Making their way home — by canoe
Residents return to streets still submerged
Paddling their red canoe past the sunroof of an otherwise underwater car, John Etgen and his daughter, Carina, 17, floated down their submerged street Sunday in the heart of Houston’s mandatory evacuation zone. Obstacle ahead: a large uprooted tree.
“All right, slow down. Let me navigate here. We’re hauling faster than I want to,” Etgen, a BP scientific adviser, told his daughter. “We’ll shoot the gap again between those trees — if I steer correctly.”
The duo maneuvered across a neighbor’s yard and drifted toward their flooded brick house, three streets from Buffalo Bayou. John hopped out of the canoe into chest-deep brown water and waded into his kitchen, where spoiled food that escaped the refrigerator was “cruising around the house.”
“I do enjoy canoeing — but not here. It’s a little weird doing it here,” said Carina, who just started her senior year of high school.
The Etgens navigated the flood-swamped Memorial Drive Acres neighborhood numerous times Sunday, joining dozens of neighbors who hauled out personal possessions using kayaks, inflatable rafts, kiddie swimming pools and the like.
Buffalo Bayou, a 52-mile river, overflowed with discharges from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs after Hurricane Harvey struck. Mayor Sylvester Turner ordered a mandatory evacuation for flooded households in this zone, and electricity was shut off Sunday in some areas.
In Memorial Drive Acres, the Rancho Bauer Drive asphalt at the water’s edge doubled as a makeshift boat ramp and dock for passengers and cargo. Trucks backed up here to pick up loads of wet plastic bags, coolers and plastic containers stuffed with items.
“It’s a disaster. A lot of these homes are, if not ruined, are going to have to be torn down to the frames to be restored,” said Steve Pierce, president of the Memorial Drive Acres Section 1 Homeowners Association.
Pierce said about 100 of the neighborhood’s 117 houses flooded.
“There’s some acreages that are $2 million homes back there. Were $2 million — before this came,” he said.