For flood survivors, Barry stirs up waves of anxiety and painful past
Houston likely spared from tropical storm, but trauma remains
The early reports of a tropical system building in the Gulf of Mexico this week was all it took.
Tropical Storm Barry likely will not have much impact in the Houston area this weekend, but just the sight of the city inside the “cone of uncertainty” on the nightly news ratcheted up the anxiety for some area residents, bringing back memories of flooding and rescues and piles of furniture and clothing amid torn-out Sheetrock and carpet.
Those memories were especially fresh in Kingwood this week, where heavy rains in May flooded about 400 homes in the Elm Grove subdivision.
When the stormwater covered the roads, fourth-grader Teagan Ludy could barely contain her anxiety. She twisted uncomfortably in the front seat of the family’s GMC Denali, her mother said, occasionally screaming when the car chugged through deeper water.
“Mom, you don’t know what you’re doing,” her mother, Jessica Ludy, remembered her yelling. “We’re going to get stuck!”
Teagan has carried the emotional scars of losing her home and nearly all her possessions since the first grade, when the
2016 Tax Day flood filled the Ludy’s Conroe home with about 2 feet of water. Days later, she watched as friends and strangers put her water-soaked favorite toys and clothes at the curb.
The Ludys are far from alone. More than 204,000 local homes and apartments flooded during Hurricane Harvey, nearly 7,000 Harris County houses were swamped in the 2016 Tax Day floods and more than 6,500 homes and apartments were damaged in the 2015 Memorial Day floods. In pockets of the region — including Meyerland, Kingwood and parts of Sugar Land — some homes have flooded four times in the past five years.
The National Weather Service predicted Thursday morning that what now is Tropical Storm Barry will wash ashore around central Louisiana on Friday morning and will drift north through that state before weakening and moving on by Saturday afternoon and evening. Meteorologists estimated between 15 and 20 inches of rain will fall in central Louisiana and a few inches of rain may materialize in the Houston area and Southeast Texas this weekend.
In New Orleans, where between 5 and 7 inches of rain fell this week, the Mississippi River already is at flood stage from springtime floods in the Midwest and South that have been slow to drain downstream. Some homes and businesses in the Crescent City have flooded, and meteorologists said the city could see a storm surge of 3 feet or more once Barry makes landfall. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday that authorities do not expect the river to top the series of levees that protect the city, according to the Associated Press. A change in the storm’s strength or path, however, could put the city’s levees at risk.
There is a marginal flash flooding risk in Beaumont and nearby areas, but Houston appears to have been spared.
Residual anxiety
Even with the improved forecast locally, earlier projections the storm could hit Houston or Beaumont caused some of those who flooded before to worry.
Like others who have lost everything to floodwaters, the Ludys still have residual anxiety from their experiences. Heavy rains are a cause for concern. When water inches up to the curb near her Elm Grove home, Jessica makes a mental list of what needs to be placed higher in the home and what she would need to bring with her in case she, her two elementary school-age children and her husband need to evacuate. Their youngest daughter, Tinsley, still asks about what happened in the floods three years ago, when she was not even 1 year old, and Teagan grows visibly shaken when water pools near their home.
“I think it bothers her more than it bothers my husband and me,” Jessica said of Teagan. “I mean, she watched her home get kind of ripped out from under her in the matter of a minute. It’s still something she copes with a lot, and storms still bother her a lot.”
Dr. Julie Kaplow, chief of psychology at Texas Children’s Hospital, said hearing about a potential storm, seeing rapid weather changes or watching anxious expressions grow on their parents’ faces can trigger memories of prior storms or floods, especially if a child had a traumatic experience in the past. The more traumatic exposures children have to floods, Kaplow said, the more severe their anxiety may be.
She also said prior negative storm experiences may not affect children until months, even years, later. She said her hospital is treating more children for Harvey-related stress now than it did in the first eight months after the storm.
“I think for many of the kids, even hearing about another storm coming is a reminder for them,” Kaplow said, adding that they pick up on their parents’ or caregivers’ stress. “They’re very susceptible to that and pick up on cues easily. That’s another reason why it’s so important for caregivers to be supported, too, and recognize how they react and behave directly impacts how their children will cope.”
Remaining calm can be difficult for parents who also were shaken by prior flooding experiences. Dr. Rebecca Schwartz, an associate professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research who has studied the impact hurricanes Harvey and Sandy had on adult survivors, said the more negative experiences people had in the storms, the more likely they were to experience mental health symptoms and post-traumatic stress disorder. Those effects were particularly acute among those who stayed in shelters or had to be rescued.
“I do think there are pockets of people who are able to grow and be resilient and be well prepared for future storms,” Schwartz said. “I think it runs the gamut — you’re either worse off due to previous experiences or grow resilient for the future.”
‘Lots of praying’
For Jessica, nearly flooding again in Harvey and in May after her Tax Day experience did little to help her nerves. She said she and her husband “nearly had a heart attack” during Harvey, and the May floods brought memories of Tax Day 2016 to the front of her mind. She remembered rushing her young children out of their flooding house to a nearby car wash on higher ground. She and her husband took turns going back to their home to retrieve each of the family’s four dogs, and each time they returned, the water would creep higher.
Family, friends and strangers helped them return to relative normalcy within a couple of months, but the memories arose when the first Barry forecast splashed across her television screen earlier this week.
“There was lots of praying,” Jessica said of this week. “Lots of praying that this house is high enough.”