Kingwood corner serves as spot for underwater residents to share sorrow, aid

Posted 10:30 a.m.

At the corner in front of the Wendy’s, where the local Fourth of July parade passes by and traffic clogs for festivals in Town Center, the stories of the Harvey flooding in Kingwood converged.

There, where the water kept rising until it swamped West Lake Houston Parkway several feet deep, and volunteers and first responders launched rescue boats to search for folks still missing, John Swank and his wife quietly asked if someone could look for his elderly parents.

It had been two days since he last talked to the couple, who are in their 80s. He pulled out a map to show where the location of the their. It was in one of the neighborhoods now engulfed by flooding.

Five minutes later, a tear-stained Alisha LaFalce came by to see if someone could check on her cats, left behind in her first floor apartment behind Kingwood Town Center.

LaFalce and her husband had dashed out quickly Sunday morning, carrying their 1-year-old and 4-year-old girls.

They tried to return, but by then, the road was blocked off.

A few feet away, Kevin Myers, outfitted in head-to-toe camo, took a break. He was in his third day of volunteering on a rescue boat.

The Kingwood resident, whose own house had escaped the flooding, felt called to help.

“I’ve got a boat,” Myers said. “I felt useless sitting home on dry land.”

As Harvey stalled over Houston, dumping buckets of rain, flooding hit large swaths of Kingwood, blanketing golf courses, shopping centers, major roadways and neighborhood after neighborhood. Many have been without power for more than two days.

On Wednesday, Kingwood Drive, the main thoroughfare of the community with about 80,000 residents in northeast Harris County, resembled a river, with roiling currents and water covering street signs and submerged cars.

At the launching site, the mission on Wednesday was to search for people reported missing or unaccounted for by friends or relatives, explained Houston Police Sgt. Charles Landrum.

Landrum, who had not been able to get back to his own home across the river, had packed his two German Shepherds — Rika and Patches — into his truck. He and his wife, also a police sergeant, were sleeping with the dogs in their vehicle.

Just moments after Landrum noted that Kingwood flood victims were likely to greet first responders with a “plate of cookies as you rescue them,” he got a report of looters in airboats targeting empty houses.

Since Sunday, residents had been evacuated from several Kingwood neighborhoods and apartment houses, including the Arbor Terrace senior residence, which many elderly evacuees emerged on walkers and wheelchairs and were transported to shelters.

By Wednesday, those sections of Kingwood were otherworldly, with water bobbing against first floor windows, toppling decorative statues and basketball hoops, and sending detritus — pool floats, a child’s bike helmet, grills — floating down the street. Some homes were marked by white towels, signalling a rescue.

From others, residents who had chosen to stay behind, waved at boats from the second-floor window.

Myers guessed that he had plucked more than 30 people out of water-logged houses since Sunday: families, couples, pregnant women, children, and lots of dogs. At times, his boat was full, so the men would have to stay behind, until another trip could be made.

Hard to estimate how many boats were out trying to help, Myers said. Maybe 200, 250. Dozens of volunteers from Kingwood and dozens more than with search-and-rescue crews from Tennessee, Louisiana and other parts of Texas were on the water.

For awhile, Myers teamed with a group from California, which had driven 30 hours straight.

The response from volunteers and others in the community, who stopped by with coffee, food and water, cheered Myers in the midst of the tragedy.

“Kingwood is still eerily beautiful, even now,” he said, looking down the normally picturesque road flanked by a canopy of oak trees, and now carpeted by water.

The flooding had struck $600,000 homes and $80,000 condos, he noted.

“This is a wake-up call to the U.S., a reminder that skin color doesn’t matter, price doesn’t matter. None of that matters.”

As for Swank, Wednesday ended in uncertainty. He had checked every local shelter, but had still not tracked down his parents.

He hoped they were simply stuck in their home, safe on the second floor.

On Thursday morning, he would again start his search.