Remembering Houston’s 2015 ‘Memorial Day Flood’

HOUSTON – As is typical for Memorial Day, folks in Houston spent their 2015 vacation having fun with barbecues and time on close by seashores. That downtime, nonetheless, turned a distant reminiscence for a lot of after they wakened the subsequent day.

Within a nine-hour span from the evening of May 25, 2015, to the morning of May 26, as a lot as 11 inches of rain fell on components of the area.

Nearly 10 inches of rain fell in Stafford, whereas the White Oak Bayou and Spring Valley picked up almost 8 inches of rain.

The common rainfall in Harris County in the course of the storm was 5.3 inches, in response to the Harris County Flood Control District. That works out to about 162 billion gallons of water.

The outcomes had been catastrophic flooding and the deaths of eight folks.

Members of the Edwards household, who reside alongside Brays Bayou within the Meyerland space, which was hit notably laborious, stated they had been nonetheless cleansing up from a flood two years earlier when the Memorial Day flood hit.

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“It’s been a protracted two years of being beneath fixed building,” said Davis Edwards. “‘This was the first time in 50 years that this house had flooded and it didn’t flood as a result of we’re decrease, it’s as a result of (of) Brays Bayou.”

Pictures showed water rising in the Downtown area and dozens of drivers stranded on highways when the water started to rise.

From snakes and deer to crawfish and alligators, the waters forced animals into people’s yards or near their homes.

A total of 3,015 homes and more than 3,500 multifamily units were flooded.

In the days that followed, leaders said they spent more than $120 million on improvements to the stormwater system. However, they said, one can never predict where the rain will fall.

Houston is not any stranger to flooding. In current years, there have been a number of main floods, together with Halloween 2015, Tax Day 2016, Memorial Day 2016 and, most lately, the flooding brought on by Hurricane Harvey.