement home that you probably saw in an earlier post. This was the picture of the overpass that they were stuck on. (The rest of these pics aren't my photos just things I got from friends on fb and Snapchat btw)

Yeah it's super shitty. I'm sure everyone is wondering "wow OP why wouldn't you guys evacuate you knew it was flooding" or "why didn't the city have mandatory evacuations" annnnnd while that's all fine and dandy it really is complicated.

(now you gotta throw the whole car away) I've lived in this area my whole life and man I gotta say, this is the most rain we've ever gotten. Also it's hard to know which areas would flood. I'm not exaggerating when I say that Ike, Katrina of Rita had waaaay less rain than Harvey. This flooding all happened last night a day after it made landfall. We all thought it was pretty much over by yesterday (tons of jokes online about this). Usually with hurricanes we worry about the storm surge (like a mini tidal wave that comes in with the storm) which usually hits the coastal cities like Galveston (south of here) and such. And then the wind and stuff comes and blows some trees over (Ike blew a tree onto my house when it hit but we only had minor damage thankfully) or things but the water isn't usually this bad.

These pictures show reeaaaally well just how quickly the rain was falling in Dickinson

2 INCHES IN LIKE 30 MINUTES (ok it probably was lagging a bit or something but still!)

That's like 4 inches an hour. That's so fast.

You can keep looking around for other numbers about the rainfall but I mean 17 inches in about 7 hours is just an insane amount. I wanna say that's more than a lot of areas get in a year or so but don't quote me on that. It was just so unexpected. Also another reason why it's still so flooded is because the storm's kind of hovering over us and the water isn't being able to drain out. This could probably drain out in a day or two or so but since it's hovering it's just not going anywhere.

Here's some kind of funny stuff that my friend posted on her snap. Lots of people were doing this in their neighborhoods with jetskis and stuff.

They were stuck on their second floor. They had to get rescued by a boat then moved to dry land by a military vehicle and now are dry at a friend's house a few miles south.

This is my apartment complex (taken by someone else) I live on the third story and that first story is just a parking garage. That little pointy thing sticking out by the trees is actually a gazebo lol I just heard that they all had to get evacuated by boat a few hours ago because it was getting too high. Luckily I live on the 3rd floor so my stuff should be ok once it all drains out.

And again, I have to stress that people didn't evacuate because it just doesn't usually flood like this. You take a risk leaving and evacuating that you probably don't think too much about. Someone can fact check me on this but during Rita there were something like 40 deaths that happened on car accidents leaving the city before the hurricane even hit (think 70 people died all together). The greater Houston area is ~6 million people and you literally would have to pack water and food just to make it out if everyone was to evacuate because that's how long it's going to take you to get out of the city. It's just not easy to evacuate that many people. My family that we had to pick up actually moved over to dickinson when the hurricane hit because they figured it was better than San Leon to deal with it and I've heard similar situations from other people. My friend is in dry land on Galveston. I would say that usually it's the other way around when storms hit (Galveston is usually one of the worst hit communities and not a place where you would evacuate to). And plus there's work and whatnot too. I didn't evacuate because I'm supposed to work on Monday or else I probably would have just to not deal with the headache but hey I didn't want to burn vacation days.

Also we're not out of the woods just yet. I know a ton of projections for Harvey have it coming out to the Gulf of Mexico a second time, intensifying over the warm waters and hitting Houston a second time. That's a worst case scenario but it probably won't get hurricane level again. I imagine in the next few days when it goes back to the gulf and gives us a breather a lot more people will go up north before it hits us again on Wednesday. I know friend and family that are already getting ready to go up north once we get a break.

Anyhow, hope you liked the post! Feel free to fact check me on anything I said, I'm doing this off of my phone right now. There's so much more cool things to show like the rescue efforts happening by citizens and things that I just don't have any good pictures of. It's just great to see the community come together to help each other. If you're in the area y'all stay dry and safe!