Tom and Lisa Slagle

Interviewee: Tom and Lisa Slagle
Interview Date: October 27, 2018
Interview Location: Kingwood Community Center
Interviewer: Laura Bernal

INTERVIEWER: Hello, today is October 27, 2018. My name is Laura Bernal, and I’m here today at the Kingwood Community Center with Tom and Lisa Slagle as part of the University of Houston Center for Public History’s Resilient Houston: Documenting Hurricane Harvey project. We’ll be talking today about their experience as Hurricane Harvey volunteers.

LB: So are you ready?
LS: Yes.
LB: Great. Please state your names. And tell me a little bit about yourself.
LS: Lisa Slagle. I lived in Houston since 1980 — lived in Kingwood since 2007. When Tom and I got married, he moved me out here to Kingwood.
TS: I’m Tom — Tom Slagle, a resident of Kingwood originally with my parents back in the early 70s and then as an adult since ’84. We’re both retired Houston firefighters — still live in the Kingwood area [0:01:00].
LB: So when did you start your career with the Houston Fire Department?
TS: I started in 1977, December of 1977, served for 36 years, retired at the rank of District Chief, worked mostly in the inner city. But — and with all the experiences that comes with inner-city Houston, it was quite the adventure.
LS: I started with the Houston Fire Department in 1994. And when I graduated from fire school, I went to Fire Station 1, which is now the Aquarium. And I worked inner-city my entire career, which was of 20 years — retired in 2014 from Station 6 on the D shift off of Washington Avenue in The Heights. And I retired as an Engineer Operator — actually, Incident Command Technician.
TS: We had a unique relationship the last almost five years that we [0:02:00] were with the City of Houston. She was my driver.
LS: Yeah, that was — we have a close relationship. We have a very good working relationship actually. There were a number of people that told us that, if they didn’t see our names on the back of our coats being the same, they would have never known that we were related or husband and wife for sure. We were very professional when we went to work and gave him the respect of Chief.
TS: There were a lot of us that assumed that you couldn’t be married and work when one had a rank over the other. We were both well-established in our careers. And those positions, it’s important that you work very, very closely. So it — we thought it was a huge benefit.
LS: And it was.
TS: It worked very well for us.
LS: It did. It served us well for those five years that we were able to do that. And the reason it was only five years, they — back in whatever year you were a driver — chief driver —
TS: Back in the [0:03:00] early 80s, chiefs had — they called them chauffeurs then. And through budget concerns and what have you, those positions were eliminated. And then as the job started to change and there became more —
LS: Computers.
TS: – liability issues and computer issues and more technology, it got to where just a single person couldn’t keep up with it in a command post — in a command environment. So they put —
LS: They started implementing that again and putting drivers back on chiefs’ cars.
TS: Called Incident Command Technicians.
LS: Yeah, that’s what I retired as.
TS: But it really worked well for us.
LS: Yeah, yeah.
LB: So what kind of things did you do with the fire department throughout your career?
LS: So I only took one promotional test — so graduated from fire school, and you’re a probationary firefighter and then career firefighter [0:04:00]. I took one test, which made me an Engineer Operator. And so that’s where I — I never tested past that. And I worked at — being in the Houston Fire Department, you’re also an EMT. And it hasn’t always been that way, but since I joined, it was like that. And so I also — although, you rode on fire apparatus, whether it was a pumper or a truck, you also had responsibilities on ambulances as well. And I mean, it’s a lot more detailed than that about whose turn it is to be on an ambulance on what day or if you’re driving an apparatus or so on and so forth. But it — so everything that is involved in being on a pumper truck or a ladder truck or tower or an ambulance, that’s basically what I did until I started driving the Chief. And then that’s a whole different set of responsibilities that I had then.
TS: So another unique twist, not only did she ultimately become [0:05:00] my driver, but as our careers progressed, she was on the executive board at the union. And I was Assistant Fire Chief. So it had management and labor —
LS: – issues, but we really didn’t have issues. We just [unclear, 0:05:14.7].
TS: – and all that came with that. So, at the station, in jest of course, we would have the management end of the dinner table and the labor end of the dinner table.
LS: I was the labor end — me and the rest of the crew.
TS: So it was myself and the captains. And there was another ex-board member there at the station also. “No, no, no, no, management end.”
LS: “Labor end.” We were fine with that. So it was fun.
TS: It was all good-hearted fun.
LS: So his responsibilities as District Chief were vastly different than mine, of course.
TS: I got promoted through the ranks and went to District Chief for over 20 years.
LS: But the different ranks, tell them the different ranks.
TS: So I was a firefighter. I was a [0:06:00] — then called a chauffeur. And I drove an engine. I drove a chief. I drove a ladder trunk. At one point, I drove a medic. Then I was a Pumper Captain at Station 7 at Austin and Elgin, Third Ward, and then a Truck Captain at Station 6, Heights Boulevard and Washington Avenue.
LS: So Pumper Captain is what we call a Junior Captain. And it’s a promotion. And then you promote from that to a Senior Captain. And those are the ones that are on the trucks. So it’s a different rank.
TS: So truck being a ladder truck as opposed to an engine or pumper. And then as a chief, I spent the majority of that time at Station 6, with Station 6, 11, 15, 16, and 62 — so five stations, 54-minute [unclear, 0:06:54.7], five engines, two ladder trucks, six medic or EMS [0:07:00] units, some other associated equipment. So a day at the station with me started with about a couple hours of just basic administrative staffing, payroll, training assignments — completed all of the administrative side, where Lisa would be checking the Chief’s car, the equipment, and everything on it, which was fairly extensive — a lot of monitoring equipment and radios — you know, all the gear.
LS: But we all had a routine.
TS: Everybody had a routine, so it really worked well for us.
LS: Yeah, uh-huh, it was good.
LB: So throughout your career, did you receive any training pertaining to natural disasters?
LS: Yes, we’ve received a lot of training on that. And that was some of the difficulty that we had once we flooded. We were not used to being on that side of a situation. We were used to being the rescuer [0:08:00] and going and doing. And I forget the names of the storms. What was the storms that we were involved in?
TS: I worked Alicia. I worked Allison. I worked Ike.
LS: Yeah, and we did. We responded on boats to go and rescue people and — in the Medical Center especially in whatever year that was.
TS: That was Alicia, the tropical storm with flooding.
LS: When the Medical Center went under water pretty much — yeah, so we were on-duty that day. So we have responded to a number of — and I also served on the USAR team for Texas — the water rescue team and had some deployments with them. But it’s very different when you’re on this side of it. I mean, you can’t prepare for what happened out here. I mean, we did. We were prepared for — as you say, prepared for a hurricane.
TS: We’ve endured, both on-duty and off, you know, weather [0:09:00] events. And we prepared for — we’ve been at our home now on a couple of occasions without power for two weeks. And we had our routine. We had our generator and charging phones and, you know, keeping refrigerators running. And we were prepared for that. But we were not at all prepared for the magnitude of the water event that we experienced.
LS: Actually, all the preparations we had made for being without power for — we were prepared to be without power for at least a couple weeks and had all the food and things that we thought we were going to need. And when you have five feet of water in your home, none of that mattered. Because it was all — all of it was destroyed. So you’re kind of regrouped, huh?
TS: It was a very — and I remember it vividly — very unique time or experience. 3:00 in the morning, we were upstairs. Water had got to the [0:10:00] fifth step. We have a very small upstairs. And we had a deliberate conversation, “Okay, the game has changed. It’s no longer about what preparations we’ve made. It’s no longer about dealing with our home. Now, it’s doing what we know we have to do to save ourselves. We’ve got to leave. We’ve got to get out.” And so we had talked it through. You know, with previous experiences applied, and said, “Okay, daybreak, this is what we’re going to do. And this is how it’s going to have to progress.”
LS: And we had actually put a ladder up to our balcony in the back just in case — in case a fire started or not knowing how much water we were going to have. You know, we — so that we would have a way to evacuate. Because we knew we were going to end up upstairs. But when you have that much — so water started coming in the house at 1 o’clock almost to the — 1:03 A.M., water started under the front door. And you just keep thinking [0:11:00], “Okay, it’s going to stop.” You know, and it doesn’t. “Okay, it’s going to stop.” And it doesn’t, so when Tom was saying that we felt like our lives were, you know, going to be in danger — because you didn’t know how much more water was going to come. I mean, it could have overtaken the whole house, upstairs and all. And you just have to get into a different mindset about that.
We had pets. We had two pets — three pets. We’ve lost one since then, but we had three pets that were upstairs that were cats. And you know, you’re thinking, “What am I going to do? I’m not leaving them here. I’m not going to do that.” So you start trying to think of all that. And then it’s, you know, in the middle of the morning. And it’s pitch-black outside. And you don’t know what’s in the water. And you don’t want to try to leave then, because we didn’t know where we were going to go if that was the case. So we just decided we were going to wait until the sun came up and make a decision about what to do. And we were prioritizing up until that time about what was the first thing that we needed to [0:12:00] do and, you know, the second thing we needed to do. And what did we actually need to get out of the house — still not knowing if the water was going to keep rising like it did. So you go through all those.
And I don’t know if our training helped us to — we were very calm about it. We were up there with our — we each had a flashlight. And things were dumping downstairs. We could hear noises. And we were very aware of that. We’d go down and check. And you know, one time the — you could hear a big crash. And then you could hear [unclear, 0:12:34]. And we looked at each other, and we said, “Oh, it’s the water line for the refrigerator — the ice maker.” Well, it’s spraying everything in the kitchen that — you know, the line’s just going crazy. So he had just come up from getting some things. I don’t know. We were rinsing off in the shower, you know, after each time just to get that dirty water off of us. And so I go down.
I’ve got the flashlight in my mouth. I’m climbing over the [0:13:00] island in the kitchen, trying to get behind the refrigerator, which had floated up and wedged itself between the island and the wall and the garage doorknob. And you — it wasn’t budging. It was just stuck there. And so I’m trying to reach over the top of it just to turn the water off. And I said, “I can’t — I can’t reach it.” He’s like, “Yes, you can. Yes, you can.”
TS: Trust me. You can make it happen.
LS: I’m like, “Okay.” You know, so I’m crawling over the top of that. I’m trying to shut that off. And back I go upstairs. So we were just trying to think through things. And the generators —
TS: I think a lot of what we dealt with — fire experience, there’s nothing that we dealt with personally that we hadn’t seen or experienced from a different perspective. And the difference when — after, well, 36 years for me and 20 for Lisa, of being the one that’s responding to [0:14:00] give aid — whatever weather, fire, flood — whatever the situation is to saying, “Okay, this is bigger than us. And we’re going to have to be on the receiving end.” So when those two things kind of came together, the experience of saying, “Yeah, we’ve done this. We’ve dealt with this. We’ve seen this,” but then saying, “But not from this perspective,” that’s when that 3 o’clock in the morning discussion took place. You know, this is — we’re in a different place than we have been. Even though we’ve experienced and seen and dealt with a lot of what we’re dealing with, it was in a completely different perspective.
LS: Yeah, but I think it helped us think through things honestly. I don’t know — just from talking to friends and neighbors that flooded also, we really were calm about it. And we knew what we needed to try to think about — what to do next [0:15:00]. And I think it probably wasn’t until a few days later that I actually got emotional about what had happened, because we wouldn’t — I don’t know if we wouldn’t let ourselves. But we had business to take care of. And it was truly that. It was, “We’ve got business to take care of, and these are things that we have to do right now, because time is not on our side.” You know, and so I think our training and the things that we’ve seen throughout our careers helped us to be able to deal with it a little bit different. I will say these past almost 14 months now have been some of the most difficult that we have ever been through — just the stress of it, physically and mentally. I mean, neither one of us have slept through the night since. We have not been in our home. We’re still not in our home although it’s close — it’s close. We keep saying it’s close.
TS: It was supposed to be today. That’s why we’re still [unclear, 0:15:56].
LS: But it’s been [0:16:00] something that you just — even when you — these people that have flooded three times, I don’t know how they’ve done it. Because I can honestly say I don’t think I would do this again.
TS: Yeah.
LS: I don’t. And we have a lovely home, and it’s going to be beautiful when we get back. But all the things that you have to go through to get to that — and I think because of the magnitude of the storm and the people that it affected, things that you’re trying to take care of with contractors and such, it just isn’t flowing like it normally would if you just decided I want to remodel my home. Because there’s just so many people that need help. And these workers are extremely tired. They haven’t stopped. And you know, when they’re not at our house doing what we think they need to be doing, they’re at somebody else’s, you know, trying to help them. And when they’re at ours, they’re not at somebody —
TS: When they’re not at ours, we’re upset. And when they’re at ours, somebody else is upset.
LS: Yeah, and we’re very — we’re trying to be very [0:17:00] mindful of that. And you know, we’ve been blessed in a lot of ways through this whole situation. We really have. We’ve had a place to live. Our church family has stepped up in a big way for us. Our fire department family has stepped up in a —
TS: Oh, yeah. You know, people talk about the brotherhood and the comradery in fire service. Talking about it doesn’t do it justice. You have to be a part of that. You have to live it, and you have to experience it. And this event was Sunday evening around 4:00 in the afternoon, 5:00 in the evening. And a friend of ours, fireman, called. And he said, “Are y’all okay?” And I said, “Yeah, we’re good. We’ve got — we’ve got a plan, you know. We’ve been listening to the flood predictions from the river and stuff,” which were way off. He goes, “Well, do you need help? We’re here.” I said, “You’re where?” He goes, “Oh, we’re here in the garage.”
LS: “Yeah, do you want to move [0:18:00] some things up?”
TS: So I opened the garage door, and there’s three of them standing there. Yep, let’s start doing this. So we just started that — what we were going to do if we needed, we just went ahead and did it then.
LS: And the whole time, I’m thinking, “If we don’t get any water in here, this is a lot of work.”
TS: Yeah, I mean, we’re hustling stuff.
LS: We’re going to have to move all this stuff back.
TS: Stuff upstairs. Stuff up on countertops.
LS: Little did I know.
TS: Yeah, but that was — so that was the first interaction of us being on the receiving side. And it was from our friends. And Jeff said, “Okay, if I don’t hear from you, I’m coming back.”
LS: And he gave us a time. “If I don’t hear from you by such and such, I’m just going to show up.” And let me say — I’m going to interject in that. When the sun did come up and we were sitting there talking, my mother — and we had spotty cell service, but my mother called and asked, you know, what — if we were okay or not. I’m like, “No,” and I’m trying to tell her. She just said, “Lisa.” She said [0:19:00], “I know you and Tom are not used to people helping you, but you are going to have to let people help you with this. This is bigger than what y’all can do my yourself.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And you know, it really didn’t settle in of what she was saying until you get to step back from it. And you just see how much work there was to do. And so then fast forward to —
TS: Well, and this starts to progress. Then when we self-evacuate and Jeff’s there. And we get across the street to where we ultimately have been staying, I get another phone call. It was from another fireman. “Chief, where you at? I’m coming to get you.” I said, “Jimmy, you can’t get here.” I said, “Unless you’re in a boat, you can’t get here.”
LS: I said, “We’re good.” He goes, “I’m not leaving y’all. I’m coming to get you.”
TS: So he goes, “Well, I can — I’m on the eastbound lanes of Kingwood Drive where they’re launching the boats.” I said, “You are?” And I look, and I holler. And I say, “Jimmy?” [0:20:00] And I hear through the trees, “Chief?” He was about, I don’t know, 20 yards from where I was standing. He made his way through all the —
LS: He’s cut through the trees and the brush and all.
TS: And pops his head over the fence, “C’mon, let’s go.”
LS: So we — I mean, and we allowed him. We were like, “Jimmy, we’re fine.” And he goes, “You’re — I am not leaving y’all here. I’m not leaving you here. I have power at the house. Just come over there.” I said, “I’ve got three cats. I’m not leaving my cats.” He goes, “You can bring them.” I said, “Okay.” So you know, we put a ladder on one side of the fence and a ladder on the other. And over we went with our cats and a few items of clothing.
TS: And we stayed with Jimmy for several days.
LS: We did stay with him for a week.
TS: But that was — you know, in retrospect, this was where the progression of being on the receiving end versus the delivery of service started. You know, those guys were there before event and then immediately afterward saying, “We got to go.” They’re there. And then we stay with Jimmy. And then our church [0:21:00] is reaching out to us immediately. And we’re thinking, “How did they even know?”
LS: But we had — we had no clue what was happening.
TS: Yeah, we were in our little world.
LS: We were. And we didn’t have a TV. We didn’t have any way of knowing what was going on through the city. So these people that were reaching out to us had a real clear picture of what was happening in the city and the areas that were so badly affected. And that’s why they were reaching out. But I mean, you’re not thinking that when they’re calling. We’re like, “How did they know we flooded?”
TS: So we had a group from Houston First Baptist came and helped us move out what we could move out, which was pretty limited. And then another fireman calls and says, “We’re going to come help y’all?” And I said, “Warren, just give us — give us 24 hours just to figure out.” “Okay, we’ll call you in 24 hours.” And then he said, “Okay, we’re going to be there Friday morning at 8:00, and we’re going to start cleaning out your house.”
LS: Because at this time when he’s talking to him, we still had water [0:22:00] in the house.
TS: Yeah, there was — yeah, there was still water in there. So I look out to the house on Friday morning. It was probably a little after 7:00. And I see two trucks pull up. One was Warren. One was Dennis Harrelson. Warren Ducote and Dennis Harrelson, and they get out. And they said, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” And they started walking through the house looking, looking. I said, “Okay.” Well, then a couple guys pull up. A couple more guys pull up. A couple more guys pull up. 27 guys —
LS: Firemen.
TS: Most of them with their wives and kids came. And they said — he said they were going to start at 8:00. And they got to work at 8 o’clock. And they didn’t stop until about 3 o’clock. That house was demoed — completely cleaned out.
LS: There was — there was just — and a clean floor. I mean, it was — it was unbelievable. And so I’m over —
TS: And they loaded up and came back a day later and did another fireman’s mother’s house [0:23:00] right down the street — same bunch.
LS: Yeah, they just — so we just — I was over at the house where they were bringing some things that they thought might be salvageable. And you know, I’m just — things are all over the driveway. There’s really not any — and everybody kept saying, “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to do?” I said, “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know.” I said, “I need to think for a second,” because when you just see all your belongings coming out. And the things that they were bringing to me mostly really was just from the kitchen, because it could hopefully be washed off and saved. You know, the other things, it was on the street. But later in the afternoon, I look over there, and I mean, I saw them there. And I saw what they were doing. And I was just trying to organize what they were bringing over to me.
And I remember going over there and just hugging them all and telling them, you know, “How are we ever — how are we ever going to pay all these people back for coming over here [0:24:00] and helping us?” Because it was truly, truly overwhelming. It was. I’ve never seen anything like it. I’ve never received anything like that. You know, we’re — we do a lot of mission work. And we are — we volunteer at church. We volunteer wherever we can. And so you feel kind of helpless that you can’t go and do something for other people, because you’re trying to manage your own mess. But seeing — being on the receiving end of that — you know, and I just remember saying to our dear friend, John Panto — I said, “How are we ever going to pay people back and let them know that — you know, how much we appreciate?” And he goes, “Lisa, this is payback for all the things that you and Tom have always done for everybody else. And we finally get to do it for you.” And everybody said the same thing to us. And that’s very humbling though. You know, and it’s hard to — it’s hard to receive sometimes.
And I kept thinking whenever I’m sitting up there watching the water come in — we are people of faith [0:25:00]. We’re Christians. And I just kept saying, “Okay, I’ll be curious to see what the Lord has for us through this season in our life.” And I think the biggest part of that has been just to be humbled and allow people to help you and receive that.
You know, people want to help, especially during that time. There were people that came here from all over the United States, you know, to help strangers. And I’m thankful. I’m thankful for our community, you know. Texas is amazing. We are. And it’s just — I think that was — that has been the biggest thing for us — is just being able to receive that. One, because we’re just people that do. But two, because of our careers, I do believe that had a big impact in that we’re just used to doing. You know, when people are having their worst day, they call the fire department to come out and fix it or do what you can. And we’re used to being those people that go fix things or try to make things [0:26:00] better — and definitely a different perspective.
TS: It’s been interesting. And still, even today 14 months in, I’m here to tell you the novelty of this event has worn off.
LS: We’re tired of dealing with it.
TS: We’re tired, but I think without this perspective that we have, it would be very easy — and I will admit that there have been days when I haven’t won this fight — but where you could just give in to the frustration of dealing with insurance, and government bureaucracy, and FEMA, and, you know, contractors. And our contractor’s a wonderful man, but he can only do so much with people that are — you know, “Okay, we’re going to be there Wednesday.” Well, Wednesday becomes Friday. And then the guy that’s going to come the next day doesn’t show up, because this guy didn’t finish, because he — and it just — it’s like it’s endless. You know, the dominos never stop falling [0:27:00]. And if you could take any one of a number of situations and focus on it, it will consume you — totally consume you.
LS: It has. I mean, this has consumed us. It’s all you think about, because you just — I mean, I started — I wasn’t really laughing-laughing in that I’ve never been homeless. I mean, I’ve always been blessed enough to have a home. My parents provided a home. When I was old enough to have a home for myself, I did. We’ve created a home together. And we have been homeless for the past 14 months. And you — it’s like you don’t have a place to be really. I mean, we are staying in a home with, you know, some people who’ve allowed us to be in their home. But it’s not the same. You don’t have a place to put your things. You don’t feel like, “I just can’t wait to get home.” You don’t just — we haven’t felt that in 14 months. And it’s exhausting. It’s absolutely exhausting [0:28:00]. And you do. You think this is never going to end. It’s soon to end. We’re getting there.
TS: Plus, something that we have seen change with us, we would have a lot of people over. We had a very warm, inviting home. And we enjoyed people coming over, and we enjoyed cooking.
LS: Just the fellowship.
TS: I couldn’t tell you the last time we cooked a meal at home.
LS: Yeah, and just —
TS: Or had somebody come over.
LS: So we miss that. I mean, that’s who we are.
TS: Because we have a place to stay. It’s not our place. You know, there’s a kitchen. It’s not our kitchen. And it’s just — those things, they start to wear on you. And then it got to be where, “Okay, well, we’ll just kill two birds with one stone. We’ll go out to eat. We don’t have to be here, and we don’t have to cook.”
LS: Yeah, so we’re ready to be home and cook a meal.
TS: We’re ready to change that.
LS: You know, we will be home by Thanksgiving. We’re having Thanksgiving at our house. I do know that.
TS: It may be on paper plates [0:29:00].
LS: We’re having Thanksgiving.
TS: That’s what we did last year. We were in the backyard at the place we’re staying on the picnic table with paper plates, but it — we made it work.
LS: We did, so it’s — it’s okay. You know, I do say — we — God has been good to us. We’ve been blessed in a number of ways through this whole situation. And I know there are people that haven’t had the blessings that we have. And so I’m thankful for that. But it doesn’t make it any easier mentally. Really, it doesn’t.
TS: And we do have conversation occasionally. And it’s not that you are feeling sorry for yourself, but a little reality check every once a while — you know, like I said, we’re tired. The novelty’s worn off. And we can be on the deck of — or the back deck of our house and see houses that haven’t been started yet.
LS: Uh-huh.
TS: 14 months post-event.
LS: Yeah.
TS: So you know, whatever tale of woe you [0:30:00] choose to tell, somebody’s —
LS: Somebody’s got it worse.
TS: – got it worse.
LS: So we just keep on, huh?
TS: Keep on. Chug along.
LS: Yep.
LB: When were you first able to return to your home? How long was it after you had left?
LS: We left on Monday morning when the sun came up. And I think we — we went back Tuesday.
TS: Tuesday afternoon or —
LS: Late afternoon?
TS: Yeah, there was a —
LS: We couldn’t get into our neighborhood. We had to walk down Kingwood Drive and go through the trees that our friend rescued us through. And the ladders that we had put up to get out, we went back over them. Because we just wanted to see.
TS: So we probably got in Tuesday afternoon. And there was probably two feet of water still in the house.
LS: We had 67 inches in the garage area and 52 in the house. So it was substantial. It was about 5 feet of water basically. And they were — because they were launching boats right there [0:31:00] and they were going down our street, there was a lot of damage that was caused from the waves. The cabinets that were higher up in our home had gotten wet.
TS: I even had to think about — when I was dealing with the insurance adjuster, he goes, “What about — what is all this? You know, why?” And I said, “Wave action.” And then I thought, “Wave action.” Think about wave action inside your house.
LS: Your home. It was just — I mean, it was just incredible over there. It was like you were in a war zone. It really was — just the helicopters — before we lost power, I do remember this. We just kept — because it was when Houston was having their flooding issues before it actually got out here. And we still had power. And that was Sunday. And the tornado warnings that just kept coming over the TVs to where it was — we were like, “What is happening? What is happening?” I mean, they were just — it was like there were one right after the other. Weren’t there?
TS: Yeah.
LS: We were trying to see [0:32:00] what — you know, where they were. But I mean, if it was going off on our TV, it was in our area. And we’re thinking, “Okay, well, we’ve done this before. We were ready to go to the bathroom — the bathroom inside the house under the stairs or our closets.
TS: It became very surreal. You know, like I said, earlier we had planned — and we had experienced this, you know, both preparing our home for storms and then dealing with storms. But it was like — as it started playing out and developing, the constant weather alerts and the water — and we’re like, “This is crazy.”
LS: It was. It was really — you really are asking yourself, “What’s happening?” It’s like there was a shift in the atmosphere kind of. And it hasn’t stopped since really when you look at all the other events that have happened since then. We had a lot of people in our church — prominent people in our church that ended up passing away two weeks after the storm, a week after the storm, three weeks after the storm. And it was — it truly was like, “What is happening?” I thought [0:33:00] the Lord’s coming back already. That’s what I thought.
TS: Yeah.
LS: But it was — so we were able to get back in Tuesday. There was still a couple feet of water in it. And so we left after we kind of looked around a bit. And then we were able to go back into it and start getting things out on Wednesday.
TS: Wednesday. And then did the demo on that Friday.
LS: Yeah.
TS: Had an interesting conversation. The San Antonio Solid Waste that came to Houston — and they were wonderful, wonderful guys. They actually started — their first deployment was on our street at our house. And they had some logistical issues that had to work through. So they —
LS: Just to get the flow of how they were going to do this.
TS: Just to get to get thing moving. So we had set up a little tent and had a cooler with drinks and some — and I told the guys, “Don’t sit in your truck. Just come.” You know, we had some chairs. We had something to drink, so [0:34:00] we got a little rapport with them. Well, we have a neighbor who has an opinion on every subject known to man and is more than willing to share that with you. So he comes over, and he’s explaining to these guys what they need to be doing. And one of them looks at him and says, “Sir, here’s what you don’t understand.” He says, “What’s happening right here on your street is happening from Beaumont, Texas to Corpus Christi.” And he just — his eyes got big, and he turned around and walked back across the street.
LS: In his defense, I mean, it is easy to —
TS: He was to the point where he was overwhelmed. He was not dealing with the situation at all and just couldn’t imagine that these guys weren’t there, you know, to just clean out his house right now. When that guy told them that, I’m thinking, “Wow, that does put it in perspective.”
LS: It does. And that’s what I mean. There were so many different events that were happening. The magnitude — and then, you know, we had storms after that. This year’s been crazy. But so we [0:35:00] — it’s a —
TS: Yeah, we have acquaintances, friends that are in Panama City.
LS: And that lost their business. I mean, yeah.
TS: Lisa’s been in contact with them. And it’s —
LS: So it isn’t just here. You know, and everybody’s just got to figure out how. So there’s lessons learned for them that they’re using the events that happened here and information that people are sharing and volunteers, especially, that are over there. They have a better idea of how to help them because of what happened here. So you know, you just try to use those things to make things better for somebody else, yeah.
LB: Did you apply for FEMA help? Or how did that process work for you?
LS: We did apply for FEMA help. When you have insurance — we had insurance. When you have insurance, you really don’t qualify for much help.
TS: It eliminated us from almost everything [0:36:00].
LS: Everything, it does.
TS: Other than the frustration of having to deal with them and finding out that you don’t qualify for anything.
LS: So the thing that they did give us — and I’m not — I am appreciative to everything that they were able to do for us. But they gave us money for rent for a month. And we’ve been out of our home for 14. And then, I guess in the last four months, the Red Cross realized — which we did not qualify for any Red Cross help whenever we applied for that. But because we were still out of home — and we didn’t reach out to them. I don’t know how they knew. I don’t know how they get their information, but I guess it was four months ago. They sent us a letter — or an email that they’d been notified that we were still out of our home. And so they gave us money for rent for a month — supposed to be for a month’s rent. But those are the — that’s what we qualified for. Because you have insurance, it just really does eliminate you from a lot of things [0:37:00]. We — you still had to — so that — so FEMA can mean a couple of things. Because our flood insurance is through FEMA also. And so when you start navigating that process, that’s a whole other disaster. And we realize it was because of the magnitude of people that were trying to get their insurance taken care of and all that. And some of it is you just don’t know what to do and how that works. I did not know. We did not realize how flood insurance works. You buy it from an insurance —
TS: You go to an agent, who writes the policy, who takes the money, who basically puts it in a big pot at FEMA. And then as you file a claim, they get a third party involved, which is an independent adjuster, who comes. And the couple that did ours were from, I believe, South Carolina [0:38:00]. And as you work through this process, you would — that couple was delightful and, I think, did a very thorough and professional job. And then you would — the next step, you would deal with levels of incompetence like I’ve never seen before and total apathy — didn’t affect them, didn’t really worry about it. One — and I couldn’t even tell you who this gentleman was, but I was voicing my frustration. And he said, “I understand.” He said, “We normally have about 800 employees.” He said, “For this event, we have 1800.” He said, “We have a thousand people that we immediately put into play.”
LS: And they had no clue.
TS: They don’t know what to do nor do they have the authority to make anything happen.
LS: So you’re telling the people over — I mean, you’re —
TS: We had a list that each day we would get up and — Lisa’s was way more [0:39:00] extensive — there was 10 or 12 people that we would call every single day.
LS: Where are we today with this?
TS: And a lot of that was, “Please call me back.” And you knew they weren’t going to, so you called them the next day. “Please call me back.”
LS: But you have to document that you’ve actually reached out to them to try to — so that when you do have to — what we ultimately ended up having to — and it had nothing to do with — the adjuster was wonderful. And he did his part, and we did our part in documenting all of our contents, which is — it took me a week. It was probably eight hours a day for a week trying to document our contents, because you have to put every single little thing down. And so we did it from memory. Then we walked through the house and saw if we forgot anything. And then we looked at the video we had taken to see if we had forgotten anything, so we could make sure that we had it as detailed as possible. And so they did their part [0:40:00].
We did our part. And then you’re waiting for something to happen. Because when you start wanting to put your home back together, you have to start writing checks to people, because they want money. You know, they don’t know who is going to be able to pay, who’s not going to be able to pay. And most people don’t have $25,000, $30,000 sitting in a bank account just to get things started, you know. So we weren’t getting anywhere with that. And so I remember sitting there one morning. And I just said to Tom — I said, “I refuse to believe that we have zero control of our life right now, because we don’t. And we have to think about what do we have control of. What can we do?” You know, and there were — lots of prayer that went into that. Lord, just give us some direction on what we need to do.
And I remember thinking, “Okay, we have people that we elect to positions. And we’ve never asked them for anything.” You know, we do our [0:41:00] — we vote. We vote in every election, and they’re supposed to be representing us. We’re going to reach out to them. And so we did. We reached to Ted Poe’s office. And we also reached out to Ted Cruz’s office and were able to tell them all the things that we had done to try to get this insurance thing going, because we weren’t qualifying for anything else, you know. And Ted Cruz’s office had someone that was actually in D.C. that was strictly for Hurricane Harvey. And he was on the phone with us for probably an hour. He wanted to know everything that we had done. And he said, “Okay.” We gave him our FEMA case number. He said, “Okay.” Ted Poe’s office, same thing. And we had — they actually sent us a paper that we needed to sign to allow them to open our case or to look into it.
TS: And release information.
LS: And release information to them, so we did. And I’ll tell you. Those — I don’t know who specifically in those offices, but those people [0:42:00] in those offices, within two weeks, we had — probably within a week, our adjuster called and said, “I don’t know who you talked to, but your file’s on the top. What do you need? You know, is there something we can do?” I said, “No, y’all have done it all. It’s just not getting processed past you.” She said, “Okay, I’ll do what I can over here.” And she did. We had our first check, right, two weeks —
TS: Yeah, in a — within a — I don’t know whose cage got rattled, but somebody’s did. And I don’t know who did that. But after all this inactivity, it started with this phone call. And then in probably — probably a 72-hour window, every agency, whether state or federal that was involved in that process, called us at least twice.
LS: “Is there anything we can do for you? Is there something that you need?” And we weren’t asking for any — we weren’t asking for handouts. We had paid for a policy [0:43:00], and we just needed them to follow through on their part so that we could start trying to put our life back together, you know. There’s a lot of things that aren’t covered in insurance and a pool being one of them and anything that has to do with a pool or outside stuff. Well, you can’t just leave you pool sitting there for months on end. We needed to start addressing some of these things that we could. And so — that was some of the reason why you just needed access to money somehow — you know, large amounts of money so you could start putting the pieces back together.
TS: Even with — even with a flood policy, we’re out of pocket a lot of money. And one of the frustrations was dealing with the Small Business Association — the Small Business Administration loan. And we approached them.
LS: Which they all encourage you to do.
TS: They encourage — they encourage you to do that. From the very beginning, they encourage you.
LS: The FEMA people.
TS: So we went through the process [0:44:00], which drug on and on and on — and had us sign releases to deed for our home — put a lien on our home with the federal government. That’ll get your attention. And this process, it was like it was endless. Well, if you produce these three documents, the next day they need five more. And then the first three weren’t right. They need something different. And it went on and on until —
LS: And it wasn’t just us. It was all of our neighbors, because every one of them had been encouraged by FEMA to apply for a Small Business Administration loan, because the rates were good. You can do it over a 30-year period. And it just all made sense, you know.
TS: Several months — probably at least five months into the process, I get a phone call. And this guy says, “Well, y’all live in Texas.” I’m thinking, “Hello.” This guy is razor — this guy is [0:45:00] razor sharp. We’re five months into this process and he realizes that we live in Texas. So a lot of what we applied for isn’t applicable.
LS: He goes, “I’m sorry. You don’t qualify for that. You live in Texas.” And we’re like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” And we said, “You know what? We’re not doing this. We’re not doing this. So whatever documents you have for us to do this, you can stop them. Because we are not going to follow through with the Small Business Administration loan. This is way too difficult.” And every single one of our neighbors, it was the same story. They said no.
TS: We’re done.
LS: We’re not going to do this. So it’s —
TS: And fortunately for us, not that we’re wealthy, but we have means that we can have other avenues to pursue. And I pity the people that don’t.
LS: Well, it’s our retirement — is what the avenues are. It’s because we — we have — we prepared for retirement, but you don’t plan for things like this in retirement really [0:46:00]. And I think that’s — was the case for a lot of our neighbors. You don’t know how long you’re going to live, you know, and if you’re going to outlive your money or not. And then when you take a big chunk out of it like this in a year, it’s disheartening. You think, “What’s going to happen?” And I think that’s where a lot of people are out here — just the ones that we talk to and especially in our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is a little bit older — the people that live out there. And it’s been hard. It has been hard to watch that and just to hear, although it does make you feel a little bit better. You don’t feel alone when you hear everybody telling the same story — you know, that they’re having — it’s not personal. That’s just how business was during all this, you know. So there’s just a lot of lessons. And like I said, I don’t know that you could ever prepare for something like this. You can do what you can, but there’s been so many curveballs that have been thrown. There’s no way to prepare for that. You just got to figure [0:47:00] it — figure out how to navigate it from one day to the next.
TS: Yeah, and something that Lisa mentioned earlier about an inventory of your home. And we’ve had this conversation. People say, “That wouldn’t be that tough.” Oh, yeah? You’d be surprised how difficult it is to say, “Okay, name everything that was in the kitchen.” Then you start thinking, “Wow, oh, yeah, there was — well.” You know, how many pots and pans and saucers and cups and —
LS: And napkins, linen napkins. I mean, because you had to put everything. And it was just a line-item for each thing — each individual thing. And I thought, “This is crazy,” but you don’t want to generalize, because you want to be paid what you’re due, you know. So it was — it’s been interesting these 14 months. But we’re still here. We’re putting our house back together. And hopefully [0:48:00] — I think that they figured out what caused the devastation here in Kingwood at least. And I think that it could have been prevented to some degree. So that’s why we decided to rebuild our home. You know, all the people said, “Why are staying there if you flooded like that? It could happen again.” I don’t think we’ll ever flood again out here like that — not in our neighborhood, I don’t. Because there were some decisions that individuals made that —
TS: There was an unprecedented, natural disaster followed up by a pretty significant manmade disaster. There was a time for several hours that the water was rising in our house at five inches an hour, where you could truly watch the water level rise.
LS: Yeah, and when you’re in the middle of it, you’re thinking, “This is like a tidal wave his us. You know, what happened?” And until after the fact, when you learned what actually [0:49:00] happened with the release of water from Conroe. And they have eight gates, and it’s coming down the river. And Lake Houston has three, and you know, there’s — you just start putting all the pieces together. And you realize what happened. And talking to just our councilmember and — I can’t think of his name. Who’s our representative? Huberty. And they’re very aware of what happened. And they make you feel a little bit better about, “Did we make the right decision in trying to put our house back together or not?” And a lot of those things that happened have been addressed. And so that’s why —
TS: It was a lot to do. It was truly the perfect storm, where you had a number of components, one being, like I said, the natural disaster and then some, I think, poor decision making that compounded that. And then the other that’s probably [0:50:00] more evident now than it was immediately after the storm is the blatant neglect of maintaining that river and the surrounding areas.
LS: Over the years.
TS: Houston annexed Kingwood in 1996 and pretty much — you know, “Thanks for your money,” and moved on.
LS: That’s how we feel, yeah.
TS: But you know, to — of course, hindsight’s 20/20 for everybody, but in retrospect, you look back. And you think, “How in the world did this happen?” And you start thinking of these different components and how they come into play. The neglect over a significant amount of time — not just — you know, I’m not talking a few months.
LS: In the last couple years, no.
TS: We’re talking years of neglect and the unchecked sand mining in the river and, you know, lack of maintenance of the drainage of the — you know, the surrounding areas. It was the perfect storm.
LS: It did, so those things are getting addressed now so we’re told [0:51:00] by the politicians, so.
TS: We know we can trust them.
LS: They’re going to have to edit our video, okay.
LB: So what kind of changes did you notice within the community, especially Kingwood, following Hurricane Harvey?
LS: Changes. Well, the negative changes were just how many businesses were affected by it and just shut down — and hoping and hoping and praying that they would come back. Because if the businesses didn’t come back, the community was not going to come back. And you know, we were in a real pivotal place there for a while, and it was —
TS: And still are.
LS: We are, you know, because there’s a number of houses that haven’t been renovated yet. And you’re hoping that that will happen. But early on, I think one of the biggest things for us personally was seeing places like HEB opening back up and just little restaurants popping back open [0:52:00]. You know, there were — what did we count? 20?
TS: In the immediate area that were close to where we’re at right now, there was 26 —
LS: – eateries, restaurants —
TS: – eateries that were closed.
LS: – from after the flood.
TS: And it was interesting to see — you know, we’re creatures of habit. You know, we had our little places we like to go. And they just weren’t options anymore.
LS: Or even to go to the grocery store and see your neighbors. You know, you would see your neighbors in the grocery store. And it’s kind of like a social event. I remember when HEB opened back up, we went and got a few things the day that they opened. And then they were doing something in there that afternoon. We said, “Let’s just go back and go visit.” So we did. We went back to HEB to just walk through, because we got to see our neighbors. Because everybody was so focused on their home and trying to get their business taken care of, you really didn’t see anybody. And so just to get to see your neighbors and ask if they were okay and just kind of socialize [0:53:00] a little bit, it makes you feel a little bit better.
TS: One thing that we — a little more specific, taking our neighborhood — or here in Kingwood, they call them villages. And ours is Fosters Mill. There’s 547 homes in Fosters Mill. 309 of them flooded. And so, here 14 months later, Lisa mentioned it being a pivotal time. There’s still some uncertainty with the homeowners. There’s those, like we’ve chosen, that committed to rebuilding. We’re putting a lot of money in that home. There’s homes, like I mentioned earlier, that haven’t — they’ve been gutted and haven’t been touched. There’s a couple that’ve been condemned. There’s several that have been bought by —
LS: – investors.
TS: – investors. Some are sitting idle. Some are being, you know, just renovated — just boom, boom, boom. And then you question the quality of the workmanship. So all those things just in our little world of [0:54:00] Fosters Mill are affecting the entire community — the entire area. You know, the what-ifs — “What if this doesn’t come back? You know, what’s going to happen to our property value? Did we do the right thing?” And time will tell. Obviously, we feel confident – or would not have done it – that the community will rebound. It’s not going to be immediate.
LS: No, and some of the things, just visually, how did it change the community? I mean, to drive — one, seeing the amount of traffic in Kingwood, especially immediately after because of all the contractors and the vehicles, it was difficult to get out — in and out of Kingwood anyways at certain times of the day. And it was all day every day. It was hard to get out. It was hard to get in. The students here were having to travel, you know, to the beltway to get to school. And they were — there was never — I mean, all day every day, traffic was [0:55:00] just horrendous around here — just people trying to get back on their feet and that.
So the grocery store opening was a big deal. The kids getting back to school — to their high school was a really big deal. And we don’t even have a student over there anymore, but we did. And just knowing they want to be at their school. I mean, we know how — so some of those students, they weren’t in their home and they weren’t in their school. And you know, some of the parents that we had talked to, they were having trouble. Kids were having a hard time trying to adjust to what’s normal now. We’re not in any of our familiar surroundings, you know, and it’s hard enough when you’re in high school. And then you pile all of that on, but I think on the positive note of things that we saw were people were driving around the neighborhood with things to drink, things to eat, you know, a popsicle. This community center was busting at the seams of donations that people brought [0:56:00] and that were shipped in — and just seeing the community come together and trying to help each other out — people that you didn’t even know. And those are the silver linings in things like that.
TS: Yeah, there are certainly people in our immediate neighborhood that, you know, we would see at a casual wave or whatever. Now, they’re stopping and saying, “Hey, your house is looking great. How’s it going? You know, when do you expect to get back in?” And you see that a lot. So it has — I think, through adversity, people have got a little closer knit.
LS: Uh-huh, yeah, so it’s changed for positive that way. It’s more positive now than negative.
TS: We have a friend that’s a realtor that had done market research in Louisiana post-flooding. And we — as we were weighing our options of working through what we wanted to do, she said, “It’ll come back, but it’s not going to be as quickly as people are hoping for.” She said, “You’re looking at [0:57:00] a couple years, not a couple months.” But — and we see that. You know, we’re 14 months into it. And we see that. We see that playing out.
LB: Did you acknowledge Harvey’s first anniversary?
LS: We did. We went to Louisiana to the Golden Nugget. We had all these ideas about our neighborhood. We were just going to have a little sip and stroll around the ponds out there. And everybody — and it — none of that — none of the ideas that any of us had that we were going to do played out the way that we thought. And the opportunity presented itself for us to just go for an overnight. And it was the anniversary, and we said, “Okay.” But it —
TS: There was a — we had been asked to talk to some people at our church. And they actually did it at the fire station.
LS: A video.
TS: A video, and then it was [0:58:00] — it didn’t seem like it fit. Well, then there was a decision made that they were going to show this video on the anniversary. And they asked if we could attend the services.
LS: All of them. We go to one, but they wanted us to attend all of the services.
TS: And some of that was — same conversation we’re having, being on the receiving end as opposed to, you know, giving. And then we were asked to come up in front of the congregation, not to specifically identify us, but for us to be representative of all those that are still not back in their homes. Because we see — and it’s absolutely nothing against people that weren’t affected, but there’s a lot of people that we know personally that weren’t affected other than some inconvenience for a few weeks. And you know, then they’re back to their lives as usual.
LS: And you just forget that there are people that are still dealing with it.
TS: There’s a whole lot of people that, now 14 months later — you know, [0:59:00] back to normal. What is normal? We don’t — you know, we’re anxious to find out what the new normal looks like.
LS: But the anniversary for us, I mean, we are not people that have PTSD when it rains or — none — none of that. We need rain. Rain is a blessing. And we just had to figure out, as a city, what we can do about these big rain events that seem to come more often than they used to. And I think that there are people that are paying attention to that now. And for us personally, the anniversary was — I mean, this has been a heck of a year, for sure, for us. But it has built character for us. It has. We’ve dealt with things together that — there are people that live a lifetime that they don’t have to try to navigate those sort of things. And we are short on our tempers sometimes, but we always remembered that, you know, we’re doing this together. And [1:00:00] we’ve been trying to navigate it together from day one. And you’ve just got to be a team.
So that’s — our anniversary is — okay, it’s been a year. And then here we are. We’re still here, and we’re doing fine. And we’re ready for it to be — to know what normal is now for us. I’m so ready for that. But it’s just not the time for that yet. We’ve still got a little bit to do, and it’s okay. It is, yeah.
LB: When one is to describe Hurricane Harvey as Houston Strong, how do you think Kingwood exemplified this? What would you say is Kingwood Strong?
TS: I think there’s been a heightened sense of community. And we referenced earlier — people wanting to get their familiar restaurants open and their familiar grocery story open, the school back up and running, so they could focus back on what drew them to this area [1:01:00] initially. And it is. It’s a wonderful community. And I think there was that sense that some of that had been taken away, stolen, whatever. And to see people being willing to help out — help each other out — whether it was sandwich or a cooler of water or, you know, stopping by and saying, “How you doing?” The stuff that was immediately post-event has continued. And I do think — I can say without reservation that there are people we’re closer to that are — you know, they’ve been neighbors and acquaintances that are now —
LS: – friends.
TS: – friends.
LS: So I think it’s drawn people together in a good way just like we can say, personally, that we’re a team and we’re just trying to navigate this together. I think we can say that as a community. The community’s navigated this — these past 14 months and especially immediately after [1:02:00]. And you just — you do become friends instead of we just all are from Kingwood. And “Did you flood?” “Oh, yeah.” We’ve learned from each other when we were — especially immediately following, trying to navigate FEMA and all those entities. You were able to share that information with other people to try to help them. And I — more than one occasion, we told people, “If you’re not getting anywhere, you need to reach out to our representatives — with our elected officials, because they can do things that we can’t. You know, they have people they can call that are over that — that we don’t know those phone numbers — you know, the backline numbers. We don’t know that.” So it really has — just a sense of community is Kingwood Strong. It is.
I mean, something very simple right afterward. You know, we’re trying to see where we could get some ice or get whatever. And there was a trailer in this parking actually that HEB [1:03:00] had sponsored. And it was a refrigerated trailer. And they just had ice in it. It was open. The door was closed, but anybody in this community could just come by here at any time and just — if you need ice, get it. It wasn’t like they were worried about somebody’s going to clean out the whole truck. You got what you needed. And the truck was here tomorrow. You could get what you needed tomorrow, too. And it was like that in here with some different products and the parking lot across the street. There were 18-wheelers that were backed up. And you know, you could just go through and try to get what you needed just to survive, right?
TS: Get you back up and running.
LS: Yeah, yeah, so I don’t know who initiated all of that, but it was appreciated. Trying to help a neighbor out, huh?
TS: Yeah.
LB: So now that you’ve experienced Hurricane Harvey, how would you prepare for the next storm that comes?
LS: What would we do different?
TS: I don’t know [1:04:00] that there would be anything that we could do differently. We did our due diligence as far as preparing for food and water and gasoline.
LS: Generator.
TS: And a generator. And we were keeping up with, you know, weather reports and keeping up with the projected river reports.
LS: We were. It didn’t matter, but we were.
TS: But the last — before we lost most of our communication, one of the last reports that we got [unclear, 1:04:36] crest at the San Jacinto River/U.S. 59 lower than what it was in 1994.
LS: When it flooded.
TS: And it was almost 7-feet higher. It’s stuff like that. There’s nothing — nothing —
LS: – you can do to prepare for that. But for other people to prepare for things like that — I mean, when the meteorologists are giving us predictions that there’s going to be 51 inches of rain [1:05:00], you need to listen to them. They weren’t — they weren’t off on that. It was very close to 51. Now, the reservoirs and things like that, I mean, Addicks Reservoir, whenever they let that out or when it overflooded, those people knew a week beforehand they were going to get water in their homes. And that was the difference in out here. Out here, people did not expect that they were going to have water in their homes. There wasn’t anything that projected that happening, so.
TS: There’s areas around that are subject to flooding. And you know, that’s a different game. And obviously, we’re almost two miles from the river and had that much water. It’s an odd-precedented event. And to say that you could identify something that you would do different, I don’t believe — as a homeowner [1:06:00] and as a resident, I don’t believe that there’s anything that we could have done. I think, looking back, there are some preventative measures that could have lessened the blow that weren’t taken by different local and state agencies. But as far as —
LS: Just the general public, what do you do to prepare? You need to have — I mean, you really need to have a generator. If you live in the City of Houston the way that storms come through, you need to have a generator. We also had a window unit for air conditioning, because we live in Houston. And the summertime, it’s a hundred, hundred and ten degrees some days. You need to have those things, you know, and just be comfortable with how all that works and have a system in place, which we did — and just food. It doesn’t mean you go and stock up where there’s no way you’re going to use [1:07:00] all the stuff. You know, people come out with carts and carts and carts full of stuff. But you need to be sensible about it. And you do need to have water. And you need to have your medicines. And you need to have all of those pertinent things that you need on a daily basis. But if you think that you’re going to flood, you know, we did have our photo albums, they were upstairs. You know, and when things just start — kept deteriorating we were trying to think through and trying to move things that were important.
TS: Prioritize. Some things you know you just can’t replace.
LS: There was no way, so.
TS: But other than moving out —
LS: There was nothing else we could have —
TS: And with the — you know, the warning that we had was when the water was coming up. So you know, other than truly moving out, I don’t know what else you can do to prepare [1:08:00].
LB: Do you have anything else you want to add?
LS: I appreciate the project that you all are doing.
TS: Yeah, I appreciate y’all doing this.
LS: So hopefully, people will learn from what others have to say. I know that that has been the case out here just in this community itself. So hopefully, there will be other people that can learn or just —
TS: Yeah.
LS: – look at it from a different perspective, you know. And show some people a little grace maybe when they’re short-tempered, huh?
TS: Yeah.
LS: “Why are they so angry?”
TS: Yeah.
LS: Because they must have flooded. That’s what I feel like. I’m in a perpetual bad mood, and I’m tired of — I’m a joyful person. I’m tired of being in a bad mood, huh? Yeah.
LB: Well, thank you.
TS: Thank you, yeah.
LS: Thank y’all so much. We do appreciate y’all. [1:08:51]

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