Houston/Harris County Rainfall Map… Click here
Unlike so many, we are high and dry. But not without a bit of drama. Our rain gauge in the lower left-hand corner of the Houston/Harris County flood map, shows that we got 17.36 inches of rain in the last four days, 13 inches in the last 24 hours! Our Keegan's Bayou about a mile away overflowed already yesterday. But we are located on high ground in the middle of the block where all the water flows away from our house very quickly.
About 7 PM last night some heavy bands of rain came through with many tornado warnings. About 8:30 I saw the wind whipping from side to side outside as though there may have been a tornado in our vicinity. But the only casualty we have from wind is a 3 foot tall pepper plant that broke in half. About that time, my tenant, Edith, came down from upstairs with a bowl of water that she got from soaking up water coming in through her window. Last year, I had our regular contractor seal that window to prevent it from leaking and in July I had a water stain in my bedroom repainted by him. Water started running down the wall while it was raining hard and this morning it is stained worse. But that is the only leak that we have. It just started raining again as I write this.
At 10 PM I broke from watching the news and started my 15 minutes of exercise on my Flexaciser. About the time I smelled it, Beh yelled that she saw smoke in the living room and quickly came and got me out of the machine. She grabbed a fire extinguisher I bought her recently. She couldn't tell where the smoke was coming from, but I suspected the outlet by the living room outside door that fire ants tend to get into. The smoking stopped although there was the acrid smell of the electrical insulation burning in the air. We took my shower and she got me in bed at 11 PM. Five minutes later, after it started raining very hard again, I smelled the same thing in bed and we decided to call 911.
The phone rang and rang for about three minutes which seemed longer while Beh got more worried seeing more smoke in the living room and not sure what to do. Finally, someone answered and immediately transferred the to the fire department. The woman at the fire department took my information and told me to get out of the house immediately. Edith's car was in the garage. She came down and opened the garage door for the firemen, but didn't drive her car out so that I could get in the garage. Beh struggled to get me dressed and into my wheelchair before the firemen arrived. They came within 5-10 minutes and I was still in bed. About 10 very wet firemen stomped all around the house looking for the source of the electrical fire. They found one breaker tripped, but there were still power to that outlet. Finally they found the breaker to the living room and turned that off and cut the wires to the outlet. I thanked them and told them to hurry up and leave because I knew they needed to be doing high water rescues with the way it was raining and with so many still driving the streets. It was midnight when we got back to bed.
I know you all are worried, but it looks like we're going to weather this one just like we've weathered them the last 35 years. Sure glad I bought this house where it is.
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