Meyerland residents flooded over and over still find it’s hard to leave.
Sweep. Sweep. Sweep. On Monday morning, John Bell was back in his one-story house in Meyerland, flushing out the remains of 40 inches of water that had toppled the fridge and turned a granite-topped kitchen cabinet upside down. He and his wife, Ellen, have been there for 38 years, living through Tropical Storm Allison and remodeling completely after taking in 16 inches during the Memorial Day floods in 2015. It was perfect, from the crown moldings to the chandeliers.
“This house was exactly as we wanted it,” said Ellen Bell, 72, standing with a broom in her aqua socks as a smoke alarm shrieked overhead. Perfect, except for one thing: Unlike the new houses in the rapidly changing area, it had not been elevated.
“The only way to salvage it would be to lift it off the ground,” she said.
These days, there generally are two kinds of houses in Meyerland, a middle-class neighborhood fronting Brays Ba you in southwest Houston that has gotten some of the worst flooding here in recent years. There are the ’50s-era ramblers now occupied by many retirees like the Bells. And the tall, modern homes with porches several feet off the ground, many of them built since the floods in 2015 and 2016.
Many of the ranchers had been evacuated by Monday morning, with boats having pulled people out all Sunday. At one house, a paper sign rested on a doorstep: “Need rescue. 4 people + 1 cat. Please come in.” No one responded to pounding on the door.
Four teenage boys, splashing through the partially submerged neighborhood with a surfboard looking for still-stranded survivors, said they had not found any.
A few, like the Bells, were back and trying to clean up.
Michelle and Chuck French spent the day ripping out carpet and using a wet-dry vacuum on the floors. They got about a foot of water in their home early Sunday. They carted the sodden carpet pieces out in a wheelbarrow.
Still, she admitted to feeling lucky to have not gotten off worse.
“I keep thinking about the people I’m seeing on television who have to be evacuated by boat,” she said.
She also was buoyed by the outpouring of support from family, friends and coworkers asking how they can help and whether the couple needs a place to stay.
“I really appreciate it,” French said.
Many of those who did not or could not evacuate found refuge at their neighbors’ homes, the ones that had rebuilt to withstand high water. The Bells escaped at 6:30 Sunday morning to a tall house just down the street in the 4900 block of Valkeith, which had taken in several families, as did another house just across the way.
That house, across the street from the Bells’ hosts, was owned by Scott and Margaret Flippen, who tore down their 1959 house when it flooded in 2015, and replaced it with a stately brick two-story. The power was out Monday morning, with six young kids bouncing off the walls. But the water had been lapping at their front door before finally receding.
Why did the Flippens rebuild there after knowing full well that the neighborhood was flood-prone?
They loved the community, Margaret Flippen said, with their friends all around. Both their kids goto Kolter Elementary School a few blocks away, and the area is zoned to well-regarded Bella ire High school.
“We chose to rebuild,” Flippen said. “And we could have gone anywhere.”
The Bells had felt the same way, back in 2015. This time, they’re not sure.
“It’s really hard to just pick up and leave,” Ellen Bell said. “We’re not young enough to start over.”