911 calls took days in Harvey
Responses for some came up to 72 hours after requesting help
It was 4:40 p.m. when 43year-old Catina Washington dialed 911 for the first time on Aug. 27. Water was at her ankles inside the East Houston home she shared with her two children and her mother.
Her second call was at 11:45 p.m., followed by another at midnight. Washington was getting desperate.
“We need help — we need rescue help,” she told the dispatcher, her voice cracking. “We called a few hours ago, and the water is still rising.”
It took nearly 48 hours before first responders showed up at her door. By then, Washington and her family had fled the waist-deep water in their onestory brick home and been picked up a volunteer in a tractor-trailer.
Long waits were common for residents desperate for high-water rescues after Hurricane Harvey came ashore, according to a Houston Chronicle review of 120,000 calls to the Houston Emergency Center between Aug. 25 and Aug. 30, the worst days in the storm’s aftermath.
“We were getting reports of people that had spent hours in the attic. Hours on top of their rooftops,” said Assistant Chief Isaac Garcia of the Houston Fire Department during a public safety presentation to city officials recently.
On Aug. 26, the first day that widespread flooding began to hit Houston, the average time to clear calls for a high-water res--
cue was about 3½ hours. By Aug. 27, it had grown to more than 20 hours in the areas hardest hit by the storm — East Houston, Meyerland, Edgebrook and Kingwood, according to the Chronicle review.
Residents took to social media to coordinate life-saving efforts. Many used Twitter and Facebook to request help when the 911 calls were ineffective.
And although firefighters and law enforcement officials responded as quickly as they could, they often discovered the caller had already been rescued by someone with a boat or truck who got there sooner, exacerbating the long response times.
For Washington and her family, the storm was a nightmare.
“We were so scared,” she told the Chronicle months later. “People died in this storm. A guy a few blocks from us died. That could have been us.”
‘Shock to the system’
With another hurricane season underway, officials are working to improve response times should another storm hit the area.
Additional staffing likely will be added at the 911 call centers during heavy storms, and local first responders have expanded the number of rescue vehicles, enhanced training and formed water strike teams.
They’re also developing a system for incorporating the thousands of volunteers into emergency response plans to cut overlapping efforts.
“It’s a shock to the system when you call for help and no one can help you,” said Francisco Sanchez, public information officer for the Harris County Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
Shock is what Wiley Sale, 38, felt when he called 911 on Aug. 28.
He was in Savannah, Ga., calling for his 71-year-old mother, Rhani Babendure, whose phone died shortly after she lost power in Kingwood.
He told the operator that water was filling up her home and that he had instructed her to pack clothes. But when an operator told him that they were not dispatching on second- or third-party calls, he was taken aback.
“I’m calling to you because I’m her son and she’s unable to make a (expletive) phone call. She’s my mom, man,” he told the operator.
His mom was rescued hours later by the National Guard, which lifted her from her home by helicopter after seeing her wave a white towel from the second floor.
“I got a little heated,” he told the Chronicle. “But that was my mom, and she needed help. I understand things were crazy and that they were doing the best they could, but it was emotional.” Some were not so lucky. It took first responders 11 hours to clear a call from Carlos Mendez, 61, who lived in north Houston in the Northline area. By then, he had died in his home from what the medical examiner determined was gastrointestinal hemorrhaging. His friends told the Chronicle that first responders had difficulty finding a route to the house after the storm.
And Agnes Stanley, 89, who lived alone in Meyerland along Brays Bayou, drowned before help arrived to her residence despite her making a call about two hours before she is believed to have died Aug. 27. Responders cleared her call on Aug. 28 — 33 hours later.
Her son, Robert, said she had limited mobility.
Beefing up resources
Houston and Harris County have already made strides in improving their ability to respond to calls for help during floods.
Houston has identified 44 areas in need of improvement in case of another storm, said George Buenik, Houston’s director of Public Safety and Homeland Security.
The targeted areas include coordination, shelter operations, damage assessment, emergency purchasing and continuity of operations, he said. The county has a similar list of improvements needed.
The city has already purchased three additional highwater rescue trucks modified with lifts and six evacuation boats to better equip departments for another deluge. And last week, the Houston and Harris County rescue fleet grew by 14 after the 100 Club donated boats to help first responders handle future floods.
The goal is to have eight highwater vehicles assigned to the Houston Fire Department that can be placed in key locations across the city, including near Kingwood, Meyerland, Greater Greenspoint, downtown and Kashmere Gardens.
The city also has set aside funding for training.
Civilian response plan
Washington had noticed water seeping in through the door frames and walls as she and her two children, ages 10 and 20, and her 62-year-old mother tried to wait out the storm.
As the water reached electrical outlets, sparks flew from electronics.
“We were in the water not really sure how we were going to get through the night,” she said.
The 911 dispatcher was not encouraging.
“We have a lot of calls coming, and the fire department — I can’t even tell you if they are going out there or if they’ll be getting to you,” an operator told her, according to audio recordings obtained by the Chronicle.
Finally, after her last call, she and her family ventured out of the house. A good Samaritan plowed through the floodwaters in a tractor-trailer to rescue them as they stood, drenched, on a street corner, she said.
She and her family squeezed into the trailer with other evacuees on their way to George R. Brown Convention Center, where officials had set up a shelter.
The 911 call logs show that the official rescue help that Washington sought did not arrive until Aug 30 — nearly three days later, after the floodwaters had receded and she had returned to the damaged home.
The role volunteers and civilians played in the storm, however, helped take some of the burden off police and firefighters by allowing them to focus on complex, life-saving cases, officials said.
“Without them, we may not have been able to handle the widespread impact as quickly as we were,” said Rodney Reed, the Harris County Fire Marshal’s Office assistant chief.
He agreed, however, that efforts could be improved.
“We can be much more efficient,” Reed said. “The key thing to remember: During a disaster, normal life-saving emergencies still occur that must be addressed, such as heart attacks and strokes.”
HFD Chief Samuel Peña said a system to coordinate volunteers will be part of a larger high-water response plan for the city.
“We are working on acquiring a platform that will allow us to muster civilian resources, on a scalable basis, from a call list of preregistered, pre-screened residents with evacuation boats in cases where HFD and City of Houston resources are overwhelmed,” Peña said.
Critics, however, say the government should not rely on volunteers during a crisis.
Tim Frazier, a faculty director of the emergency and disaster management program at Georgetown University, said a region should be able to respond to a disaster with the resources it has.
“You risk placing them in harm because they do not have the necessary training,” said Frazier, an expert on vulnerability, resilience and risk assessment.
But emergency officials say they need to marshal the additional resources during a catastrophe such as a hurricane.
“People are going to volunteer whether we want them to or not,” said HFD Assistant Fire Chief Herbert Griffin. “So it’s best that we organize our efforts.”
‘That was too scary’
With the 2018 hurricane season already active, officials are encouraging residents to prepare for what may be ahead.
The National Weather Service expects the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean — which includes storms that could move into the Gulf of Mexico — to be as active as last year, though where those storms could strike is anybody’s guess.
Washington, however, said she knows exactly what she’s going to do the next time a hurricane threatens Houston.
“I’m taking my family and we’re leaving. That was too scary,” she said. “It’s nice to have a plan for the city, but sometimes you have to do what you can to take care of yourself.”