Rare flooding in Baytown overwhelms refinery suburb that ‘doesn’t flood’
Posted: Midnight
Late Tuesday night, Amy Waltz-Reasonover, a parishioner at Trinity Episcopal Church in Baytown, said she hadn’t left the ad-hoc shelter they had set up since 1 p.m.
“We’re exhausted,” she said. “”Everything is shut down.”
Devastation came to refinery suburb later than other parts of the region as Harvey’s rainfall moved east, pounding Baytown with some 50 inches of water and hitting it especially hard on the eastern and western sides of the city. The area, on the mouth of the San Jacinto River on Galveston Bay, was almost impossible to get to Tuesday as many of the incoming roadways were flooded.
Many could only pass in highwater trucks, sometimes only in boats. Authorities earlier had asked residents in need of rescue to place white sheets or towels in their windows to make it easier to find them.
Hundreds of people were evacuated. A volunteer rescue squad was swept away by gushing water, but they survived.
All of it was impossible to comprehend for a part of Houston that hardly ever struggles with such rainfall.
“Baytown doesn’t flood,” WaltzReasonover said. “But this time, Baytown flooded. Baytown flooded a lot.”
Her church took in some 40 residents from an apartment complex at 2500 East James Avenue.
“It’s like shock and awe,” she said. “There are children here, small children, they’re the most resilient I think, and adults just doing what they can to make it.”
Waltz-Reasonover said the rain had paused and the water receded but that the wind was still high. Spirits, however, were damp.
“We look at the people devastated around us and we know they have so much rebuilding to do, and you know some people will be okay and there’s some people that just won’t,” she said. “They don’t have insurance, or if they do, they don’t have anyone to help them rebuild or fill in the gaps. … We all feel lost. Where do we go from here? How do we help when there’s so much need?”